i 

' 

„ 


■ 


. 


■ 

•  .  ,* 


'  -“JEr-  • 

. 


*v./ 


* 


1 


><  «  »::i 


jj 

* 


i 


* 


\ 


'V 


/ 


' 


. 


i 


■b 


' 

'  l'r 


- 


' 


SELECTIONS  AND  DOCUMENTS 
IN  ECONOMICS 

SELECTED  READINGS  IN  ECONOMICS 
By  Charles  J.  Bullock,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
Economics,  Harvard  University 

SELECTED  READINGS  IN  PUBLIC 
FINANCE  ( Second  Edition) 

By  Charles  J.  Bullock,  Ph.  D.,  Professor  of 
Economics,  Harvard  University 

ECONOMIC  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES.  176s- 1860 

By  Guy  Stevens  Callender,  late  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Yale  University 

SOCIOLOGY  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

By  Thomas  N.  Carver,  Ph.  D.,  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

TRADE  UNIONISM  AND  LABOR 
PROBLEMS  ( Second  Series) 

By  John  R.  Commons,  Professor  of  Political 
Economy,  University  of  Wisconsin 

SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  AND  SOCIAL 
POLICY 

By  James  Ford,  Ph.  D.,  Associate  Professor 
of  Social  Ethics,  Harvard  University 

RAILWAY  PROBLEMS  ( Revised  Edition) 

Bv  William  Z.  Ripley,  Ph.  D.,  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

TRUSTS,  POOLS  AND  CORPORATIONS 
( Revised  Edition) 

By  William  Z.  Ripley,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  Harvard  University 

SELECTED  READINGS  IN  INTERNA¬ 
TIONAL  TRADE  AND  TARIFF 
PROBLEMS 

By  Frank  W.  Taussig,  Henry  Lee  Professor 
of  Economics,  Harvard  University 

READINGS  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

By  Albert  Benedict  Wolfe,  Professor  of  Eco¬ 
nomics,  University  of  Texas 


SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  AND 
SOCIAL  POLICY 


PRINCIPLES  UNDERLYING  TREATMENT 
AND  PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY,  DEFECTIVENESS, 

AND  CRIMINALITY 


EDITED  WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY 

JAMES  FORD,  Ph.D. 

ASSOCIATE  PROFESSOR  OF  SOCIAL  ETHICS  IN  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


GINN  AND  COMPANY 

BOSTON  •  NEW  YORK  •  CHICAGO  •  LONDON 
ATLANTA  •  DALLAS  •  COLUMBUS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


JiObTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


4 


* 


COPYRIGHT,  1923,  13 Y  JAMES  FORD 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 
923-9 


129093 


Cfj c  9tftcn*tim  r  e  S  S 


GINN  AND  COMPANY  •  PRO¬ 
PRIETORS  •  BOSTON  •  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 


The  books  and  articles  that  are  most  valuable  in  the  field  of  Social 
Problems  and  Social  Policy  are  either  monographs  based  upon  in¬ 
tensive  study  of  a  narrowly  delimited  field  or  secondary  textbooks  in 
one  or  another  branch  of  social  theory  or  of  social  practice.  Some 
authors  deal  ably  with  social  purpose  (they  may  be  moralists,  sociolo¬ 
gists,  political  scientists,  or  others)  but  ordinarily  they  fail  to  show  us 
by  what  concrete  programs  social  purpose  is  to  be  realized.  Others 
submit  admirable  analyses  of  special  social  problems  but  fail  to  show 
by  what  criteria  existing  conditions  and  practices  are  to  be  measured. 
In  this  volume  the  editor  has  endeavored  to  bring  together  the  best  of 
contemporary  ethical  theory  and  the  best  of  contemporary  practice. 

To  frame  social  policy  competently  we  should  determine  with  some 
precision  both  what  we  should  strive  to  accomplish  and  how  we  should 
achieve  our  purpose — that  is,  both  aims  and  means.  Part  I  of  this 
book  borrows  its  statements  of  social  purpose  and  social  criteria  from 
various  contemporary  schools  of  ethics.  Part  II  comprises  statements 
of  social  method  drawn  from  statistical  science,  pedagogy,  psychology, 
economics,  philanthropy,  sociology,  law,  political  science,  and  biology. 
Parts  III,  IV,  and  V  apply  the  principles  outlined  in  Parts  I  and  II  to 
the  problems  of  defectiveness,  poverty,  and  crime. 

The  arrangement  of  the  book  is  logical  but  the  material  will  not 
be  used  in  this  order  to  greatest  advantage  with  all  classes.  In  an 
introductory  course  or  with  immature  students  it  may  be  better  to 
start  with  Part  III  or  Part  IV  and  after  a  month  or  more  of  discussion 
of  concrete  problems  begin  the  study  of  fundamental  principles  out¬ 
lined  in  Part  I. 

The  editor  has  found  it  useful  in  such  a  course  to  treat  defectives 
before  the  dependent  and  delinquent  classes  and  to  follow  the  study  of 
defectives  with  the  study  of  eugenics  or  the  social  control  of  heredity. 
The  analysis  of  social  purpose  and  of  social  control  may  be  deferred 
to  the  middle  or  end  of  a  course  in  which  the  discussion  method  is 
not  used.  But  in  advanced  classes  and  classes  where  there  is  free 


VI 


PREFACE 


discussion  social  purpose  will  inevitably  be  considered  from  the 
beginning  and  reconsidered  from  time  to  time  throughout  the  course. 

The  pedagogical  purpose  of  this  volume  is  best  accomplished  where 
each  article  is  closely  analyzed  by  the  student  to  discover  the  prin¬ 
ciples  presented  and  the  argument  involved.  Any  student  will  get 
as  much  out  of  study  as  he  puts  into  it.  Mental  training  from  a  book 
of  this  sort  comes  primarily  from  challenging  each  statement  and 
from  considering  alternatives.  Destructive  criticism  of  existing  meas¬ 
ures  (which  is  easy)  should  be  followed  by  framing  substitute  con¬ 
structive  measures  or  policies  (which  is  difficult).  Throughout  both 
processes  the  students  should  be  required  to  support  all  opinions 
with  reasons. 

There  is  value  in  arranging  to  have  the  student  or  reader  contrast 
the  forms  of  organization,  agencies,  measures,  and  laws  which  are  out¬ 
lined  here  with  those  of  his  own  state — reasoning  out  their  relative 
merits,  determining  in  what  way  the  local  laws  or  agencies  should  be 
changed  and  how  such  change  should  be  accomplished. 

The  purpose  of  this  book  is  missed  if  students  are  required  to 
memorize  the  detail  which  it  contains.  It  is  designed  to  outline  prin¬ 
ciples  and  to  suggest  the  measures  by  which  the  moral  aims  of  society 
are  being  or  may  be  progressively  achieved.  Its  purpose  is  not  dogma¬ 
tism,  but  stimulation  and  education.  All  its  statements  should  be 
analyzed  and  challenged.  Local  applications  of  these  principles  and 
measures  will  help  to  reveal  their  strengths  or  weaknesses — and  also 
the  strengths  or  weaknesses  of  the  existing  local  practice. 

It  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  say  that  the  editor  does  not  necessarily 
agree  with  the  argument  of  all  the  articles  incorporated.  Some  incon¬ 
sistencies  will  be  noted  by  the  careful  reader.  But  the  editor  considers 
that  all  viewpoints  presented  here  should  be  taken  into  consideration 
and  that  every  statement  may  wisely  be  challenged  by  the  student. 
Where  possible  the  student  should  be  encouraged  to  examine  and  read 
further  in  the  original  volumes  from  which  these  selections  have 
been  made. 

Grateful  acknowledgment  is  here  made  to  the  authors  whose  writ¬ 
ings  are  included  in  this  volume  and  to  the  publishers  named  under 
the  first  citation  from  each  book  or  article  for  their  cooperation  and 
for  their  courtesy  in  permitting  the  use  of  copyrighted  material. 

Harvard  University  JAMES  FORD 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION.  By  James  Ford  .  . .  i 

PART  I.  SOCIAL  PURPOSE 

CHAPTER 

I.  Ethics  and  Social  Policy 

1.  The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question.  By  Francis  Greenwood 

Peabody  .  8 

2.  The  Scope  of  Ethics.  By  John  H.  Muirhead . io 

II.  Social  Purpose 

3.  The  End  as  Common  Good.  By  John  H.  Muirhead  ...  20 

4.  The  Moral  Good  as  the  Fulfilment  of  an  Organization  of  In¬ 

terests.  By  Ralph  Barton  Perry . 30 

5.  Happiness  and  Social  Ends.  By  John  Dewey  and  James  H.  Tufts  35 

6.  Egoism  and  Altruism.  By  John  Dewey  and  James  H.  Tufts  .  41 

7.  The  Good  as  Self-Realization.  By  John  Dewey  and  James  H. 

Tufts . 53 

III.  Social  Virtues 

8.  Justice  and  Benevolence.  By  James  Seth . 59 

9.  Justice.  By  Bernard  Bosanquet . 67 

10.  True  and  False  Idealism.  By  Bernard  Bosanquet  ....  79 

11.  Rights,  Duties,  and  the  Problem  of  Expediency.  By  George 

Edward  Moore . 86 

IV.  The  Ethics  of  the  State 

12.  The  Ethical  Basis  and  Function  of  the  State.  By  James  Seth  92 

13.  The  Ethics  of  the  Family  versus  the  Ethics  of  the  State.  By 

Herbert  Spencer . 103 

14.  Society  and  the  Individual.  By  Roscoe  Pound . 105 

15.  The  Individual  and  the  State.  By  Leonard  T.  Hobhouse  .  .  hi 

16.  Political  Rights  and  Obligations.  By  John  Dewey  and  James 

H.  Tufts . 125 

17.  The  Moral  Criterion  of  Political  Activity.  By  John  Dewey  and 

James  H.  Tufts . 132 

V.  Social  Progress 

18.  The  Meaning  of  Progress.  By  Leonard  T.  Hobhouse  .  .  .  135 

19.  Progress  in  Evolution.  By  J.  Arthur  Thomson . 142 

vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


PART  II.  SOCIAL  METHOD 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VI.  Criticism  of  Contemporary  Method 

20.  What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other.  By  William  Graham 

Sumner . 151 

21.  Disappointed  Methods  of  Reform.  By  James  Harvey  Robinson  164 

VII.  Technique  of  Social  Investigation 

22.  The  General  Method  of  Statistical  Investigation.  By  Arthur 

L.  Bowley . 173 

23.  The  Technique  and  Criteria  of  Social  Surveys.  By  CarlC. Taylor  176 

VIII.  Education  and  Character  Building 

24.  Education.  By  William  Ernest  Hocking . 186 

25.  Equality  of  Opportunity.  By  John  Dewey  and  James  H.  Tufts  203 

26.  Health  as  the  Basis  of  Character.  By  John  MacCunn  .  .  205 

27.  The  Training  of  Habit.  By  William  James . 209 

IX.  The  Role  of  Private  Activity 

28.  Constructive  Democracy:  the  Non-Legislative  Program.  By 


Thomas  Nixon  Carver . 217 

26.  Social  Work.  By  Robert  A.  Woods . 229 


30.  Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy.  By  Joseph  Lee  .  236 

X.  Social  Control 

31.  Social  Self-Control.  By  Franklin  H.  Giddings . 240 

32.  The  Means  and  Criteria  of  Social  Control.  By  Edward  A.  Ross  248 

33.  Intervention  of  the  State.  By  B.  Kirkman  Gray  ....  251 

XI.  Social  Legislation 

34.  Historic  Changes  of  Policy  and  the  Modern  Concept  of  Social 

Legislation.  By  Ernst  Freund . 255 

35.  The  Meaning  of  Principle  in  Legislation.  By  Ernst  Freund  .  270 

36.  Constructive  Factors.  By  Ernst  Freund . 281 

3  7.  Limitations  on  Legislative  Activity.  By  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks  .  290 

XII.  Social  Control  of  Heredity 

38.  Fundamental  Facts  of  Heredity.  By  J.  Arthur  Thomson  .  .  209 

39.  The Mendelian  Theory.  By  x\aron  J.Rosanoff  and  Florence  I.  Orr  302 

40.  Mendelian  Principles  and  Human  Inheritance.  By  Edwin  G. 

Conklin  . 305 

41.  Can  Human  Evolution  be  Controlled?  By  Edwin  G.  Conklin  309 

42.  The  Problem  of  Practical  Eugenics.  By  Karl  Pearson  .  .  328 

43.  The  Value  and  Limitations  of  Eugenics.  By  Leonard  T. 

Hobhouse . 332 

44.  Social  Ideals:  Eugenics,  Eutechnics,  Eutopias.  By  J.  Arthur 

Thomson . 349 


CONTENTS 


IX 


PART  III.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 

CHAPTER  '  PAGE 

XIII.  Mental  Tests  and  the  Variations  in  Mental  Equipment 

45.  The  Nature  of  Mental  Examinations.  By  Herman  M.  Adler  353 

46.  Individual  Variations  in  Mental  Equipment.  By  Augusta  F. 

Bronner . 358 

47.  On  the  Use  of  the  Term  "Feeble-Minded.”  By  Edgar  A.  Doll  370 

XIV.  Heredity  and  Degeneracy 

48.  The  Jukes  in  1915.  By  Arthur  H.  Estabrook . 376 

I 

XV.  Mental  Deficiency 

49.  The  Feeble-Minded  in  Institutions,  1910.  By  the  United 

States  Bureau  of  the  Census . 391 

50.  Education  of  the  Feeble-Minded.  By  Walter  E.  Fernald  .  393 

51.  A  State  Program  for  the  Care  of  the  Mentally  Defective.  By 

Walter  E.  Fernald . |o8 

XVI.  Mental  Disorder  or  "Insanity” 

52.  Serious  Cases  of  Mental  Disorder  or  So-Called  "Insanity.” 

By  Harry  C.  Solomon . 417 

53.  Mental  Disorders  Reinforcing  or  Simulating  Physical  In¬ 

validism.  By  Abraham  Myerson . 420 

54.  The  Insane  in  Institutions.  By  the  United  States  Bureau  of 

the  Census . 425 

55.  A  Study  of  Heredity  in  Insanity  in  the  Light  of  the  Men- 

delian  Theory.  By  Aaron  J.  Rosanoff  and  Florence  I.  Orr  428 

56.  The  Causes  of  Insanity.  By  Chester  Lee  Carlisle  .  .  .  433 

57.  Epilepsy.  By  Everett  Flood . 435 

,  58.  Purposes  and  Advantages  of  the  Colony  System.  By  William 

E.  Sprattling . 438 

XVII.  Blindness  and  Deaf-Mutism 

59.  Extent,  Causes,  and  Conditions  of  Blindness.  By  the  United 

States  Bureau  of  the  Census . 440 

60.  The  Prevention  of  Blindness.  By  the  National  Committee 

for  the  Prevention  of  Blindness . 446 

61.  Extent,  Causes,  and  Conditions  of  Deaf-Mutism.  By  the 

United  States  Bureau  of  the  Census . 452 

62.  Heredity  of  Deaf-Mutism.  By  Edward  Allen  Fay  .  .  .  460 

63.  Education  of  the  Deaf  and  the  Blind.  By  Edward  E.  Allen  467 

XVIII.  Deformity  :  Crippled  Children  and  Adults 

64.  Extent,  Causes,  and  Conditions  of  Deformity.  By  Edith 

Reeves . 486 

65.  Treatment  and  After-Care  for  Crippled  Children.  By  Edith 

Reeves 


491 


X 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

66.  Survey  of  the  Cripples  of  Cleveland.  By  Lucy  Wright  and 

Amy  M.  Hamburger . 

67.  Economic  Consequences  of  Physical  Disability.  By  John  C. 

Faries . 

68.  Policy  in  Dealing  with  Disabled  Civilians.  By  Douglas  C. 

McMurtrie . 

69.  Rehabilitation  of  the  Injured  Worker.  By  the  'Massa¬ 

chusetts  Board  of  Education . 

PART  IV.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 

XIX.  Surveys  of  the  Conditions  and  Causes  of  Poverty 

70.  Poverty  in  East  London.  By  Charles  Booth . 

71.  Poverty — A  Study  of  Town  Life  —  in  York,  England.  By 

B.  Seebohm  Rowntree . 

72.  Conditions  of  Life  and  Labor  among  the  Wage-Earners  of 

Pittsburgh.  By  Edward  T.  Devine . 

XX.  Standards  of  Living  and  Wage-Earners’  Budgets 

73.  The  Standard  of  Life.  By  Alfred  Marshall . 

74.  The  Standard  of  Living  and  Engel’s  Law.  By  Frank  Hatch 

Streightoff . 

75.  Pioneer  Studies  of  Family  Budgets.  By  Robert  Coit  Chapin 

76.  Minimum  of  Subsistence  and  Minimum  Comfort  Budget. 

By  the  Bureau  of  Applied  Economics . 

77.  Wages  in  Iron  and  Steel  and  Other  Industries.  By  the 

Bureau  of  Applied  Economics . 

XXI.  Analysis  of  the  Causes  of  Dependency 

78.  The  Statistical  Study  of  Causes  of  Destitution.  By  Gustav 

Kleene . . 

79.  Poverty  and  its  Vicious  Circles.  By  Jamieson  B.  Hurry  . 

XXII.  Prevention  of  Poverty — Economic  Factors 

80.  Income  in  the  United  States.  By  Henry  R.  Seager  . 

81.  Needless  Waste  and  its  Elimination.  By  The  Federated 

American  Engineering  Societies . 

82.  Unemployment.  By  Henry  R.  Seager . 

S3.  Standard  Recommendations  for  the  Relief  and  Prevention 

of  Unemployment.  By  the  American  Association  for 

Labor  Legislation . 

84.  Redistribution  of  Human  Talent  and  of  Labor.  By  Thomas 
Nixon  Carver . 


I 


PAGE 

494 

497 

5oi 

508 


512 

53i 

548 

550 

554 

559 

562 

57i 

574 

58i 

592 

594 

6iq 

627 

629 


CONTENTS 


xi 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXIII.  Principles  of  Public  Relief  of  the  Poor  in  England 

85.  Sketch  of  the  Evolution  of  the  Poor  Law.  By  Clement 

R.  Attlee . 641 

86.  Contrast  of  the  Principles  of  1834  and  of  1907.  By  Sidney 

and  Beatrice  Webb . 644 

87.  Report  of  the  Poor  Law'  Commission  and  the  Recommen¬ 

dations  of  the  Minority.  By  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb  651 

XXIV.  Public  Relief  of,  the  Poor  in  the  United  States 

88.  The  Aftermath  of  Public  Outdoor  Relief  in  Brooklyn.  By 


Thomas  J.  Riley . 658 

89.  The  Administrative  Basis  of  Public  Outdoor  Relief.  By 

Porter  R.  Lee . 662 

90.  Almshouses:  Existing  Conditions  and  Needed  Reforms. 

By  Murray  A.  Auerbach . 671 

91.  Local  versus  Centralized  Administration.  By  Robert  W. 

Kelso . 678 


XXV.  Relation  between  Public  and  Private  Agencies 

92.  The  Relation  between  Philanthropy  and  State  or  Munici¬ 

pal  Action.  By  Sidney  Webb . 681 

93.  The  Elberfeld  System.  By  Charles  Richmond  Henderson  694 

94.  State  Money  and  Privately  Managed  Charities.  By 

Alexander  Fleisher . 699 

XXVI.  Social  Case  Work 

95.  Social  Work  with  Families  and  Individuals.  By  Porter 

R.  Lee . 707 

96.  Social  Case  Work  as  Personality  Development.  By  Mary 

E.  Richmond . 713 

97.  Example  of  Case  Work  in  which  "Relief”  is  not  In¬ 

volved.  By  the  Editors  of  "The  Family”  ....  719 

98.  Individualization.  By  Stockton  Raymond  ....  722 

XXVII.  Special  Problems  and  Contemporary  Policy  for  Control 

99.  Malnutrition  among  School  Children.  By  the  New  York 

Academy  of  Medicine . 728 

100.  Desertion — its  Treatment  and  Prevention.  By  Earle 

Edward  Eubank . 739 

101.  Mothers’  Pension  Legislation  in  the  United  States.  By 

the  Children’s  Bureau . 744 

102.  Federal  Aid  for  the  Protection  of  Maternity  and  Infancy. 

By  Grace  Abbott  . 


748 


Xll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXVIII.  Child  Protection 

103.  Child-Placing.  By  W.  H.  Slingerland . 755 

104.  Minimum  Standards  of  Child  Welfare.  By  the  Chil¬ 

dren’s  Bureau . 764 

XXIX.  Financial  Federations  and  Councils  of  Social  Agencies 

105.  Federation  of  Social  Agencies.  By  William  J.  Norton  .  76Q 

106.  History  of  the  Federation  and  Council  in  Cleveland.  By 

Sherman  C.  Kingsley . 780 

XXX.  Public  Welfare  Administration 

107.  Summary  of  the  Present  State  Systems  for  the  Or¬ 

ganization  and  Administration  of  Public  Welfare.  By 
Sophonisba  P.  Breckinridge . 787 

• 

PART  V.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 

XXXI.  Definition  and  Causes  of  Crime 

108.  What  is  Crime?  By  Frederick  Howard  Wines  . 

109.  Anthropological  Theory  of  Crime:  Atavism  and  Epilepsy. 

By  Cesare  Lombroso . 

110.  Study  of  the  English  Convict:  A  Criticism  of  Lombroso. 

By  Charles  Goring . 

111.  Physical  and  Social  Factors  in  the  Production  of  Crime. 

By  Richmond  Mayo-Smith . 

112.  Immigration  and  Crime.  By  the  United  States  Immigra¬ 

tion  Commission . 

113.  Mental  Disease  and  Delinquency.  By  Victor  V.  Anderson 


XXXII.  Investigation  and  Records  of  Crime  and  Criminals 

114.  The  Improvement  of  Criminal  Statistics  in  the  United 

States.  By  Louis  N.  Robinson  . . 834 

115.  Systems  of  Identification  of  Criminals.  By  Raymond  B. 

Fosdick . 838 

116.  Aims  and  Methods  of  the  Survey  of  Criminal  Justice  in 

Cleveland.  By  Felix  Frankfurter . S41 


XXXIII.  The  Justification  of  Punishment 

117.  Theories  of  Punishment.  By  Heinrich  Oppenheimer  .  846 

XXXIV.  Problems  of  Law  Enforcement  and  Criminal  Procedure 

118.  Delays  and  Defects  in  the  Enforcement  of  Law  in  this 


Country.  By  William  H.  Taft . 867 

119.  Criminal  Responsibility.  By  Henry  W.  Ballantine  .  .  872 

120.  Treatment  of  Persons  Awaiting  Court  Action.  By  Hast¬ 

ings  H.  Hart  .  , . 870 


803 

805 

808 

815 

82  2 
826 


CONTENTS 


•  •  • 

xm 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXXV.  Criminal  Justice  and  the  American  City 

121.  The  Nature  of  the  Problem.  By  Roscoe  Pound  .  .  886 

122.  Inherent  Difficulties.  By  Roscoe  Pound . 894 

123.  General  Difficulties.  By  Roscoe  Pound . 91 1 

124.  American  Difficulties.  By  Roscoe  Pound  ....  917 

XXXVI.  Penal  and  Reformatory  Institutions 

125.  The  Origins  of  the  Modern  Prison.  By  Harry  Elmer 


Barnes . 942 

126.  Evils  of  the  Present  Prison  System.  By  Thomas  Mott 

Osborne  . 950 

127.  Systems  of  Convict  Labor.  By  the  United  States  Com¬ 

missioner  of  Labor . 956 


XXXVII.  Reformatory  Methods 

128.  The  American  Reformatory  Prison  System.  By  Z.  B. 

Brockway . 962 

129.  The  Mutual  Welfare  League.  By  Thomas  Mott  Osborne  965 

XXXVIII.  Probation  and  Parole 

130.  Aims,  Standards,  and  Methods  of  Probation  and  Parole. 

By  Edith  N.  Burleigh  .  981 

XXXIX.  Juvenile  Courts  and  Probation 

131.  The  Evolution  of  the  Juvenile  Court.  By  Katherine 

F.  Lenroot  . 991 

132.  Scientific  Study  of  Juvenile  Delinquents.  By  William 

Healy- . 1003 


INDEX 


1019 


tj  ' 


- 


f  firry  i  T 


Vo 


'  • 


. *  '  I*  ■  ..  /  X  >r 

- 

■  '  it\  ■  •  .  I  ;  O  *< 


* 


ivt 

. 


UK 

m--.nli.ty/  H  .i, 


(AU 


’ 

. 


' 


V 


. 


SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  AND 
SOCIAL  POLICY 


INTRODUCTION 

Social  science  and  sociology.  The  field  of  study  within  which  meas¬ 
ures  for  human  betterment  fall  is  ordinarily  termed  Social  Science. 
The  term  "science”  may  be  used  to  cover  any  body  of  systematized 
knowledge  from  which  natural  laws  may  be  deduced.  There  are  ac¬ 
tually  many  so-called  "social  sciences,” — such  as  economics,  history, 
government,  anthropology,  education,  law, — which  in  varying  de¬ 
gree  are  entitled  to  the  use  of  the  term  through  their  discovery  of  the 
natural  laws  which  underlie  the  specific  forms  of  human  relationships 
with  which  they  deal.  It  is  the  function  of  sociology  to  synthesize 
and  interpret  their  findings — to  serve  as  the  comprehensive  descrip¬ 
tive  science  of  social  phenomena.  Sociology,  however,  is  concerned 
with  human  relations  and  with  social  purpose  merely  as  social  phe¬ 
nomena,  from  which  it  may  deduce  the  natural  laws  underlying  hu¬ 
man  conduct.1 

Social  ethics  and  sociology.  The  field  of  this  volume  will  by  some 
be  termed  Practical  Sociology  or  Applied  Sociology.  It  would  better 
be  designated  as  Applied  Social  Ethics  or  Social  Policy.  For  Ethics,2 
like  Logic  and  ^Esthetics,  is  a  normative  branch  of  human  study.  It 
is  its  function  to  determine  what  constitutes  goodness.  It  establishes 
or  describes  the  norms  or  standards  by  which  the  quality  of  individ¬ 
ual  or  social  conduct  may  be  judged,  precisely  as  Logic  establishes  or 
describes  the  norms  of  truth  and  ^Esthetics  the  norms  of  beauty.  De¬ 
scriptive  sciences  like  Sociology  or  Economics  deal  with  what  James 

1  Compare  with  Thomas  N.  Carver,  Sociology  and  Social  Progress ,  Introduc¬ 
tion  and  Part  I;  Charles  Horton  Cooley,  Social  Process ,  chap,  xxxiii;  Charles  A. 
Ellwood,  Sociology  in  its  Psychological  Aspects,  chaps,  i-vi;  Franklin  H.  Gid- 
dings,  Principles  of  Sociology,  Bk.  I;  Albion  W.  Small,  The  Meaning  of  Social 
Science’,  J.  H.  W.  Stuckenberg,  Sociology,  chaps,  i,  ii,  and  xxiii;  Lester  F.  Ward, 
Outlines  of  Sociology,  Part  I.  2  See  Titles  2  and  3  of  this  volume. 


2 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


Seth  calls  "is-judgments.”  Normative  sciences  deal  with  " ought- 
judgments.”  The  synthetic  normative  field  of  social  study  may 
therefore  properly  be  termed  Social  Ethics.  The  study  of  the  adap¬ 
tation  of  social  method  to  the  achievement  of  moral  purpose  may  be 
termed  Applied  Social  Ethics.1 

Social  measures  and  social  purpose.  Every  social  measure  should 
be  framed  with  reference  to  general  social  policy,  and  social  policy  in 
turn  should  be  framed  with  reference  to  a  clearly  conceived  and 
humanly  adequate  social  purpose.  Measures,  therefore,  for  the  care 
of  the  poor  or  the  prevention  of  poverty,  for  the  reform  of  the  crimi¬ 
nal  or  the  prevention  of  crime,  for  the  elimination  of  bad  housing 
or  of  disease,  for  the  constructive  use  of  leisure  time,  the  elimination  of 
war  or  the  social  control  of  heredity,  must  involve  some  ultimate 
ideal  of  human  perfection.  They  should  involve  as  well  some  prox¬ 
imate  ideal  of  immediately  achievable  betterment  which  would  lead 
humanity  on  the  way  to  the  fulfillment  of  its  ultimate  purpose.2 

Framing  social  measures.  The  achievement  of  social  purpose  is 
dependent  upon  the  utilization  of  an  adequate  social  method3  by 
which  aims  both  proximate  and  ultimate  can  be  attained.  There 
are  three  usual  steps  in  the  framing  of  social  measures :  the  first  is  the 
discovery  and  statement  of  the  conditions  ;  the  second  is  the  discovery 

iThe  lines  between  the  Social  Sciences  are  not  sharply  drawn.  Sociology  is 
often  defined  to  include  Social  Ethics.  When  Economics  deals  with  the  concept 
of  justice,  and  when  Political  Science  and  Law  deal  with  human  rights  they  are 
—  quite  properly — invading  the  field  of  Ethics.  Contributions  to  social  theory 
and  to  social  practice  are  frequently  made  by  just  such  encroachments  upon 
neighboring  fields  of  thought.  Nevertheless,  it  is  important  that  a  group  of 
specialists  should  work  at  the  synthesis  of  the  findings  of  all  antecedent  and 
special  Social  Sciences  in  order  to  determine  how  their  accumulated  knowledge 
may  be  coordinated  and  applied  for  the  general  welfare.  Their  field  is  Applied 
Social  Ethics  or  Social  Politics. 

2  It  is  the  province  of  Ethical  Theory  to  determine  what  should  constitute  in¬ 
dividual  or  social  purpose.  Some  of  the  best  of  contemporary  statements  of  the 
aim  of  the  moral  life  are  submitted  in  Part  I  of  this  volume. 

3  Part  II  of  this  volume  submits  characteristic  criticism  of  contemporary  social 
method  in  Chapter  VI,  the  technique  of  social  study  briefly  in  Chapter  VII, 
methods  of  character  building  in  Chapter  VIII,  the  functions  of  private  agencies 
in  Chapter  IX,  the  methods  of  social  control  in  Chapter  X,  the  scope,  methods, 
and  limitations  of  social  legislation  in  Chapter  XI.  The  application  of  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  social  control  to  the  problem  of  heredity  is  shown  in  Chapter  XII  rather 
than  in  Part  III  because  the  problem  of  heredity  is  broader  than  the  problem 
of  defectiveness. 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


3 


and  statement  of  needs,  which  involves  the  formulation  of  standards 
or  criteria ;  and  the  third  is  the  formulation  and  application  of  a  tech- 
nique  to  solve  the  problem — that  is,  to  meet  conditions,  fulfill  the 
needs,  and  attain  the  standard  set.  The  first  step  may  be  a  broad  sur¬ 
vey  or  a  narrow  bit  of  special  research,  depending  upon  the  nature  and 
scope  of  the  problem.  The  second  step  is  the  application  of  social 
purpose  to  the  problem,  expressing  proximate  purpose  in  the  form  of 
attainable  standards.  The  third  step  includes  the  ascertainment  of 
all  the  agencies,  devices,1  and  forces  which  are  appropriate  to  the 
solution  of  the  problem. 

Survey  of  conditions  and  needs .  For  example,  the  problem  may 
be  one  of  poverty.  To  cope  with  the  problem  it  is  necessary  first  to 
discover  and  state  with  precision  the  existing  conditions.2  Next  it  is 
necessary  to  establish  the  standards  with  reference  to  which  the  con¬ 
ditions  must  be  judged.  Poverty  is  gauged  with  reference  to  a 
standard  of  living.  The  proximate  standard  may  be  the  "subsistence 
minimum.”  The  ultimate  standard  may  be  a  "welfare  minimum.”3 — 
an  income  sufficient  to  supply  each  member  of  the  household  not  only 
with  necessaries  but  also  with  such  education  and  recreation  as  will 
make  it  possible  for  each  member  of  the  family  to  develop  his  latent 
capacities  and  be  in  the  highest  degree  productive  of  physical  and 
moral  values. 

Similarly  defectiveness  is  gauged  with  reference  to  standards  of 
normality  or  of  social  effectiveness.4  Criminality  is  gauged  by  stand¬ 
ards  of  character  or  by  standards  of  conformity  to  law. 

Control  of  causes.  After  conditions  and  needs  have  been  thus  as¬ 
certained  all  effective  social  policy  will  proceed  to  the  ascertainment 
of  causes.5  Evil  conditions  can  often  be  overcome  by  preventing  their 
causes  from  operating,  otherwise  evil  is  to  be  overcome  by  strategy, 

1  Compare,  for  example,  such  devices  as  mental  tests  (Chapter  XIII),  social 
case  work  (Chapter  XXVI),  identification  of  criminals  (Chapter  XXXII),  punish¬ 
ment  (Chapter  XXXIII),  as  well  as  education,  patronage,  restriction,  cooper¬ 
ation,  etc.,  discussed  in  the  following  pages. 

2  As  is  done  by  Booth  and  Rowntree  in  Chapter  XIX. 

3  Outlined  in  Chapter  XX;  also  in  Chapter  XXVIII,  Title  104. 

4  See  Chapter  XIII.  Various  criteria  are  used  in  this  volume,  so  the  reader 
may  profitably  examine  each  article  carefully  to  ascertain  what  standards  are 
used  and  why. 

5 Causes  of  defectiveness  are  treated  in  each  chapter  of  Part  III;  causes  of 
poverty,  in  Chapters  XIX-XXII;  causes  of  criminality,  in  Chapter  XXXI. 


4 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


circumvention,  or  substitution.  But  in  any  case  the  effectiveness  of 
the  program  is  dependent  upon  recognition  of  the  precise  nature  of 
the  evil  in  question.1  Likewise  the  causes  of  conditions  that  are  good 
should  be  known  in  order  that  by  the  cultivation  of  such  causal  factors 
the  good  may  be  more  rapidly  achieved. 

Forces  and  agencies.  The  survey  should  also  take  into  considera¬ 
tion  the  forces  which  are  available  to  meet  the  conditions  as  found.2 
The  forces  may  be  individuals,  groups,  institutions,  or  agencies.  The 
relative  merits  and  availability  of  each  must  be  considered.  The 
agencies  are  conveniently  classified  as  commercial,  philanthropic,  co¬ 
operative,  and  governmental. 

Commercial  agencies  are  primarily  interested  in  profit  and  tend  to 
restrict  their  activities  in  the  field  of  human  service  to  those  forms  of 
service  which  bring  a  net  financial  return  to  the  entrepreneur — the 
individual  or  corporation  undertaking  the  enterprise.  Commercialized 
agencies  loom  large  in  any  program  for  the  improvement  of  conditions 
of  housing  or  recreation  but  are  quite  incidental  factors  in  coping  with 
problems  of  poverty,3  defectiveness,  or  crime. 

Philanthropic  agencies  are  primarily  interested  in  service  but  are 
not  precluded  from  accepting  or  seeking  a  limited  dividend  upon  their 
philanthropic  investment.  Religious  agencies  largely  fall  within  this 
category,  but  every  community  has  an  ever-increasing  group  of  non¬ 
religious  or  secular  agencies  to  cope  with  its  social  problems,  general 
and  special.  Movements  for  social  betterment  are  largely  initiated  by 
philanthropic  agencies ;  for  their  major  value  is  in  the  field  of  experi¬ 
mentation.  They  also  excel  in  the  subtler  and  more  personal  forms 
of  service.  The  major  danger  of  the  philanthropic  agency,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  its  tendency  to  patronize  and  to  become  a  vested  inter¬ 
est  in  forms  of  service  where  the  need  of  philanthropy  is  outgrown. 
Philanthropic  agencies  are  of  paramount  importance  in  coping  with 
problems  of  poverty  but  have  important  functions  also  in  the  fields 
of  defectiveness,  criminality, housing,  recreation,  education,  and  labor.4 

i Illustrated  in  Chapters  XV,  XVII,  XXII,  and  XXXVII. 

2  See  Chapters  IX,  X,  XV,  XVIII,  Titles  65,  68;  Chapters  XXV,  XXVII, 
Titles  99,  100;  Chapters  XXVIII,  XXXV-XXXIX. 

3  See  especially  Chapter  XXII,  Title  81,  for  an  exception  to  this  rule. 

4  General  principles  are  outlined  in  Chapter  IX  by  Carver,  Woods,  and  Lee, 
and  elaborated  throughout  this  volume — especially  in  Chapters  XXV  and  XXVI 
by  Webb,  Lee,  Richmond,  and  Raymond. 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


s 


Cooperative  agencies  are  established  by  groups  of  men  for  mutual 
service.  They  are  voluntary  and  elastic  and  presuppose  both  initia¬ 
tive  and  self-confidence  on  the  part  of  their  founders.  They  substitute 
fraternalism  and  mutuality  for  the  exploitation  of  commercial  agencies 
and  the  almost  inevitable  patronage  of  philanthropic  agencies.  They 
likewise  escape  the  irksome  compulsion,  the  remoteness,  and  the  over¬ 
standardization  of  public  agencies.  Their  major  sphere  is  in  business 
and  in  the  recreational  life  of.  people.  Their  ultimate  field  is  com¬ 
munity  organization.  At  present  they  can  do  little  directly  to  cope 
with  problems  of  poverty,  defectiveness,  or  criminality.1 

Governmental  agencies  are  the  manifestations  of  the  public  will  as 
expressed  through  constitutions  and  the  law.  To  cope  with  any  social 
problem  effectively,  one  must  consider  it  with  reference  to  the  es¬ 
tablished  government  of  city,  county,  state,  and  nation — with  ref¬ 
erence  to  the  existing  charters,  constitutions,  ordinances,  laws,  and 
their  interpretation.2  The  utility  of  government  in  the  process  of 
social  amelioration  lies  primarily  in  its  universality  and  its  power.3 
The  major  limitations  of  this  agency  are  its  tendencies  to  over¬ 
standardization  and  to  neglect  of  the  individual.4  Governmental  agen¬ 
cies  are,  however,  effective  and  indispensable  in  coping  with  problems 
of  poverty,  defectiveness,  and  criminality  precisely  as  they  are  in  cop¬ 
ing  with  all  other  human  problems.  Each  social  program  must,  how¬ 
ever,  consider  the  relative  merits  of  agencies  of  all  four  types  and 
must  determine  where  the  sphere  of  governmental  activity  should  end 
and  where  private  activity — individual,  commercial,  philanthropic,  or 
cooperative — should  begin.5 

Social  method  then  begins  with  a  social  survey  covering  (i)  con¬ 
ditions,  (2)  needs,  (3)  causes,  and  (4)  forces.  The  survey  should 

1  Chapter  XXXVII,  Title  134,  on  the  "  Mutual  Welfare  League,”  gives  an  ad¬ 
mirable  example  of  the  application  of  this  principle  in  the  treatment  of  criminal¬ 
ity.  Unquestionably  community  councils  and  similar  community  agencies  when 
well  organized  on  a  democratic  basis  will  increasingly  take  over  and  develop 
functions  now  characteristic  of  philanthropic  agencies — such  as  Settlements,  the 
Big  Brother  Movement,  Prisoner’s  Aid  Societies,  and  Employment  Exchanges. 

-Chapters  IV,  X,  and  XI  deal  with  the  principles  underlying  social  control 
and  social  legislation. 

3  Webb  develops  this  point  in  Chapter  XXV. 

4  Illustrated  in  the  history  of  public  poor  relief,  Chapters  XXIII  and  XXIV ; 
also  in  Jenks,  Title  37. 

5  Abundantly  illustrated  in  Parts  III,  IV,  and  V. 


6 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


be  followed  by  a  diagnosis  which  should  be  a  statement  as  precise 
and  compact  as  possible  of  the  nature  of  the  conditions  under  exam¬ 
ination.  The  diagnosis  should  be  tentative  and  should  be  followed 
by  the  making  of  a  plan  for  treatment  and  prevention.  The  plan 
should  be  subject  to  revision  as  new  data  come  to  hand  or  as  unfore¬ 
seen  difficulties  appear. 

Education  and  character -building .  Earlier  generations  have  stressed 
the  salvation  of  the  individual  soul  as  the  moral  criterion  and  indi¬ 
vidual  responsibility  as  the  means.  The  tendency  of  the  past  gen¬ 
eration  has  been  to  stress  social  welfare  as  the  norm  and  social 
responsibility  as  the  means.  The  colossal  developments  of  philan¬ 
thropies  and  of  social  legislation  are,  however,  revealing  the  limitations 
of  programs  which  treat  individuals  exclusively  en  masse.  It  is  found 
"that  social  development  is  dependent  upon  individual  development 
and  that  the  individual  cannot  be  reformed  by  act  of  Parliament.” 
The  importance  of  education1  of  the  individual  and  of  character¬ 
building  becomes  manifest  in  the  best  of  contemporary  social  pro¬ 
grams,  each  of  which  involves  individualized  case-work2  and 
education3  in  addition  to  group  programs  and  social  legislation. 

Social  administration.  The  program  by  which  the  plan  is  executecl 
should  coordinate  the  activities  of  the  many  agencies  which  may  be 
involved,  avoiding  overlapping  on  the  one  hand  and  neglect  upon  the 
other.4  It  should  utilize  the  services  of  each  where  it  is  most  adept. 
These  factors  of  organization  and  management,  of  direction  and  con¬ 
trol,  belong  to  the  field  of  social  administration.5 

Limitations  of  applied  sciences.  Obviously,  all  the  applied  sciences 
must  be  limited  by  the  scope  and  the  accuracy  of  the  theories  of  the 
antecedent  descriptive  sciences  the  data  of  which  they  must  use.  Ar¬ 
chitecture  and  Engineering  are  dependent  upon  Physics.  Medicine  is 
dependent  upon  Pathology  and  Physiology.  Applied  Social  Ethics 

1  Hocking,  James,  and  MacCunn  in  Chapter  VIII. 

2  See  Richmond  and  Raymond  in  Chapter  XXVI,  and  Healy  in  Chapter 
XXXIX. 

3  See  Fernald  in  Title  50,  Allen  in  Title  63,  and  Brockway  in  Title  133. 

4  See  especially  Norton  and  Kingsley  in  Chapter  XXIX. 

5 See  Fernald  (Title  51),  "The  National  Committee  of  the  Prevention  of  Blind¬ 
ness”  (Title  60),  the  Federated  American  Engineering  Societies  (Title  81),  Seager 
(Title  82),  and  Chapters  XXIII-XXV,  XXVII-XXX,  XXXV,  and  XXXVII- 
XXXIX. 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


7 


is  similarly  dependent  upon  the  correctness  of  Theoretical  Ethics,  on 
the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  upon  the  scope  and  accuracy  of 
the  findings  of  Biology,  Psychology,  Economics,  Political  Theory,  and 
Pedagogy,  and  a  host  of  other  descriptive  social  sciences. 

The  juture  of  social  policy.  If  the  limitations  of  the  antecedent 
sciences  are  serious,  the  effectiveness  and  value  of  their  application  are 
consequently  limited.  The  Ethics  which  establishes  or  interprets 
social  purpose  today  is,  for  example,  the  product  of  speculative  philos¬ 
ophers.  It  is  probable  that  during  the  cpming  generations  Ethics  will 
be  wholly  rewritten  by  the  development  of  the  case-method  or  in 
the  terms  of  Experimental  Psychology.  Social  method  will  almost 
inevitably  be  changed  because  of  modifications  and  growth  of  Statis¬ 
tical  Theory,  Psychiatry,  and  Economics.  The  control  of  heredity 
will  be  reorganized  in  accordance  with  the  findings  of  Biology.  Social 
legislation  will  take  new  form  with  the  more  effective  interpretation  of 
History  and  the  further  development  of  Jurisprudence  and  of  Politi¬ 
cal  Science. 

Immediate  policy  necessary.  Meanwhile,  men  are  faced  with  is¬ 
sues  which  demand  immediate  action  on  their  part.  Measures  must 
be  framed  to  cope  with  evil  or  to  promote  the  good.  Something  must 
be  done  to  help  the  poor,  to  educate  the  defective,  to  reform  the  crim¬ 
inal,  and  to  prevent  poverty,  defectiveness,  and  crime.  The  program 
cannot  wait  for  the  findings  of  a  new  generation  of  scientists.  The 
best  of  contemporary  theory  and  practice  must  therefore  in  each 
generation  be  collated  and  rendered  available  for  utilization.  If  this 
is  done  with  minds  open  to  truth  wherever  it  may  lie,  and  wherever  it 
may  lead,  humanity  cannot  go  far  wrong. 


PART  I.  SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


CHAPTER  I 

ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 

1.  The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question1; 

Industrial  life  may  be  regarded,  as  a  great  German  economist  has 
said,  "  either  as  a  system  of  natural  forces  or  as  a  system  of  ethical 
forces.  It  is  each  according  to  the  point  of  yiew  from  which  it  is  stud¬ 
ied.  ...  On  its  technical  side  it  is  unmoral,  but  in  its  connection  with 
spiritual  and  social  forces  it  is  ethical.”2 

Each  incident  of  the  Social  Question  has  this  twofold  character:  its 
outward  form  and  its  interior  spirit,  its  mechanism  and  its  motive- 
power,  its  economics  and  its  ethics ;  and  until  the  student  penetrates 
through  the  first  of  these  aspects  to  the  second,  he  may  altogether  fail 
to  understand  what  is  really  going  on. 

The  possibilities  of  the  ethical  approach  are  illustrated  in  a  striking 
manner  by  the  history  of  economics  itself.  It  is  instructive  to  recall 
the  fact  that  the  three  classical  discussions  which  have  had  the  most 
enduring  influence  on  economic  theory  are  to  be  found  in  the  writings 
of  teachers  who  were  not  primarily  economists,  but  who  applied  to 
economic  problems  the  principles  which  they  had  already  laid  down 
in  their  ethical  treatises.3  The  philosophy  of  Aristotle  was  the  highest 
expression  of  the  wisdom  of  Greece ;  the  revival  of  Aristotle’s  teaching 
by  Thomas  Aquinas  is  still  an  authoritative  statement  of  Catholic 
economics;  and  the  Wealth  of  Nations  of  Adam  Smith  began  the 
modern  epoch  in  economic  science.  The  economics  of  Thomas  Aquinas 

1  By  Francis  Greenwood  Peabody,  A.M.,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  Emeritus,  in 
Harvard  University.  Adapted  from  The  Approach  to  the  Social  Question,  pp.  68- 
70,86-92.  Copyright,  1909,  by  The  Macmillan  Company.  Reprinted  by  permission. 

2  Schmoller,  Grundriss  der  allgemeinen  Volkswirtschaftslehre,  Bd.  I,  S.  59,  60. 

3 Noted  by  Ziegler,  Die  soziale  Frage  eine  ethische  Frage  (1891),  S.  35;  and, 

in  the  case  of  Adam  Smith,  dwelt  upon  by  Jodi,  Volkswirtschaftslehre  und  Ethik, 
in  v.  Holtzendorff’s  Zeit-  und  Streitfragen,  Bd.  XIV,  Heft  224,  S.4. 

8 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


9 


forms  a  section  of  his  teaching  on  the  principles  of  ethics.1  He  dis¬ 
tinguishes  between  two  forms  of  exchange,  one  using  money  for  the 
necessities  of  life,  the  other  exchanging  money  or  commodities  for 
the  sake  of  gain.  "The  first  form  of  exchange  is  praiseworthy,  .  .  . 
the  second  may  be  justly  criticized  in  so  far  as  it  serves  only  the  greed 
of  gain.”  Finally,  the  Wealth  of  Nations ,  though  described  by  Pitt 
as  the  "best  solution  of  the  question  connected  with  the  history  of 
commerce  or  with  the  systems  of  political  economy,”2  was  the  work 
of  a  professor  of  moral  philosophy,  and  made  the  second  part  of  a 
system,  of  which  the  first  part  was  a  Theory  of  the  Moral  Sentiments. 
Indeed,  it  would  have  much  surprised  Adam  Smith  to  know  that  his 
first  treatise  would  be  forgotten,  while  the  second  would  be  remem¬ 
bered  as  the  most  important  contribution  of  modern  times  to  economic 
literature.  Historical  precedents  so  notable  as  these,  while  they  do 
not  eliminate  the  risk  of  intemperate  or  misdirected  leadership,  may 
encourage  those  who  find  themselves  led  along  the  way  of  ethics 
towards  the  interpretation  of  the  Social  Question.  The  end  of  politi¬ 
cal  science  remains,  as  Aristotle  taught,  the  attainment  of  good,  and 
the  discipline  of  the  Moral  Sentiments  is,  as  Adam  Smith  recognized, 
preliminary  to  the  securing  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 

The  place  of  economic  theory  in  the  approach  to  the  Social  Ques¬ 
tion  thus  becomes  plain.  It  may  be  indicated  in  the  phrase  which  one 
of  the  greatest  of  modern  philosophers  uses  to  describe  the  principles 
of  his  own  work.  In  the  introduction  to  his  Mikrokosmus  Lot^e  an¬ 
nounces  the  sublime  thesis  which  his  system  is  designed  to  represent : 
"It  is  to  show,”  he  says,  "how  absolutely  universal  is  the  extent,  and 
at  the  same  time  how  completely  subordinate  is  the  part,  which 
mechanism  has  to  fulfill  in  the  structure  of  the  world.”3  Through  the 
entire  universe,  from  its  material  elements  to  its  spiritual  manifesta¬ 
tions,  according  to  the  teaching  of  this  master,  work  the  invariable 
processes  of  mechanism,  insuring  the  stability  and  continuity  of  the 
world ;  yet  through  this  vast  mechanism  there  is  fulfilled  a  moral  pur¬ 
pose,  of  which  history  and  experience  are  the  instruments  and  expres¬ 
sions.  The  same  great  proposition  may  be  maintained  concerning  the 

1  Die  Summa  Theologica  des  heiligen  Thomas  von  A  quin  (Regensburg,  1888), 
Bd.  VII,  Die  Sittenlehre ,  especially  Kap.  77,  Art.  1-4,  S.  471  ff. 

2 Haldane,  Lije  of  Adam  Smith  (1887),  p.  75. 

3 Mikrokosmus  (2te  Aufl.,  1869),  S.xv. 


10 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


modern  social  world.  Its  mechanism  is  that  of  the  economic  order, 
and  on  the  precision  and  perfection  of  that  mechanism  the  continuity 
of  social  progress  depends.  Yet  this  economic  mechanism  is  the  in¬ 
strument  of  motives  which  it  does  not  itself  supply.  Let  that  ma¬ 
chinery  be  maladjusted,  and  progress  becomes  halting,  intermittent, 
or  precipitate ;  let  the  supply  of  motive-power  fail  and  the  machinery, 
however  well  constructed,  becomes  motionless  and  dead. 

Here  are  the  two  besetting  faults  of  modern  social  service, — the 
trusting  to  a  machine  which  has  no  power,  and  the  trusting  to  a  power 
which  has  no  brakes.  Who  shall  say  whether  more  mistakes  have 
thus  been  made  by  sentiment  without  science,  or  by  science  without 
sentiment?  On  the  one  hand  is  the  peril  of  sentimentalism,  on  the 
other  hand  is  the  peril  of  officialism.  On  one  side  is  the  sin  of  soft¬ 
headedness,  and  on  the  other  side  is  the  sin  of  hard-heartedness. 

Why  is  indiscriminate  almsgiving  a  sin  ?  It  is  because  it  substitutes 
ethical  emotion  for  economic  law.  It  imagines  itself  to  be  in  a  world 
of  feeling  when  in  reality  it  is  a  world  of  facts.  Sentiment  without 
science  in  charity  degrades  the  workless  into  the  worthless,  and  in 
relieving  want  breeds  mendicancy.  What  it  fancies  to  be  benevolence 
is  at  bottom  indolence.  On  the  other  hand  is  the  not  less  threatening 
peril  which  awaits  a  science  of  relief  which  is  not  an  instrument  of 
moral  power.  Officialism  easily  becomes  mechanism ;  institutionalism 
tends  to  automatism.  How  to  rescue  officialism  from  its  own  ma¬ 
chinery  and  direct  the  mechanics  of  charity  without  losing  faith  or 
hope, —  this  is  the  difficult  problem  which  makes  the  life  of  a  pro¬ 
fessional  agent  of  relief  a  constant  struggle  to  save  his  own  soul  from 
the  risks  of  his  hazardous  calling.  It  is  easy  to  be  recklessly  kind, 
it  is  equally  easy  to  be  timidly  wise;  but  to  be  scientifically  sym¬ 
pathetic  and  prudently  humane, — that  is  the  complex  task  of  modern 
philanthropy. 

2.  The  Scope  of  Ethics 

In  what  sense  Ethics  differs  from  the  Natural  Sciences 1 

Ethics  differs  from  all  the  natural  sciences  in  that : 

(i)  It  is  regulative.  Ethics  deals  with  a  rule  or  standard  of  judg- 

1  Adapted  from  The  Elements  of  Ethics  (pp.  26-39),  by  John  H.  Muirhead, 
M.A.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Birmingham.  Copy¬ 
right,  1892,  by  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York. 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


ii 


ment,  not  with  physical  events  and  the  causes  which  determine  them. 
It  involves,  however,  a  further  distinction  which  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  note. 

(2)  It  treats  man  as  conscious.  Seeing  that  ethics  deals  with 
judgments  consciously  passed  by  man  upon  himself  and  others,  it 
rests  upon  the  assumption ^that  man  is  not  merely  a  part  of  nature  and 
the  blind  servant  of  her  purposes,  but  is  conscious  of  being  a  part,  and 
of  being  subject  to  her  laws.  He  not  only  behaves  in  a  certain  way 
in  presence  of  particular  circumstances,  as  oxygen  may  be  said  to 
"behave”  in  the  presence  of  hydrogen,  but  he  is  conscious  of  his  be¬ 
haviour  in  its  relation  to  himself  and  others.  It  is  on  the  ground  of 
this  consciousness  that  he  passes  judgment  upon  it.  Hence  any  at¬ 
tempt  to  treat  the  science  of  human  conduct  and  character  as  merely 
a  branch  of  material  science  is  doomed  to  failure.1  The  "explanations” 
in  the  field  of  ethics  cannot  be  in  terms  of  the  laws  and  hypotheses 
that  are  applicable  in  the  field  of  physical  science.  The  laws  of  mo¬ 
tion  or  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  force  are  here  out  of  court. 
It  is  true  that  human  conduct  may  be  described  as  a  mode  or  form  of 
energy,  but  the  important  thing  is  the  "form,” — it  is  conscious  energy, 
and  that  makes  all  the  difference.  We  are  in  danger  of  forgetting 
that  the  world  does  not  consist  of  groups  of  facts  all  upon  the  same 
plane  and  explicable  by  the  same  definitions.  Ethics  differs  from  the 
sciences  that  stand  next  below  it,  viz.,  biology  and  natural  history,  in 
that  while  these  treat  man  as  organically  related  to  his  environment  in 
nature  and  society,  ethics  treats  of  him  as  conscious  of  that  relation. 

(3)  It  is  more  closely  related  to  philosophy.  Another  distinction 
is  important.  It  flows  naturally  from  the  two  already  mentioned.  It 
has  already  been  observed  that  the  explanations  of  particular  sciences 
are,  after  all,  relative.  No  fact  or  phenomenon  is  fully  explained  till 
its  relations  to  all  the  world  beside  are  clearly  known  and  defined. 
But  all  the  world  beside,  or  the  whole  system  of  things,  is  not  the 
subject-matter  of  any  particular  science.  So  far  as  it  can  be  made  a 

1  As  a  prominent  instance  of  this  mistake  at  the  present  time  we  might  take  the 
tendency  to  apply  the  law  of  natural  selection,  as  it  is  observed  to  operate  in 
unconscious  nature  and  among  the  lower  animals,  to  the  life  of  man  as  a  conscious 
and  intelligent  member  of  a  social  system.  Even  Mr.  Spencer  is  not  altogether 
free  from  this  error.  A  great  deal  of  the  antagonism  to  the  scientific  treatment 
of  the  moral  life  is  probably  due  to  attempts  to  explain  its  phenomena  upon 
inadequate  principles. 


12 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


subject  of  investigation  at  all,  it  is  the  subject  of  philosophy  or  meta¬ 
physics,  the  science  of  sciences.1  But  while  philosophy  alone  deals 
with  complete  or  final  explanations,  yet  relatively,  and  in  their  own 
field,  the  explanations  of  the  particular  sciences  are  regarded  as  valid. 
It  might  be  said,  for  instance,  that  the  truth  of  the  fifth  proposition  of 
the  first  book  of  Euclid  is  independent  of  the  conclusions  of  philosophy 
as  to  the  nature  and  reality  of  space,  and  no  one  would  think  it  worth 
while  seriously  to  question  the  statement  that  mathematics  is  inde¬ 
pendent  of  metaphysics.  But  the  question  may  be  and  has  been  put 
with  reference  to  ethics,  Is  it  in  like  manner  independent  of  phi¬ 
losophy  ?  The  older  thinkers  apparently  were  of  opinion  that  it  was 
not,  as  it  was  commonly  spoken  of  as  moral  philosophy.  Modern 
nomenclature  and  methods  of  treating  it  have  emphasized  its  inde¬ 
pendence.  Recent  writers  even  go  out  of  their  way  to  disown  all 
connection  between  ethics  and  metaphysics.  But  besides  the  general 
connection  which  there  is  between  all  the  sciences  which  deal  with 
some  particular  aspect  of  the  world  (e.g.,  mathematics,  which  deals 
with  space;  dynamics,  which  deals  with  bodies  in  motion)  and  phi¬ 
losophy  or  metaphysics,  which  deals  with  the  nature  and  reality  of 
the  world  as  a  whole,  there  is  in  the  case  of  ethics  a  more  particular 
connection.  This  is  manifest  whether  we  take  the  point  of  view  of  the 
first  or  of  the  second  of  the  distinctions  already  mentioned. 

For  (i)  its  judgments  are  thought  to  be  absolute.  Ethics,  we  have 
seen,  has  to  do  with  moral  judgments,  and  these  judgments  are  judg¬ 
ments  of  value — the  value  of  conduct  or  character.  Now,  whatever 
they  be  in  reality,  they  are  apparently,  at  least,  judgments  of  absolute, 
not  merely  of  relative  value ;  for  it  is  usually  thought  and  asserted  that 
conduct  is  good  or  bad,  not  merely  relatively,  i.e.,  according  as  we 
choose  to  regard  a  certain  end  (e.g.,  the  good  of  the  society  in  which 
we  live)  as  desirable  or  not,  but  absolutely,  i.e.,  without  relation  to 
our  individual  views  of  what  is  desirable  or  not  desirable  in  particular 
circumstances.  This  apparently  is  the  meaning  of  duty  and  right  as 
contrasted  with  pleasure  or  utility.  In  other  words,  morality  is  com¬ 
monly  thought  to  be  required  by  the  nature  of  things  as  a  whole,  not 
merely  by  the  circumstances  in  which  we  happen  to  live.  It  is  not 
necessary  here  to  decide  whether  this  opinion  is  true  or  false.  Clearly 

1  Which,  however,  ought  not  to  be  thought  of  as  opposed  to  the  sciences,  but 
only  as  ’'an  unusually  obstinate  effort  to  think  clearly”  on  their  subject-matter. 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


13 


if  it  is  true  there  is  a  most  intimate  connection  between  ethics  and 
metaphysics.  And  even  if  it  be  false  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  its  falsity 
can  be  proved  without  more  or  less  overt  reference  to  a  philosophical 
doctrine  of  the  place  of  man  in  the  universe,  and  his  relation  to  its 
central  principle  and  purpose. 

(2)  Man’s  consciousness  of  himself  as  a  member  of  society  involves 
a  reference  to  a  cosmic  order.  This  intimate  connection  between 
ethics  and  metaphysics  may  further  be  illustrated  from  the  fact  that 
in  the  former  we  have  to  do,  not  only  with  man  as  related  to  his 
material  and  social  environment,  but  with  man  as  conscious  of  this 
relationship.  For  this  consciousness,  as  may  be  easily  shown,  in¬ 
volves  a  reference  to  the  whole  world  besides,  as  a  cosmos  or  order  in 
which  he  has  a  place.  In  being  conscious  of  himself  as  a  citizen  of  a 
particular  state,  or  as  a  member  of  the  human  brotherhood,  he  is  also 
conscious  of  himself  as  a  citizen  of  the  world  and  as  a  member  of  a 
cosmos  of  related  beings.  And  just  as  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  him¬ 
self  as  a  member  of  any  lesser  circle  of  relations,  e.g.,  of  the  family, 
without  thinking  of  himself  as  a  member  of  a  larger  circle,  e.g.,  a  ’ 
society  or  state,  so  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  himself  as  a  member  of 
society  without  thinking  of  himself  as  a  member  of  a  universal  or 
cosmic  order.  His  thought  of  himself,  moreover,  in  this  latter  aspect, 
overflows,  as  it  were,  into  all  his  other  thoughts  about  himself,  trans¬ 
forming  and  moulding  them  in  such  a  way  that  it  is  impossible  to 
treat  of  any  of  the  lower  forms  of  consciousness,  e.g.,  his  social  con¬ 
sciousness,  without  taking  the  higher  into  account.  It  is  of  course 
possible  for  the  moment  and  for  purposes  of  science  to  abstract  one 
aspect  or  form  of  consciousness,  such  as  the  consciousness  of  ourselves 
as  members  of  a  particular  society,  from  our  consciousness  of  our¬ 
selves  in  general,  just  as  it  is  possible  to  abstract  a  particular  form 
or  aspect  of  space  or  of  force  from  space  or  force  in  general.  But 
when  we  come  to  analyse  our  social  consciousness  into  its  con¬ 
stituent  elements,  and  ask,  as  we  do  in  ethics,  What  is  its  nature 
and  contents?  we  find  that  the  answer  depends  upon  our  answer 
to  the  wider  question,  as  to  the  nature  and  contents  of  conscious¬ 
ness  as  a  whole,  in  a  far  more  intimate  way  than  does  the  question 
of  the  properties  of  the  triangle  or  the  electric  current  upon  the 
question  of  the  nature  of  space  or  force  in  general.  Thus,  to  take  a 
single  instance,  the  science  of  mathematics  will  remain  unaffected 


14 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


whether  we  believe  with  one  school  of  metaphysicians  that  our  knowl¬ 
edge  of  space  is  given  from  without,  or  with  another  that  it  is  an  a 
priori  form  contributed  by  the  mind  itself.  But  no  one  could  say  that 
our  ethical  analysis  of  that  form  of  social  consciousness  which  we  call 
conscience  will  remain  unaffected  whether  we  believe  with  the  Epi¬ 
cureans  that  the  world  is  an  accidental  concourse  of  atoms,  or  hold 
with  the  Stoics  that  it  is  the  reflection  of  divine  intelligence.  We  are 
thus  led  to  the  conclusion  that,  while  the  natural  sciences  may  be  said 
to  be  practically  independent  of  metaphysics,  the  conclusions  of  phi¬ 
losophy  as  to  the  nature  of  the  world  at  large  and  man’s  relation  to  it 
are  of  the  utmost  importance  to  ethics,  and  cannot  be  neglected  in  a 
complete  exposition  of  its  subject-matter. 

While  this  is  so,  it  may  be  convenient  and  even  necessary,  in  an 
elementary  treatise  like  the  present,  to  consider  the  subject-matter  of 
ethics  with  as  little  reference  as  possible  to  the  philosophical  questions 
involved.  Little  harm  can  come  of  this  course,  so  long  as  we  know 
what  we  are  about.  It  only  comes  to  be  misleading  when  we  confuse 
•  the  temporary  convenience  of  neglecting  these  questions  with  the  per¬ 
manent  possibility  of  doing  so.  To  assert  that  we  may  for  purposes  of 
investigation  abstract  from  metaphysical  considerations  is  one  thing ; 
to  assert  their  irrelevance  to  our  ultimate  results  is  quite  another. 

Ethics  as  a  rr Practical^  Science 

Ethics  has  sometimes  been  distinguished  from  the  natural  sciences 
on  the  ground  that  it  is  practical,  while  they  are  theoretic.  On  ex¬ 
amination,  however,  the  distinction  is  found  to  be  a  superficial  one. 
It  is  true,  indeed,  that  ethics  stands  nearer  to  our  everyday  life  than 
do,  for  instance,  astronomy  or  physiology.  Its  very  name,  as  we  have 
seen,  implies  this,  and  on  this  ground  it  has  sometimes  been  called 
practical  philosophy.  It  is  the  science  of  conduct  (v-pa^is)  and  the 
judgments  which  more  deeply  affect  it.  Its  conclusions  may  therefore 
be  said  to  be  of  immediate  and  universal  interest  in  a  sense  which 
cannot  be  claimed  for  the  conclusions  of  the  sciences  just  mentioned. 
But  this  does  not  carry  us  far.  For  it  may  easily  be  shown  that  as  a 
science  ethics  is  just  as  theoretic  as  astronomy  or  physiology,  while, 
as  furnishing  the  basis  for  the  scientific  practice  of  the  arts,  e.g.,  of 
navigation  and  of  healing,  these  sciences  are  just  as  practical  as  ethics. 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


15 


The  idea  that  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as  a  science  which  is  purely 
theoretic  comes  from  our  habit  of  thinking  of  the  natural  sciences  as 
systems  of  truth  elaborated  in  books  which  are  chiefly  useful  as  a 
means  of  intellectual  training.  In  the  early  stages  of  the  history  of 
science  such  a  mistake  was  impossible.  Man’s  interest  in  the  laws  of 
nature  was  then  only  the  reflection  of  his  interest  in  his  own  ends  and 
purposes.  Causes  in  nature  were  only  interesting  as  means  to  prac¬ 
tical  ends.  It  is  true  that  there  came  a  time  when  man  began  to 
develop  that  "disinterested  curiosity”  which  is  the  condition  of  all 
higher  achievement  in  science.  Yet  it  is  equally  true  that,  just  in 
proportion  as  scientific  research  becomes  divorced  from  the  practical 
interest  that  man  has  in  the  subjugation  of  nature,  there  is  a  danger 
that  it  may  become  pedantic  or  dilettante.  Even  the  most  abstract 
and  theoretic  of  all  the  sciences,  viz.,  metaphysics  or  philosophy,  while, 
as  Novalis  said,  "it  bakes  no  bread,”  is  not  without  important  bearing 
on  the  practical  problems  of  everyday  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  notion  that  ethics  is  less  theoretic  than  any 
other  science  can  only  come  from  the  tendency,  already  remarked 
upon,  to  confuse  theory  with  practice  in  the  field  of  conduct — ideas 
and  judgments  about  morality  in  the  study  or  in  the  class-room  with 
moral  ideas  and  moral  judgments  in  the  concrete  circumstances  of 
daily  life. 

Has  Ethics  to  do  with  what  Ought  to  be  rather  than 

with  what  Is? 

Closely  allied  with  the  view  just  criticised  is  another  that  is  not  less 
misleading.  Ethics,  it  is  said,  differs  from  the  natural  sciences  in  that, 
while  they  deal  with  things  as  they  are,  ethics  deals  with  them  as  they 
ought  to  be.  This  distinction,  it  is  maintained,  is  based  upon  the 
fundamental  antithesis  between  natural  and  moral  law.  The  former 
is  the  law  of  what  is,  the  latter  of  what  is  to  be. 

Now  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  for  the  individual  the  moral  law 
represents  something  that  ought  to  be,  as  opposed  to  physical  law, 
which  is  a  statement  of  what  is.  The  law  of  gravitation  is  a  statement 
,  of  the  actual  relation  between  the  pen  I  hold  in  my  hand  and  the 
earth  which  attracts  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  law  that  I  shall  be 
perfectly  sincere  in  the  opinions  I  express  by  my  writing  is  a  state- 


i6 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


ment  of  what  ought  to  be  my  relation  to  my  reader,  whatever  the 
actual  fact  may  be.  But  this  is  no  more  than  to  say  that,  as  by  this 
time  must  be  obvious  to  the  student,  these  two  are  laws  in  a  wholly 
different  sense.  In  the  one  case  we  have  a  scientific  generalisation 
from  the  observation  of  facts,  in  the  other  we  have  a  rule  or  maxim 
flowing  from  such  a  generalisation.  What  corresponds  to  moral  law 
in  this  sense  is  the  practical  rule  deducible  from  the  conclusions  of  any 
particular  science,  e.g.,  the  rules  of  health  which  are  deducible  from 
the  conclusions  of  physiology.  On  the  other  hand,  what  corresponds 
in  ethics  to  the  theoretic  conclusions  of  science  are  the  definitions, 
classifications,  and  explanations.  It  is,  indeed,  true  that  in  the  search 
for  the  conclusions  there  sketched  out  we  start  from  judgments  of  what 
ought  to  be, — this  constitutes  the  distinctive  mark  of  the  science, — 
but  it  deals  with  these  judgments  as  actual  facts.  At  each  step,  more¬ 
over,  in  its  progress  the  science  is,  as  we  shall  see,  in  the  closest  contact 
with  concrete  facts,  in  just  as  true  a  sense  as  any  other  science.  Thus 
it  is  its  aim  to  show  how  moral  judgments  as  to  what  ought  to  be  are 
always  relative  to  what  is ;  they  imply  at  every  point  the  actual  exist¬ 
ence  of  a  moral  order,  apart  from  which,  as  it  is  revealed  in  social 
relations,  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  a  moral  law,  any  more  than, 
apart  from  the  known  relations  of  the  bodily  organs  to  one  another 
in  what  we  might  call  the  physiological  order  which  reveals  itself  in 
them,  there  could  be  any  laws  of  health  in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
the  term. 

In  criticising  the  distinction  which  it  has  been  sought  to  establish 
between  ethics  and  other  sciences,  on  the  ground  of  the  difference  be¬ 
tween  the  "ought”  and  the  "is,”  I  have  not  meant  to  deny  or  in  any 
way  to  obliterate  the  latter  antithesis.  However  closely  these  cate¬ 
gories  may  be  related  to  one  another,  no  identification  of  them  is 
ultimately  possible.  I  have  merely  wished  to  point  out  that  the  dis¬ 
tinction  between  them  is  not  applicable  as  a  principle  of  division 
among  the  sciences  themselves.1 

1  Dewey  in  his  Outlines  of  Ethics  (pp.  174  ff.)  states:  "A  moral  law,  e.g.  the  law 
of  justice,  is  no  more  merely  a  law  of  what  ought  to  be  than  is  the  law  of  gravi¬ 
tation  .  .  .  the  law  of  justice  may  appear  as  the  law  of  something  which  ought 
to  be  but  is  not.  .  .  .  But  the  very  fact  that  it  ought  to  be  for  him  implies  that 
it  already  is  for  others.  It  is  a  law  of  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member.” — Ed.  * 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY, 


Distinction  between  Ethics  and  Politics 

**  „  ■  '  •  \  ...  ■  . 

It  remains  to  distinguish  ethics  from  a  science  with  which  it  may 
seem  to  have  been  confused,  when  we  spoke  of  the  former  as  having 
to  do  with  man  as  a  member  of  society,  namely,  politics.1  The  con¬ 
nection  between  them  is  obvious.  They  both  deal  with  human  con¬ 
duct  and  character.  They  both  treat  of  these  in  connection  with  the 
end  of  human  good,  and  therefore  as  the  subject  of  moral  judgment. 
They  both  conceive  of  them  as  subject  to  laws,  carrying  with  them 
judicial  rewards  and  penalties.  The  difference  is  that  while  ethics  is 
concerned  with  the  analysis  of  conduct  and  character  as  the  subjects 
of  moral  judgment  (i.e.,  as  right  and  wrong),  simply,  politics  has  to 
do  with  the  analysis  of  those  external  forms  and  institutions  which 
lay  down  in  outline  the  fields  in  which  right  conduct  primarily  mani¬ 
fests  itself,  viz.,  the  family,  school,  church,  profession,  etc.  Hence 
ethics  may  be  said  to  precede  politics.  Only  after  we  have  arrived  at  a 
clear  conception  of  the  inward  nature  of  right  conduct  can  we  hope  to 
settle  the  question  as  to  its  proper  external  conditions.  The  foundation 
of  a  true  criticism  of  political  institutions  must  be  laid  in  a  true  criti¬ 
cism  of  human  life  as  subject  to  a  supreme  law  or  purpose,  i.e.,  in  ethics. 

Hence  also  the  familiar  distinctions  between  political  and  moral 
law:  (i)  Morality  is  more  authoritative  than  law,  conscience  than 
political  institutions.  Morality  judges  the  latter,  declaring  them  to 
be  bad  or  good.  A  bad  political  law  or  institution  is  unfortunately  a 
common  phenomenon ;  a  bad  moral  law  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.2 

!The  word  is  here  used  in  its  ancient  sense.  Just  as  "Ethics”  is  preferred  to 
the  more  ambitious  title  of  "Moral  Philosophy,”  so  "Politics”  may  be  preferred 
to  "Political  Philosophy,”  but  in  both  cases  it  is  to  be  understood  that  a  science, 
not  an  art,  is  intended.  The  hybrid  term  "Sociology”  seems  likely  to  assert  a 
place  for  itself.  I  understand  the  word  as  meaning  the  theory  of  society  in  general, 
including  its  origin  and  growth,  whereas  politics  is  the  theory  of  civilised  society 
organised  as  a  state.  On  the  distinction  between  Society  and  State,  see  D.  G. 
Ritchie’s  Principles  of  State  Interference ,  Appendix. 

2  The  practical  steps  that  ought  to  be  taken  in  consequence  of  such  an  unfa¬ 
vourable  judgment  upon  any  particular  law  or  institution  will,  of  course,  depend 
upon  circumstances.  The  obvious  formula  in  a  country  like  our  own  is :  agita¬ 
tion  for  reform  plus  temporary  conformity.  If  any  one  thinks  he  can  best  agitate 
by  refusing  to  conform,  and  taking  the  consequences,  he  may  be  admired  for  his 
moral  zeal,  but  he  will  be  punished  for  his  political  disobedience.  The  justifica¬ 
tion  will  be  that  more  moral  harm  would  come  from  leaving  the  law  unvindicated 
than  from  punishing  an  enthusiast  for  reform. 


1 8 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


(2)  Morality  extends  over  a  wider  field  than  legal  enactment.  It 
takes  account  of  all  conduct,  not  of  some  departments  only.  This 
follows  from  the  distinction  already  drawn  between  politics  and  ethics. 
For  as  politics  is  the  science  of  the  external  conditions  of  morality,  the 
corresponding  art — practical  government — takes  account  only  of 
those  kinds  of  conduct  which  endanger  these  conditions.  These  con¬ 
ditions  are  not  indeed  confined,  as  a  popular  philosophical  dogma 
represents,  to  protection  of  person  and  property, — such  a  limitation 
is  purely  arbitrary, — they  embrace  family  life,  education,  recreation, 
and  everything  that  admits  of  public  organisation  in  the  interest  of 
morality.  Yet  the  details  of  conduct  within  the  circle  of  these  con¬ 
ditions,  e.g.,  within  the  family,  the  school,  the  theatre,  lie  outside  this 
field,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  their  infinite  multiplicity.  (3)  A 
deeper  difference  is  that  political  law  has  to  do  with  conduct  in  its 
external  consequences,  or  if  it  goes  deeper  merely  takes  account  of 
intention.  It  takes  account  of  such  visible  effects  as  theft  of  property, 
neglect  of  wife  and  children,  etc.  On  the  other  hand,  the  invisible 
things  of  the  mind  are  recognised  by  most  civilised  governments  as 
outside  of  their  sphere.  Morality  regulates  the  inward  motive  and 
disposition  as  well  as  the  outward  effect, — the  conduct  of  the  under¬ 
standing  and  the  imagination  as  well  as  conduct  towards  property  or 
children.  It  says  not  only  "Thou  shalt  not  steal,”  "Thou  shalt  not 
kill,”  but  "Think  no  evil,”  "Flee  vain  and  foolish  imaginations.'”  This 
also  follows  from  the  distinction  between  the  external  conditions  and 
the  life  for  which  these  are  intended  to  make  room.  Political  enact¬ 
ment  can  maintain  property,  the  currency,  the  family,  public  educa¬ 
tion  ;  it  cannot  secure  that  the  citizens  shall  use  these  institutions  in 
the  spirit  and  for  the  purpose  for  which  they  were  intended, — a  truth 
which  is  expressed  in  the  common  saying  that  you  cannot  make  men 
moral  by  act  of  parliament.  The  justification  for  legislation  which 
apparently  has  this  aim — e.g.,  the  regulation  or  suppression  of  public 
houses — is  not  that  by  means  of  it  we  may  make  certain  persons  con¬ 
form  to  moral  demands,  e.g.,  abstain  from  intoxicating  liquor,  but  that 
we  may  improve  the  conditions  of  the  moral  life  for  the  community  at 
large,  e.g.,  for  the  neighbours  or  the  children  of  the  toper.  The  man 
who  abstains  merely  because  owing  to  the  state  of  the  law  he  cannot 
get  liquor  is  obviously  not  moral.  A  distinguished  churchman  is  said 
to  have  remarked  to  the  late  Professor  Thorold  Rogers,  "We  must 


ETHICS  AND  SOCIAL  POLICY 


19 


have  compulsory  religion,  because  otherwise  we  shall  have  none  at 
all,”  to  which  the  Professor  replied  that  he  didn’t  see  the  difference. 
The  same  might  be  said  of  compulsory  morality :  it  is  equivalent  to  no 
morality  at  all.1 

1On  the  general  subject  of  the  relation  between  Law  and  Morality,  see  Sidg- 
wick’s  Methods  of  Ethics ,  Book  I,  chap,  ii,  also  Elements  of  Politics,  chap,  xiii; 
and  on  the  apparent  permanency  of  the  legal  as  compared  with  the  moral  code, 
see  Alexander’s  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  p.  286. 


CHAPTER  II 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 
3.  The  End  as  Common  Good1 

The  current  opinion 2  is  that,  while  it  requires  a  metaphysician  like 
Hobbes  to  trace  back  all  the  elements  and  instincts  of  human  nature 
to  the  egoistic  desire  for  pleasure,  it  is  yet  possible  to  divide  them 
psychologically  into  two  distinct  classes,  the  egoistic,  or  self-regarding, 
and  the  altruistic,  or  other-regarding.  Of  the  former  type  we  have  the  ' 
instinct  of  self-preservation  and  of  the  acquisition  of  property.  Of 
the  latter  we  have  types  in  benevolence  and  sympathy.  Similarly, 
there  is  the  obvious  social  distinction  between  man  and  the  state,  the 
individual*  and  society.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  the  "rights  of 
man.”  The  individual  is  supposed  to  be  born  into  the  world  with 
certain  natural  rights  belonging  to  him  as  an  individual.  These  are 
the  germ  of  that  system  of  conventional  or  artificial  rights  with  which 
in  any  civilised  country  the  law  courts  invest  him.3  On  the  other 
hand,  as  securing  to  him  the  enjoyment  of  his  natural  rights  by  means 
of  the  police  and  the  law  courts,  the  state  has  a  certain  limited  right 
of  taxation  and  control  over  individuals.  One  of  the  chief  questions 
for  the  political  philosopher  is,  it  is  supposed,  to  define  the  limits 
which  the  state  must  observe  in  interfering  with  the  natural  rights  of 

1From  The  Elements  of  Ethics  (pp.  152-166),  by  J.  H.  Muirhead,  M.A.,  LL.D., 
Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Birmingham.  Copyright,  1892,  by 
Charles  Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York. 

2  Not  unsupported  by  the  highest  scientific  authorities,  as  when  Mr.  Spencer 
represents  human  nature  as  the  battle-ground  of  two  permanently  antithetical 
forces  of  egoism  and  altruism. 

3 The  natural  rights  of  man  apparently  are  liberty,  property,  security,-  and 
"Resistance  of  Oppression.”  See  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  quoted  in 
Paine’s  treatise  on  the  same.  The  Declaration  of  Rights  in  the  Constitution  of 
the  State  of  California  further  adds  the  right  of  "pursuing  and  obtaining  (!) 
happiness.”  See  Bryce’s  American  Commonwealth ,  Vol.  II,  p.  643.  As  necessary 
corollaries  of  these  some  add  "access  to  the  soil”;  others,  more  generally,  "access 
to  the  means  of  production.” 


20 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


21 


individuals.  The  quintessence  of  wisdom  in  this  field  is  sometimes 
declared  to  be  to  recognise  that,  inasmuch  as  rights  belong  to  man 
naturally  and  not  in  virtue  of  any  connection  with  the  artificial  or¬ 
ganisation  of  society  and  state,  the  state  has  really  no  business  to 
interfere  at  all.1 

It  is  not  difficult  to  show  that  these  distinctions,  though  relatively 
valid,  as  giving  us  different  points  of  view  from  which  it  may  be  useful 
to  look  at  psychological  and  social  facts,  are  misleading  when  taken 
as  absolute  and  final. 

Relativity  of  these  Distinctions 

i.  Egoistic  and  altruistic  passions  and  desires.  Thus,  in  regard 
to  the  psychological  distinctions  referred  to  above  between  egoistic 
and  altruistic  desires,  it  is  easy  to  show  how  the  thought  of  self  and 
the  thought  of  others  cross  and  interlace  one  another,  in  such  a  man¬ 
ner  as  to  leave  us  with  only  a  vanishing  distinction  between  them. 
Thus,  nothing  seems  more  individualistic  than  the  desire  for  life.  But 
the  moment  we  think  of  it,  we  see  how  in  a  rational  being  it  is  its 
social  significance  that  makes  life  valuable  to  him.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  in  a  moment  of  peril  a  normally  constituted  individual  thinks 
first,  or  even  at  all,  of  himself,  except  so  far  as  he  is  related  to  others. 
His  thoughts  fly,  e.g.,  to  his  wife  and  family.  When  life  is  emptied 
of  these  relations,  i.e.,  when  it  appears  only  as  an  egoistic  good,  it  is 
no  good  at  all.  It  is  just  its  emptiness  of  social  content  that  makes 
life  appear  so  worthless  to  the  suicide. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  benevolent  desire  for  the  good  of  others 
involves  a  reference  to  self.  By  this  it  is  not  merely  meant,  as 
Professor  Bain  puts  it,  that  "  sympathy  cannot  exist  upon  the  extreme 
of  self-abnegation.  .  .  .  We  must  retain  a  sufficient  amount  of  the 
self-regarding  element  to  consider  happiness  an  object  worth  striving 
for,”2  but  that,  as  has  been  already  so  frequently  pointed  out,  the 
object  of  all  desire  is  a  personal  good.  Hence  it  is  only  as  involved 
in  one’s  own  that  one  can  desire  one’s  neighbour’s  good :  it  is  only  as 
his  good  enters  as  an  element  into  my  conception  of  my  good  that  I 
can  make  it  an  object  of  desire  and  volition. 

aFor  further  discussion  of  this  point  see  Chapter  IV  of  this  volume. — Ed. 

2 Mental  and  Moral  Science ,  p.  282. 


22 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


The  "inadequacy  of  such  a  classification  of  the  elements  of  human 
nature  into  egoistic  and  altruistic  is  further  seen  in  the  difficulty  which 
we  should  have  in  classifying  the  more  violent  forms  of  passion  under 
either  head.  Thus  love  in  its  purer  forms  is  commonly  thought  to  be 
an  altruistic  emotion,  having  for  its  object  the  good  of  the  loved 
object.  Yet  it  may  on  occasions  take  forms  into  which  the  good  of 
the  loved  object  does  not  enter  as  an  element.  Similarly  revenge, 
which  is  presumably  upon  this  classification  to  be  set  down  as  an 
egoistic  passion,  nevertheless  takes  forms  which  involve  the  most 
complete  self-abnegation. 

2.  The  individual  and  society.  In  regard  to  the  relations  of  the 
individual  to  society,  it  may  likewise  be  shown  that  the  independent 
rights  put  forward  on  behalf  of  the  individual,  by  current  individual¬ 
istic  theories,  are,  if  taken  literally,  an  arbitrary  assumption.  Whence, 
it  may  be  asked,  does  the  individual  derive  them?  He  has  them,  it 
may  be  said,  by  nature  (the  theory  of  "natural  rights’7  seems  to  imply 
this).  "Man,”  said  Rousseau,  "is  born  free,”  i.e.,  independent  of 
the  laws,  habits,  and  conventions  of  society.  But  this  is  certainly  not 
the  case.  The  child  who  comes  into  the  world  inherits  everything  he 
has  from  a  previous  state  of  society.  He  owes  everything  he  possesses 
to  a  combination  of  forces  and  circumstances  (national,  local,  and 
family  influences)  over  which  he  has  had  no  control.  It  was  a  favour¬ 
ite  metaphor  with  the  older  individualistic  writers  to  liken  the  soul  of 
the  newly  born  child  to  a  piece  of  blank  paper,  on  which,  by  means  of 
education,  anything  might  be  written,  and  so  a  perfectly  independent 
and  original  character  given  to  the  individual.  It  would  be  a  more 
apt  illustration  of  its  true  nature  to  compare  it  to  a  word  or  sentence 
in  a  continuous  narrative.  The  soul  comes  into  the  world  already 
stamped  with  a  meaning  determined  by  its  relation  to  all  that  went 
before, — having,  in  other  words,  a  context  in  relation  to  which  alone 
its  character  can  be  understood.  It  sums  up  the  tendencies  and  tradi¬ 
tions  of  the  past  out  of  which  it  has  sprung, — giving  them,  indeed,  a 
new  form  or  expression,  inasmuch  as  it  is  an  individual,  but  only 
carrying  on  and  developing  their  meaning,  and  not  to  be  understood 
except  in  relation  to  them. 

Or  it  may  be  said  that  man  acquires  these  rights  by  education. 
Knowledge  gives  him  power,  individuality,  freedom.  This,  of  course, 
is  true,  but  not  in  the  sense  that  with  these  advantages  he  acquires  any 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


23 


rights  as  against  society.  On  the  contrary,  the  dependence  of  the 
individual  upon  society  in  the  sense  claimed  is  still  more  obvious  when 
we  consider  what  is  implied  in  education.  Thus  it  may  be  pointed  out 
how  absurd  it  is  to  speak,  as  is  sometimes  done,  of  a  "self-educated 
man.”  No  one  can  be  said,  in  any  proper  sense,  to  educate  himself. 
Nor  indeed  can  any  individual  properly  be  said  to  gain  his  education 
from  another.  Parent  or  teacher  can  only  help  to  open  and  interpret 
to  him  the  sources  of  education.  That  education  has  begun  long  be¬ 
fore  it  is  consciously  thought  of,  and  goes  on  long  after  it  is  supposed 
to  be  completed.  Intellectually  it  consists  from  first  to  last  in  the 
appropriation  of  a  body  of  knowledge,  not  contained  in  the  mind  of 
any  individual  parent  or  teacher,  but  diffused  through  the  language 
and  literature  of  the  society  into  which  the  child  is  born.  The  child 
has  not  to  make  its  own  ideas  about  the  world,  nor  has  the  parent  or 
teacher  to  make  them  for  it.  In  spoken  language,  which  is  essentially 
a  social  institution,  there  is  already  a  store-house  of  distinctions  and 
generalisations  which  the  child  begins  by  appropriating.  Its  thoughts 
adapt  themselves  to  the  mould  which  is  here  prepared  for  them.  They 
will  be  accurate  and  adequate  in  proportion  ( 1 )  to  the  stage  of  accu¬ 
racy  which  the  language  has  reached  (i.e.,  the  stage  of  intellectual 
advance  which  the  society  whose  language  it  is  represents)  ;  (2)  to 
the  degree  of  culture  which  the  group  of  persons  who  form  its  imme¬ 
diate  society  have  attained.  Not  less  representative  of  -social  acquisi¬ 
tions  is  the  written  language  of  books.  This  or  that  man  indeed  is 
said  to  write  a  book :  he  puts  his  name  at  the  beginning  of  it,  and  his 
list  of  authorities  in  the  preface  or  at  the  end.  But  in  most  cases  it 
would  represent  the  fact  more  accurately  if  he  put  the  names  of  his 
authorities  on  the  title  page,  and  stowed  away  his  own  in  some  ob¬ 
scurer  corner.  All  that  he  has  done,  all  that  he  can  do,  is  to  recast  the 
material  supplied  him  by  the  labour  of  countless  generations.  His 
book  is  at  best  only  a  clever  compilation  from  these. 

The  same  remarks  apply  to  the  child’s  moral  education.  Here, 
again,  it  is  not  we  who  educate  our  children,  but  language  with  its 
store  of  ready-made  moral  distinctions,  the  nursery  with  its  "spirit,” 
its  laws,  and,  as  Plato  would  add,  its  pictures  and  songs,  the  family, 
the  playground,  and  the  church.  These  begin  to  act  upon  the  child’s 
moral  life,  forming  or  deforming  it,  at  a  time  when  direct  verbal  in¬ 
struction  is  impossible.  From  its  earliest  infancy,  to  use  a  philoso- 


24 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


pher’s  somewhat  grandiloquent  expression,  the  child  "has  been  suckled 
at  the  breast  of  the  Universal  Ethos.”1 

Further  Illustrations  of  Dependence  of  Individual  on  Society 

In  industry  this  truth  has  a  still  more  obvious  application.  Thus 
we  sometimes  hear  in  business  of  a  "self-made  man.”  But  a  moment’s 
consideration  makes  it  obvious  that  it  is  as  impossible  for  a  man  to 
"make”  himself  as  we  saw  it  to  be  for  him  to  educate  himself.  All  he 
does  is  to  use  the  opportunities  that  society  offers  to  him.  Where,  to 
look  no  further,  would  his  factory  or  business  be  but  for  the  police 
who  protect  it,  the  laws  that  secure  him  the  title  deeds,  the  markets 
that  supply  the  raw  material,  the  communit}^  that  supplies  the  labour 
to  work  it,  the  system  of  railways,  harbours,  etc.,  that  are  the  means 
of  disposing  of  the  product  ?  What  is  the  share  that  all  these  things, 
each  in  its  turn  depending  for  its  existence  and  efficiency  upon  a  com¬ 
munity  of  organised  wills,  as  well  as  on  the  social  labour  of  many 
generations,  have  in  the  wealth  that  is  prodyced,  and  what  is  the 
share  of  the  energetic  individual  who  uses  them  ?  where  in  all  this  are 
we  to  draw  the  line  between  the  respective  rights  of  the  man  and  of 
the  state? 

As  a  final  illustration,  we  might  take  the  case  of  great  men.  These, 
at  any  rate,  it  might  be  thought,  are  an  exception  to  this  dependence 
of  the  individual  upon  his  society  and  his  time.  They  stand  out  in 
solitary  independence  of  the  society  in  the  midst  of  which  they  live. 
If  they  have  not  made  themselves,  they  seem  to  have  been  made  by 
God,  and  to  owe  little  or  nothing  to  their  environment.  Caesar,  Charle¬ 
magne,  Napoleon,  may  thus  be  proved  to  have  been  makers  of  their 
social  environment,  instead  of  having  been  made  by  it.  And  indeed 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  this  is  true.  Such  men  seem  to  contribute  a 
new  element  to  social  progress,  and  to  leave  the  world  different  from 
what  they  found  it.  But  when  we  look  closer  we  see  that  they  do  so, 
not  in  virtue  of  that  which  separates  them  from  their  time,  but  of 
that  which  unites  them  to  it.  It  is  their  insight  into  the  wants  of  the 
time,  their  sympathy  with  its  blind  longings  and  aspirations,  that  gives 
them  their  power  over  it.  They  are  closer  to  the  spirit  of  the  time, 
and  the  moral  order  which  that  spirit  represents,  not  further  away 

1On  the  subject  of  this  section,  see  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  pp.  145-158. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


25 


from  it,  than  common  people.  This  is  the  secret  of  their  greatness. 
It  is  on  this  account  that  they  "  represent  ”  their  time.1  They  sum  up 
and  give  expression  to  its  tendencies.  It  is  not  so  much  they  who  act, 
as  the  spirit  of  the  time  that  acts  in  them.  The  permanent  part  of 
their  work  (the  establishment  of  an  empire,  of  a  system  of  education, 
or  a  new  social  organisation)  was  "in  the  air”  when  the  man  arrived. 
He  was  only  an  instrument  in  giving  effect  to  it. 

t 

Ethical  Import  oj  these  Facts 

1.  The  first  consequence  of  the  truth  I  have  been  illustrating  which 
it  is  of  importance  for  us  to  note  is  that  the  end  which  is  the  standard 
of  moral  judgment  is  a  social  one — the  good  is  common  good.  A 
being  who,  like  man,  is  a  little  higher  than  the  animals,  "a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,”  can  only  realise  his  own  life  in  so  far  as  he 
realises  the  life  of  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member.2  To  main¬ 
tain  himself  in  isolated  independence,  to  refuse  to  be  compromised 
by  social  relations,  is  the  surest  way  to  fail  to  realise  the  good  he 
seeks.3  To  seek  life  in  this  sense  is  to  lose  it.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  man  finds  salvation  in  the  duties  of  family,  profession,  city,  coun¬ 
try.  To  lose  his  life  in  these  is  to  find  it.  For  the  social  fabric  of 
which  he  finds  himself  a  part  is  only  the  fabric  of  his  own  life  "writ 
large.”  It  is  only  the  other,  or  objective  side,  of  that  which  sub¬ 
jectively  I  described  as  the  system  of  his  impulses  and  desires,  as  con¬ 
trolled  and  organised  by  his  reason.  It  might  seem,  at  first  sight,  an 
illustration  of  an  ignotum  per  ignotius  to  refer  us  from  the  desires  and 
impulses,  which  we  know  as  parts  of  ourselves,  to  the  vague  field  of 
social  rights  and  duties,  which  appeal  to  us  only  in  a  secondary  way 
through  moral  rules  and  social  conventions,  were  it  not  for  the  knack 
that  these  rights  and  duties  have  of  grouping  themselves  in  visible  in¬ 
stitutions.  Thus,  corresponding  to  the  instinct  of  self-preservation 
and  the  rights  and  duties  it  involves,  civilisation  has  produced  the 

1  Compare  Ben  Jonson’s  apostrophe  to  Shakespeare  as  "Soul  of  the  Age.'’ 

2 Aristotle  said  that  one  who  is  independent  of  society  is  either  "a  god  or  a 
beast.” 

:!As  a  simple  illustration  of  this  truth,  I  may  quote  the  case  of  a  man  whose 
vote  I  once  solicited  for  one  of  several  strongly  opposed  candidates  for  the  School 
Board.  His  answer  was  that  he  was  an  independent  man,  and  intended  to  prove 
it  by  not  voting  at  all. 


26 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


police  and  law  courts;  corresponding  to  the  instinct  of  propagation, 
the  family ;  of  acquisition,  property  .and  trade ;  of  the  pursuit  of  truth, 
the  school,  university,  and  academy  of  science.  Apart  from  these, 
and  the  rights  and  duties  they  represent,  the  individual  life  shrivels 
up  into  quite  insignificant  proportions;1  in  connection  with  them  it 
expands  to  the  full  extent  of  its  recognised  capabilities. 

The  same  truth  might  be  illustrated  from  the  side  of  vice  and  evil. 
As  the  good  of  the  individual  is  the  common  good,  so  his  evil  is  com¬ 
mon  evil.  No  one  can  neglect  the  duty  he  owes  himself  of  finding  the 
equilibrium  of  his  instincts  and  desires  in  the  due  proportion  of  their 
exercise,  without  failing  in  his  duty  to  society,  and  disturbing  the 
equilibrium  of  functions  which  constitute  its  health  and  well-being. 
The  man  who  drinks  away  his  wages,  and  upsets  the  equilibrium  be¬ 
tween  desire  for  drink  and  desire  for  health,  if  he  fails  of  no  duty 
nearer  home,  deprives  his  trade  or  profession  of  an  efficient  member, 
and  so  is  a  source  of  common  loss  and  evil.  And  just  as  we  have  the 
wholesome  institutions  of  family,  trade,  the  universities,  etc.,  corre¬ 
sponding  to  the  harmonious  and  proportionate  satisfaction  of  natural 
instincts,  so,  corresponding  to  disorganisation  in  the  system  of  de¬ 
sires,  we  have  the  morbid  growth  of  brothels,  gambling  dens,  cribs, 
and  cramming  establishments.2 

2.  It  is  only  expressing  the  same  truth  in  a  more  particular  form 
to  point  out  that  the  self  is  not  merely  related  to  society  in  general, 
but  that  each  particular  self  is  related  in  a  special  way  to  the  society 
into  which  he  is  born.  This  way  is  best  described  under  the  form, 
which  is  not  an  ingenious  metaphor,  but  a  vital  fact,  of  membership. 
The  individual  is  not  less  vitally  related  to  society  than  the  hand  or 
the  foot  to  the  body.  Nor  is  it  merely  that  each  individual  is  depend¬ 
ent  for  life  and  protection  upon  society,  as  the  hand  or  the  foot  is 
dependent  for  its  nourishment  upon  the  body,  but  he  is  dependent  on 
his  particular  relation  to  society  for  the  particular  form  of  his  in¬ 
dividuality.  It  is  the  function  it  performs  in  virtue  of  its  special  place 
in  the  organism  which  makes  the  hand  a  hand,  and  the  foot  a  foot. 
In  the  same  way  it  is  his  place  and  function  in  society  that  makes  the 

1  Becoming,  as  Hobbes  puts  it,  "solitary,  poor,  nasty,  brutish,  short.” 

-It  is  common  to  make  a  distinction  between  sins  of  omission  and  commission. 
If  the  above  account  is  true,  this  is  merely  superficial.  To  omit  a  duty  is  as  much 
a  common  evil  as  to  commit  a  positive  trespass. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


27 


individual  what  he  is.  He  realises  himself  by  enabling  society, 
through  him,  to  perform  the  particular  function  which  is  represented 
by  his  station  and  its  duties.1 

Appeal  to  Moral  Judgments  in  Support  of  Conclusions 

We  have  thus  arrived  at  a  new  statement  of  the  nature  of  the  self, 
which,  as  the  standard  of  moral  judgment,  I  formerly  described  as  the 
permanent  unity  underlying  the  multiplicity  of  desire.  This,  which  may 
have  appeared  a  somewhat  metaphysical  statement,  I  am  now  able  to 
translate  into  the  familiar  language  of  every-day  life,  in  so  far  as  I 
have  shown  that  this  unity  amid  diversity  assumes  visible  form  in  that 
circle  of  inter-related  duties  which  we  call  a  man’s  station  in  society. 
It  remains  merely  to  verify  this  explanation  of  moral  judgments  by 
submitting  it  to  the  test  of  fact,  and  asking  whether  moral  judgments, 
which  we  have  seen  involve  a  reference  to  a  true  self  or  rational  order 
among  instincts  and  desires,  bear  out  the  interpretation  I  have  just 
given  to  that  self  as  essentially  social  by  carrying  with  them  a  refer¬ 
ence  to  a  society  or  objective  moral  order  as  well. 

That  this  is  §0  with  regard  to  a  large  section  of  our  moral  judg¬ 
ments  is  obvious.  Injustice,  dishonesty,  untruthfulness,  covetousness, 
are  all  judgecf  bad  on  the  ground  of  the  harm  to  others  they  involve. 
So  fully  has  this  been  recognised,  that  it  has  sometimes  been  proposed 
to  resolve  all  virtue  into  right  relations  with  our  fellow-men  under 
the  common  name  of  Justice,  Benevolence,  or  Truth.  But  it  is  not  so 
clear  that  this  social  reference  is  universally  present  in  moral  judg¬ 
ments,  when  we  come  to  consider  the  so-called  individualistic  virtues 
and  the  duties  we  are  said  to  owe  to  ourselves. 

In  the  next  chapter  I  shall  have  occasion  to  remark  in  detail  how 
these  involve  a  social  reference.2  Here  it  will  be  sufficient  to  take  what 

iSee  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies ,  pp.  157-186.  Compare  Essays  in  Philosophical 
Criticism  (ed.  Seth  and  R.  B.  Haldane),  "The  Social  Organism,”  by  Professor 
Henry  Jones,  especially  pp.  193,  209  ff.  Dewey  points  out  that  (1)  the  fulfilment 
of  the  duties  of  one’s  station,  or,  as  he  calls  it,  "adjustment  to  environment,” 
can  be  taken  as  a  moral  ideal  only  on  condition  that  it  means  "willing  the  main¬ 
tenance  and  development  of  moral  surroundings  as  one’s  own  end”;  (2)  the 
function  that  is  thus  performed  serves  at  once  to  define  and  to  unite.  It  makes 
a  man  "a  distinct  social  member  at  the  same  time  that  it  makes  him  a  member. 
.  .  .  Individuality  means,  not  separation,  but  defined  position  in  a  whole”  ( Out¬ 
lines  of  Ethics ,  pp.  1 15  ff.,  137,  138).  >  2Muirhead,  Book  IV,  chap.  ii. 


28 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


is  regarded  as  the  first  duty  we  owe  to  ourselves,  the  duty  of  self- 
preservation.  And  that  it  may  not  be  obscured  by  obvious  reference 
to  "social  ties/7  which  may  in  a  particular  instance  "bind  a  man  to 
life,”  such  as  his  duty  to  his  wife  and  family,  we  must  suppose  all 
these  ties  have  been  dissolved,  and  life  to  have  been  to  all  appearance 
emptied  of  social  significance.  What,  it  may  be  asked,  is  implied  in 
our  judgment  that  suicide  is  wrong  in  such  a  case  ?  Ex  hypothesi  there 
are  no  relations  that  can  have  any  claim  upon  the  would-be  suicide. 
He  is  without  friends,  money,  trade,  or  the  hope  of  acquiring  them. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  it  might  be  supposed  our  judgment  refers  to  the 
individual.  In  parting  with  his  life,  he  is  merely  parting  with  his 
own.  If  there  is  a  duty  in  the  matter,  it  is  merely  a  duty  to  himself. 
There  is  no  duty  to  society,  and  therefore  society  has  no  right  to 
interfere  with  what  is  strictly  his  own  affair.1 

To  all  this  society  in  most  civilised  countries,  as  is  well  known, 
replies,  rudely  enough,  with  the  policeman’s  baton,  the  prison,  or  the 
lunatic  asylum.  It  may  indeed  be  said  that  this  is  no  sufficient  answer 
to  the  claim  that  is  put  forward.  For  the  State  may  be  wrong.  Its 
judgments  in  this  matter  may  not  be  in  conformity  with  any  true 
standard  of  right.  But  we  have  already  seen  reason'in  the  nature  of 
man  himself  for  believing  that  its  interference  in  this  case  is  not 
without  ethical  justification.  For  if  what  was  said  in  the  earlier  part 
of  this  chapter  be  sound,  no  man  has  a  right  to  take  his  own  life,  be¬ 
cause  no  man  has  a  life  of  his  own  to  take.  His  life  has  been  given 
him,  and  has  been  made  all  that  it  is,  as  has  been  already  shown,  by 
society.  He  cannot  morally  part  with  it  without  consent  of  a  society 
which  is  joint-owner  with  him  in  it.  He  carries  on  his  life  as  a  joint 
concern :  he  cannot  dissolve  the  partnership  without  the  consent  of 
his  partner  in  it.2  Perhaps  in  the  case  selected  society  may  have 

1This,  of  course,  is  constantly  urged  in  defence  of  suicide;  and  if  we  take  up 
the  position  that  certain  duties  rest  on  the  value  which  life  has  to  the  individual 
alone,  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  answer  there  can  be.  Hence  individualistic  theories 
of  ethics,  e.g.,  Stoicism,  have  always  tended  to  justify  suicide. 

2 Compare  Burke’s  famous  description  :  "Society  is  indeed  a  contract.  Subordi¬ 
nate  contracts  for  objects  of  mere  occasional  interest  may  be  dissolved  at  pleasure; 
but  the  state  ought  not  to  be  considered  as  nothing  better  than  a  partnership 
agreement  in  a  trade  of  pepper  and  coffee,  calico  or  tobacco,  or  some  other  such 
low  concern,  to  be  taken  up  for  a  little  temporary  interest,  and  to  be  dissolved 
by  the  fancy  of  the  parties.  It  is  to  be  looked  on  with  other  reverence;  because 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


29 


shamefully  neglected  its  part.  So  far  society  is  wrong,  and  is  respon¬ 
sible  for  the  state  to  which  matters  have  come,  but  this  does  not 
absolve  the  individual  from  his  duty  to  society.  Two  wrongs  do  not 
make  a  right. 

Duty  to  Humanity 

Nor  do  we  alter  the  social  implication  of  moral  judgment  by  saying 
that  the  duty  in  such  cases  is  not  to  the  state  or  community  to  which 
he  belongs,  but  to  God  or  to  humanity,  for  this  only  brings  into  view 
a  wider  aspect  of  the  moral  order  than  that  which  we  have  hitherto 
considered.  Thus,  to  take  the  latter  contention  first,  to  speak  of  our 
interest  in  humanity  as  the  ground  of  obligation  is  only  to  extend  our 
conception  of  what  is  implied  in  the  moral  order  which  we  call  society. 
It  is  to  conceive  of  it  as  reaching  beyond  the  limits  of  any  particular 
time  and  country,  and  as  progressively  realising  itself  over  the  whole 
world  and  through  the  ages.  The  existence  of  such  an  order  is  not 
doubted  by  the  historian.  History,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  is  the 
record  of  the  form  which  it  takes,  and  the  changes  it  undergoes,  in  a 
particular  age  or  country.  Universal  history  is  the  record  of  these 
forms  and  changes  as  organically  related  to  one  another,  and  to  the 
whole  which  we  call  the  growth  or  evolution  of  civilisation.1 

Loyalty  to  the  moral  order  in  this  sense  is  involved  in  loyalty  to  the 
narrower  circle  of  duties  which  represent  it  for  the  individual.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  former  is  impossible  apart  from  the  latter.  It  is 
not  possible  to  do  our  duty  to  humanity,  and  leave  undone  our  duty 
to  our  neighbour.  Dickens  has  made  us  laugh  over  Mrs.  Jellyby’s 
"  telescopic  philanthropy.”  But  in  his  humorous  description  of  that 
lady’s  humanitarian  eccentricities  the  novelist  is  only  emphasising  the 
truth  which  the  philosopher  expresses  in  different  language  when  he 
.  reminds  us  that  "  there  is  no  other  genuine  enthusiasm  for  humanity 

it  is  not  a  partnership  subservient  only  to  the  gross  animal  existence  of  a  tempo¬ 
rary  and  perishable  nature.  It  is  a  partnership  in  all  science,  a  partnership  in  all 
art,  a  partnership  in  every  virtue  and  in  all  perfection.  As  the  ends  of  such  a 
partnership  cannot  be  obtained  in  many  generations,  it  becomes  a  partnership  not 
only  between  those  who  are  living,  but  between  those  who  are  living,  those  who 
are  dead,  and  those  who  are  to  be  born.” — Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France 

1  For  a  sketch  of  history  in  this  sense,  see  Hegel’s  Philosophy  of  History 
(Bohn’s  Library). 


30 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


than  one  which  has  travelled  the  common  highway  of  reason — the  life 
of  the  good  neighbour  and  the  honest  citizen — and  can  never  forget 
that  it  is  still  only  a  further  stage  of  the  same  journey.”1 

4.  The  Moral  Good  as  the  Fulfilment  of  an 

Organization  of  Interests2  ' 

An  interest,  or  unit  of  life,  is  essentially  an  organization  which  con¬ 
sistently  acts  for  its  own  preservation.  It  deals  with  its  environment 
in  such  wise  as  to  keep  itself  intact  and  bring  itself  to  maturity ;  ap¬ 
propriating  what  it  needs,  and  avoiding  or  destroying  what  threatens 
it  with  injury.  The  interest  so  functions  as  to  supply  itself  with  the 
means  whereby  it  may  continue  to  exist  and  function.  This  is  the 
principle  of  action  which  may  be  generalized  from  its'  behavior,  and 
through  which  it  may  be  distinguished  within  the  context  of  nature. 
Now  the  term  interest  being  construed  in  this  sense,  we  may  describe 
goodness  as  fulfilment  of  interest.  The  description  will  perhaps  refer 
more  clearly  to  human  life,  if  for  the  term  interest  we  substitute  the 
term  desire.  Goodness  would  then  consist  in  the  satisfaction  of  de¬ 
sire.  In  other  words,  things  are  good  because  desired,  not  desired 
because  good.  To  say  that  one  desires  things  because  one  needs  them, 
or  likes  them,  or  admires  them,  is  redundant ;  in  the  end  one  simply 
desires  certain  things,  that  is,  one  possesses  an  interest  or  desire  which 
they  fulfil.  There  are  as  many  varieties  of  goodness  as  there  are 
varieties  of  interest ;  and  to  the  variety  of  interest  there  is  no  end. 

Strictly  speaking,  goodness  belongs  to  an  interest’s  actual  state  of 
fulfilment.  This  will  consist  in  an  activity,  exercised  by  the  interest, 
but  employing  the  environment.  With  a  slight  shift  of  emphasis, 
goodness  in  this  absolute  sense  will  attach  either  to  interest  in  so  far 
as  nourished  by  objects,  as  in  the  case  of  hunger  appeased,  or  to 
objects  in  so  far  as  assimilated  to  interest,  as  in  the  case  of  food 
consumed.  It  follows  that  goodness  in  a  relative  sense,  in  the  sense 
of  "good  for,”  will  attach  to  whatever  conduces  to  good  in  the  abso- 

XT.  H.  Green’s  Introduction  to  the  Moral  Part  of  Hume's  "Treatise,”  Works, 
Vol.  I,  p.  371. 

2From  The  Moral  Economy  (pp.  11-19),  by  Ralph  Barton  Perry,  Ph  D., 
Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Harvard  University.  Copyright,  1909,  by  Charles 
Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


3i 


lute  sense ;  that  is,  actions  and  objects,  such  as  agriculture  and  bread, 
that  lead  directly  or  indirectly  to  the  fulfilment  of  interest.  But 
"good”  and  "good  for,”  like  their  opposites  "bad”  and  "bad  for,”  are 
never  sharply  distinguishable,  because  the  imagination  anticipates 
the  fortunes  of  interests,  and  transforms  even  remote  contingencies 
into  actual  victory  or  defeat. 

Through  their  organization  into  life,  the  mechanisms  of  nature  thus 
take  on  the  generic  quality  of  good  and  evil.  They  either  serve  in¬ 
terests  or  oppose  them;  and  must  be  employed  and  assimilated,  or 
avoided  and  rejected  accordingly.  Events  which  once  indifferently 
happened  are  now  objects  of  hope  and  fear,  or  integral  parts  of  suc¬ 
cess  and  failure. 

But  that  organization  of  life  which  denotes  the  presence  of  morality 
has  not  yet  been  defined.  The  isolated  interest  extricates  itself  from 
mechanism ;  and,  struggling  to  maintain  itself,  does,  it  is  true,  divide 
the  world  into  good  and  bad,  according  to  its  uses.  But  the  moral 
drama  opens  only  when  interest  meets  interest ;  when  the  path  of  one 
unit  of  life  is  crossed  by  that  of  another.  Every  interest  is  compelled 
to  recognize  other  interests,  on  the  one  hand  as  parts  of  its  environ¬ 
ment,  and  on  the  other  hand  as  partners  in  the  general  enterprise  of 
life.  Thus  there  is  evolved  the  moral  idea,  or  principle  of  action, 
according  to  which  interest  allies  itself  with  interest  in  order  to  be 
free-handed  and  powerful  against  the  common  hereditary  enemy,  the 
heavy  inertia  and  the  intessant  wear  of  the  cosmos.  Through  morality 
a  plurality  of  interests  becomes  an  economy,  or  community  of  interests. 

I  have  thus  far  described  the  situation  as  though  it  were  essentially 
a  social  one.  But  while,  historically  speaking,  it  is  doubtless  always 
social  in  one  of  its  aspects,  the  essence  of  the  matter  is  as  truly  repre¬ 
sented  within  the  group  of  interests  sustained  by  a  single  organism, 
when  these,  for  example,  are  united  in  an  individual  life-purpose. 
Morality  is  that  procedure  in  which  several  interests,  whether  they 
involve  one  or  more  physical  organisms,  are  so  adjusted  as  to  function 
as  one  interest,  more  massive  in  its  support,  and  more  coherent  and 
united  in  the  common  task  of  fulfilment.  Interests  morally  combined 
are  not  destroyed  or  superseded,  as  are  mechanical  forces,  by  their 
resultant.  The  power  of  the  higher  interest  is  due  to  a  summing  of 
incentives  emanating  from  the  contributing  interests ;  it  can  perpetu¬ 
ate  itself  only  through  keeping  these  interests  alive.  The  most  spec- 


32 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


tacularnnstance  of  this  is  government,  which  functions  as  one,  and  yet 
derives  its  power  from  an  enormous  variety  of  different  interests, 
which  it  must  foster  and  conserve  as  the  sources  of  its  own  life.  In  all 
cases  the  strength  of  morality  must  lie  in  its  liberality  and  breadth. 

Morality  is  simply  the  forced  choice  between  suicide  and  abundant 
life.  When  interests  war  against  one  another  they  render  the  project 
of  life,  at  best  a  hard  adventure,  futile  and  abortive.  I  hold  it  to  be 
of  prime  importance  for  the  understanding  of  this  matter  to  observe 
that  from  the  poorest  and  crudest  beginnings,  morality  is  the  massing 
of  interests  against  a  reluctant  cosmos.  Life  has  been  attended  with 
discord  and  mutual  destruction,  but  this  is  its  failure.  The  first 
grumbling  truce  between  savage  enemies,  the  first  collective  enter¬ 
prise,  the  first  peaceful  community,  the  first  restraint  on  gluttony  for 
the  sake  of  health,  the  first  suppression  of  ferocity  for  the  sake  of  a 
harder  blow  struck  in  cold  blood, — these  were  the  first  victories  of 
morality.  They  were  moral  victories  in  that  they  organized  life  into 
more  comprehensive  unities,  making  it  a  more  formidable  thing,  and 
securing  a  more  abundant  satisfaction.  The  fact  that  life  thus  com¬ 
bined  and  weighted,  was  hurled  against  life,  was  the  lingering  weak¬ 
ness,  the  deficiency  which  attends  upon  all  partial  attainment.  The 
moral  triumph  lay  in  the  positive  access  of  strength. 

Let  us  now  correct  our  elementary  conceptions  of  value  so  that 
they  may  apply  to  moral  value.  The  fulfilment  of  a  simple  isolated 
interest  is  good,  but  only  the  fulfilment  of  an  organization  of  in¬ 
terests  is  morally  good.  Such  goodness  appears  in  the  realization  of 
an  individual’s  systematic  purpose  or  in  the  well-being  of  a  com¬ 
munity.  That  it  virtually  implies  one  ultimate  good,  the  fulfilment 
of  the  system  of  all  interests,  must  necessarily  follow ;  although  we 
cannot  at  present  deal  adequately  with  that  conclusion. 

The  quality  of  moral  goodness,  like  the  quality  of  goodness  in  the 
fundamental  sense,  lies  not  in  the  nature  of  any  class  of  objects,  but 
in  any  object  or  activity  whatsoever,  in  so  far  as  this  provides  a 
fulfilment  of  interest  or  desire.  In  the  case  of  moral  goodness  this 
fulfilment  must  embrace  a  group  of  interests  in  which  each  is  limited 
by  the  others.  Its  value  lies  not  only  in  fulfilment,  but  also  in  adjust¬ 
ment  and  harmony.  And  this  value  is  independent  of  the  special 
subject-matter  of  the  interests.  Moralists  have  generally  agreed  that 
it  is  impossible  to  conceive  moral  goodness  exclusively  in  terms  of  any 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


special  interest,  even  such  as  honor,  power,  or  wealth.  There  is  no 
interest  so  rare  or  so  humble  that  its  fulfilment  is  not  morally  good, 
provided  that  fulfilment  forms  part  of  the  systematic  fulfilment  of  a 
group  of  interests. 

But  there  has  persisted  from  the  dawn  of  ethical  theory  a  miscon¬ 
ception  concerning  the  place  of  pleasure  in  moral  goodness.  It  has 
been  supposed  that  every  interest,  whatever  its  special  subject-matter, 
is  an  interest  in  pleasure.  Now  while  a  thorough  criticism  of  hedonism 
would  be  out  of  place  here,  even  if  it  were  profitable,  a  summary  con¬ 
sideration  of  it  will  throw  some  light  on  the  truth.1  Fortunately,  the 
ethical  status  of  pleasure  is  much  clearer  than  its  psychological  status. 
As  a  moral  concern,  pleasure  is  either  a  special  interest,  in  which  case 
it  must  take  its  place  in  the  whole  economy  of  life,  and  submit  to  prin¬ 
ciples  which  adjust  it  to  the  rest ;  or  it  is  an  element  in  every  interest, 
in  which  case  it  is  itself  not  an  interest  at  all.  Now  whether  it  be 
proper  to  recognize  a  special  interest  in  pleasure,  it  is  not  necessary 
here  to  determine.  That  this  should  be  generally  supposed  to  be  the 
case  is  mainly  due,  I  think,  to  a  habit  of  associating  pleasure  peculiarly 
with  certain  familiar  and  recurrent  bodily  interests.  At  any  rate  it 
is  clear  that  the  pleasure  which  constantly  attends  interests  is  not  that 
in  which  the  interest  is  taken.  Interests  and  desires  are  qualitatively 
diverse,  artd  to  an  extent  that  is  unlimited.  The  simpler  organisms 
are  not  interested  in  pleasure,  but  in  their  individual  preservation ; 
while  man  is  interested  not  only  in  preservation,  but  in  learning,  card¬ 
playing,  loving,  fighting,  bargaining,  and  all  the  innumerable  activities 
that  form  part  of  the  present  complex  of  life. 

Now,  it  is  true  that  it  is  agreeable  or  pleasant  to  contemplate  the 
fulfilment  of  an  interest ;  and  that  such  anticipatory  gratification  in 
some  measure  accompanies  all  endeavor.  But  there  is  an  absolute 
difference  between  such  present  pleasure  and  the  prospect  which 
evokes  it.  And  it  is  that  prospect  or  imagined  state  of  fulfilment 
which  is  the  object  of  endeavor,  the  good  sought.  It  is  also  true  that 
the  fulfilment  of  every  interest  is  pleasant.  But  this  means  only  that 
the  interest  is  conscious  of  its  fulfilment.  In  pleasure  and  pain  life 
records  its  gains  and  losses,  and  is  guided  to  enhance  the  one  or  repair 
the  other.  Where  in  the  scale  of  life  pleasure  and  pain  begin  it  is  not 

irThe  issue  is  presented  clearly  and  briefly  in  Fr.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics, 
Book  II,  chap,  ii,  and  in  W.  James,  Principles  of  Psychology ,  Vol.  II,  pp.  549-559. 


34 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


now  possible  to  say,  but  it  is  certain  that  they  are  present  wherever 
interests  engage  in  any  sort  of  reciprocity.  If  one  interest  is  to  control 
or  engage  another  it.  must  be  aware  of  it,  and  alive  to  its  success  or 
failure.  Where  life  has  reached  the  human  stage  of  complexity,  in 
which  interests  supervene  upon  interests,  in  which  every  interest  is 
itself  an  object  of  interest,  the  consciousness  of  good  and  evil  assumes 
a  constantly  increasing  importance.  Life  is  more  watchful  of  itself, 
more  keenly  sensitive  to  the  fortunes  of  all  of  its  constituent  parts. 
It  is  proper,  therefore,  to  associate  pleasure  with  goodness ;  and  hap¬ 
piness,  or  a  more  constant  and  pervasive  pleasure,  with  the  higher 
forms  of  moral  goodness.  But  pleasure  and  happiness  are  incidental 
to  goodness;  necessary,  but  not  definitive  of  its  general  form  and 
structure. 

In  addition  to  goodness  thus  amplified  there  now  enters  into  life  at 
the  moral  stage  a  new  element  of  value,  the  rightness  or  virtue  of 
action  which,  though  moved  by  some  immediate  desire,  is  at  the  same 
time  controlled  by  a  regard  for  a  higher  or  more  comprehensive 
interest.  This  is  the  distinguishing  quality  of  all  that  wins  moral 
approval :  thrift  and  temperance ;  loyalty  and  integrity ;  justice,  un¬ 
selfishness,  and  public  spirit ;  humanity  and  piety.1 

Moral  procedure,  then,  differs  from  life  in  its  more  elementary 
form,  through  the  fact  that  interests  are  organized.  Morality  is  only 
life  where  this  has  assumed  the  form  of  the  forward  movement  of 
character,  nationality,  and  humanity.  Moral  principles  define  the  ad¬ 
justment  of  interest  to  interest,  for  the  saving  of  each  and  the 
strengthening  of  both  against  failure  and  death.  Morality  is  only  the 
method  of  carrying  on  the  affair  of  life  beyond  a  certain  point  of  com¬ 
plexity.  It  is  the  method  of  concerted,  cumulative  living,  through 
which  interests  are  brought  from  a  doubtful  condition  of  being  toler¬ 
ated  by  the  cosmos,  to  a  condition  of  security  and  confidence.  The 
spring  and  motive  of  morality  are  therefore  absolutely  one  with  those 
of  life.  The  self-preservative  impulse  of  the  simplest  organism  is 
the  initial  bias  from  which,  by  a  continuous  progression  in  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  first  intent,  have  sprung  the  service  of  mankind  and  the 
love  of  God. 

1  Further  discussion  of  these  virtues  will  be  found  in  Perry,  Moral  Economy , 
chaps,  ii  and  iii. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


35 


5.  Happiness  and  Social  Ends1 

( i )  Moral  quality  is  an  attribute  of  character,  of  dispositions  and 
attitudes  which  express  themselves  in  desires  and  efforts.  (2)  Those 
attitudes  and  dispositions  are  morally  good  which  aim  at  the  produc¬ 
tion,  the  maintenance,,  and  development  of  ends  in  which  the  agent 
and  others  affected  alike  find  satisfaction.  There  is  no  difference 
(such  as  early  utilitarianism  made)  between  good  as  standard  and  as 
aim,  because  only  a  voluntary  preference  for  and  interest  in  a  social 
good  is  capable,  otherwise  than  by  coincidence  or  accident,  of  pro¬ 
ducing  acts  which  have  common  good  as  their  result.  Acts  which  are 
not  motivated  by  it  as  aim  cannot  be  trusted  to  secure  it  as  result ; 
acts  which  are  motived  by  it  as  a  living  and  habitual  interest  are  the 
guarantee,  so  far  as  conditions  allow,  of  its  realization.  Those  who 
care  for  the  general  good  for  its  own  sake  are  those  who  are  surest 
of  promoting  it. 

The  good  moral  character .  The  genuinely  moral  person  is  one, 
then,  in  whom  the  habit  of  regarding  all  capacities  and  habits  of  self 
from  the  social  standpoint  is  formed  and  active.  Such  an  one  forms 
his  plans,  regulates  his  desires,  and  hence  performs  his  acts  with  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  effect  they  have  upon  the  social  groups  of  which  he  is  a 

\ 

part.  He  is  one  whose  dominant  attitudes  and  interests  are  bound 
up  with  associated  activities.  Accordingly  he  will  find  his  happiness 
or  satisfaction  in  the  promotion  of  these  activities  irrespective  of  the 
particular  pains  and  pleasures  that  accrue. 

Social  interests  and  sympathy.  A  genuine  social  interest  is  then 
something  much  broader  and  deeper  than  an  instinctive  sympathetic 
reaction.  Sympathy  is  a  genuine  natural  instinct,  varying  in  intensity 
in  different  individuals.  It  is  a  precious  instrumentality  for  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  social  insight  and  socialized  affection ;  but  in  and  of  it¬ 
self  it  is  upon  the  same  plane  as  any  natural  endowment.  It  may  lead 
to  sentimentality  or  to  selfishness ;  the  individual  may  shrink  from 
scenes  of  misery  just  because  of  the  pain  they  cause  him,  or  may  seek 
jovial  companions  because  of  the  sympathetic  pleasures  he  gets.  Or 

xFrom  Ethics  (pp.  297-304),  by  John  Dewey  ?  PhJD.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
Philosophy  in  Columbia  University,  and  James  H.  Tufts,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor 
of  Philosophy  in  The  University  of  Chicago.  Copyright,  1908,  by  Henry  Holt  and 
Company,  New  York. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


36 

he  may  be  moved  by  sympathy  to  labor  for  the  good  of  others,  but, 
because  of  lack  of  deliberation  and  thoughtfulness,  be  quite  ignorant 
of  what  their  good  really  is,  and  do  a  great  deal  of  harm.  One  may 
wish  to  do  unto  others  as  he  would  they  should  do  unto  him,  but  may 
err  egregiously  because  his  conception  of  what  is  desirable  for  himself 
is  radically  false ;  or  because  he  assumes  arbitrarily  that  whatever  he 
likes  is  good  for  others,  and  may  thus  tyrannically  impose  his  own 
standards  upon  them.  Again  instinctive  sympathy  is  partial ;  it  may 
attach  itself  vehemently  to  those  of  blood  kin  or  to  immediate  asso¬ 
ciates  in  such  a  way  as  to  favor  them  at  the  expense  of  others,  and 
lead  to  positive  injustice  toward  those  beyond  the  charmed  circle.1 

Transformation  of  instinctive  sympathies.  It  still  remains  true 
that  the  instinctive  affectionate  reactions  in  their  various  forms 
(parental,  filial,  sexual,  compassionate,  sympathetic)  are  the  sole 
portions  of  the  psychological  structure  or  mechanism  of  a  man  which 
can  be  relied  upon  to  work  the  identification  of  other’s  ends  with  one’s 
own  interests.  What  is  required  is  a  blending,  a  fusing  of  the  sym¬ 
pathetic  tendencies  with  all  the  other  impulsive  and  habitual  traits 
of  the  self.  When  interest  in  power  is  permeated  with  an  affectionate 
impulse,  it  is  protected  from  being  a  tendency  to  dominate  and  tyran¬ 
nize;  it  becomes  an  interest  in  effectiveness  of  regard  for  common 
ends.  When  an  interest  in  artistic  or  scientific  objects  is  similarly 
fused,  it  loses  the  indifferent  and  coldly  impersonal  character  which 
marks  the  specialist  as  such,  and  becomes  an  interest  in  the  adequate 
aesthetic  and  intellectual  development  of  the  conditions  of  a  common 
life.  Sympathy  does  not  merely  associate  one  of  these  tendencies  with 
another ;  still  less  does  it  make  one  a  means  to  the  other’s  end.  It  so 
intimately  permeates  them  as  to  transform  them  both  into  a  single  new 
and  moral  interest.  This  same  fusion  protects  sympathy  from  senti¬ 
mentality  and  narrowness.  Blended  with  interest  in  power,  in  science, 
in  art,  it  is  liberalized  in  quality  and  broadened  in  range.  In  short, 
the  fusion  of  affectionate  reactions  with  the  other  dispositions  of  the 
self  illuminates,  gives  perspective  and  body  to  the  former,  while  it 

1  IVIill  in  his  article  on  Bentham  says  of  him:  "Personal  affection,  he  well 
knew,  is  as  liable  to  operate  to  the  injury  of  third  parties,  and  requires  as  much 
to  be  kept  in  check,  as  any  other  feeling  whatever :  and  general  philanthropy  .  .  . 
he  estimated  at  its  true  value  when  divorced  from  the  feeling  of  duty,  as  the  very 
weakest  and  most  unsteady  of  all  feelings.” — Utilitarianism,  p.  356 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


37 


gives  social  quality  and  direction  to  the  latter.  The  result  of  this 
reciprocal  absorption  is  the  disappearance  of  the  natural  tendencies  in 
their  original  form  and  the  generation  of  moral,  i.e.,  socialized  in¬ 
terests.  It  is  sympathy  transformed  into  a  habitual  standpoint  which 
satisfies  the  demand  for  a  standpoint  which  will  render  the  person 
interested  in  foresight  of  all  obscure  consequences. 

i.  Social  interest  and  the  happiness  oj  the  agent.  We  now  see 
what  is  meant  by  a  distinctively  moral  happiness,  and  how  this  hap¬ 
piness  is  supreme  in  quality*  as  compared  with  other  satisfactions, 
irrespective  of  superior  intensity  and  duration  on  the  part  of  the 
latter.  It  is  impossible  to  draw  any  fixed  line  between  the  content  of 
the  moral  good  and  of  natural  satisfaction.  The  end,  the  right  and 
only  right  end,  of  man,  lies  in  the  fullest  and  freest  realization  of 
powers  in  their  appropriate  objects.  The  good  consists  of  friendship, 
family  and  political  relations,  economic  utilization  of  mechanical 
resources,  science,  art,  in  all  their  complex  and  variegated  forms  and 
elements.  There  is  no  separate  and  rival  moral  good ;  no  separate 
empty^  and  rival  "good  will.” 

Nature  of  moral  interest  and  motivation.  Yet  the  interest  in  the 
social  or  the  common  and  progressive  realization  of  these  interests 
may  properly  be  called  a  distinctive  moral  interest.  The  degree  of 
actual  objective  realization  or  achievement  of  these  ends,  depends 
upon  circumstances  and  accidents  over  which  the  agent  has  little  or 
no  control.  The  more  happily  situated  individual  who  succeeds  in 
realizing  these  ends  more  largely  we  may  call  more  fortunate ;  we 
cannot  call  him  morally  better.  The  interest  in  all  other  interests,  the 
voluntary  desire  to  discover  and  promote  them  within  the  range  of 
one’s  own  capacities,  one’s  own  material  resources,  and  the  limits  of 
one’s  own  surroundings,  is,  however,  under  one’s  control :  it  is  one’s 
moral  self.  The  nature  and  exercise  of  this  interest  constitutes  then 
the  distinctively  moral  quality  in  all  good  purposes.  They  are  mor¬ 
ally  good  not  so  far  as  objectively  accomplished  and  possessed,  but 
so  far  as  cherished  in  the  dominant  affections  of  the  person. 

The  moral  interest  as  final  happiness.  Consequently  the  true  or 
final  happiness  of  an  individual,  the  happiness  which  is  not  at  the 
mercy  of  circumstance  and  change  of  circumstance,  lies  not  in  objec¬ 
tive  achievement  of  results,  but  in  the  supremacy  within  character  of 
an  alert,  sincere,  and  persistent  interest  in  those  habits  and  institu- 


38 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


tions  which  forward  common  ends  among  men.  Mill  insisted  that 
quality  of  happiness  was  morally  important,  not  quantity.  Well, 
that  quality  which  is  most  important  is  the  peace  and  joy  of  mind 
that  accompanies  the  abiding  and  equable  maintenance  of  socialized 
interests  as  central  springs  of  action.  To  one  in  whom  these  interests 
live  (and  they  live  to  some  extent  in  every  individual  not  completely 
pathological)  their  exercise  brings  happiness  because  it  fulfills  his  life. 
To  those  in  whom  it  is  the  supreme  interest  it  brings  supreme  or  final 
happiness.  It  is  not  preferred  because  it  is  the  greater  happiness, 
but  in  being  preferred  as  expressing  the  only  kind  of  self  which  the 
agent  fundamentally  wishes  himself  to  be,  it  constitutes  a  kind  of 
happiness  with  which  others  cannot  be  compared.  It  is  unique,  final, 
invaluable.1 

Identity  of  the  individual  and  general  happiness.  No  algebraic 
summing  up  of  sympathetic  pleasures,  utilities  of  friendship,  advan¬ 
tages  of  popularity  and  esteem,  profits  of  economic  exchange  among 
equals,  over  against  pains  from  legal  penalties  and  disapproving  public 
opinion,  and  lack  of  sympathetic  support  by  others,  can  ever  make  it 
even  approximately  certain  that  an  individual’s  own  interest,  in  terms 
of  quantity  of  pleasures  and  pains,  is  to  regard  the  interest  of  others.2 
Such  a  demonstration,  moreover,  if  possible,  would  not  support  but 
would  weaken  the  moral  life.  It  would  reduce  the  manifestation  of 
character  to  selecting  greater  rather  than  less  amounts  of  homogeneous 
ends.  It  would  degrade  reflection  and  consideration  to  ingenuity  in 
detecting  where  larger  quantities  of  pleasures  lie,  and  to  skill  in  per¬ 
forming  sums  of  addition  and  subtraction.  Even  if  such  a  scheme 
could  be  demonstrated,  every  one  except  the  most  languid  and  phleg¬ 
matic  of  pleasure-seekers  would  reject  a  life  built  upon  it.  Not  only 
the  "good,”  but  the  more  vigorous  and  hearty  of  the  "bad,”  would 

1"It  is  only  a  poor  sort  of  happiness  that  could  ever  come  by  caring  very  much 
about  our  own  narrow  pleasures.  We  can  only  have  the  highest  happiness,  such 
as  goes  along  with  being  a  great  man,  by  having  wide  thought  and  much  feeling 
for  the  rest  of  the  world  as  well  as  ourselves;  and  this  sort  of  happiness  often 
brings  so  much  pain  with  it,-  that  we  can  only  tell  it  from  pain  by  its  being 
what  we  would  choose  before  everything  else,  because  our  souls  see  it  is  good.” 
—  George  Eliot,  Romola 

-The  recognition  of  this  by  many  utilitarian  hedonists  has  caused  them  to  have 
recourse  to  the  supernaturally  inflicted  penalties  and  conferred  delights  of  a  future 
life  to  make  sure  of  balancing  up  the  account  of  virtue  as  self-sacrificing  action 
with  happiness,  its  proper  end. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


39 


scorn  a  life  in  which  character,  selfhood,  had  no  significance,  and 
where  the  experimental  discovery  and  testing  of  destiny  had  no  place. 
The  identity  of  individual  and  general  happiness  is  a  moral  matter ; 
it  depends,  that  is,  upon  the  reflective  and  intentional  development  of 
that  type  of  character  which  identifies  itself  with  common  ends,  and 
which  is  happy  in  these  ends  just  because  it  has  made  them  its  own. 

2.  Social  ends  and  the  happiness  of  others .  The  same  principle 
holds  of  the  happiness  of  others.  Happiness  means  the  expression  of 
the  active  tendencies  of  a  self  in  their  appropriate  objects.  Moral  hap¬ 
piness  means  the  satisfaction  which  comes  when  the  dominant  active 
tendencies  are  made  interests  in  the  maintenance  and  propagation  of 
the  things  that  make  life  worth  living.  Others,  also,  can  be  happy  and 
should  be  happy  only  upon  the  same  terms.  Regard  for  the  happiness 
of  others  means  regard  for  those  conditions  and  objects  which  permit 
others  freely  to  exercise  their  own  powers  from  their  own  initiative, 
reflection,  and  choice.  Regard  for  their  final  happiness  (i.e.,  for  a 
happiness  whose  quality  is  such  that  it  cannot  be  externally  added  to 
or  subtracted  from)  demands  that  these  others  shall  find  the  con¬ 
trolling  objects  of  preference,  resolution,  and  endeavor  in  the  things 
that  are  worth  while. 

3.  Happiness  and  common  ends.  For  all  alike,  in  short,  the  chief 
thing  is  the  discovery  and  promotion  of  those  activities  and  active 
relationships  in  which  the  capacities  of  all  concerned  are  effectively 
evoked,  exercised,  and  put  to  the  test.  It  is  difficult  for  a  man  to 
attain  a  point  of  view  from  which  steadily  to  apprehend  how  his 
own  activities  affect  and  modify  those  of  others.  It  is  hard,  that  is, 
to  learn  to  accommodate  one’s  ends  to  those  of  others;  to  adjust,  to 
give  way  here,  and  fit  in  there  with  respect  to  our  aims.  But  difficult 
as  this  is,  it  is  easy  compared  with  the  difficulty  of  acting  in  such  a 
way  for  ends  which  are  helpful  to  others  as  will  call  out  and  make 
effective  their  activities. 

Moral  democracy.  If  the  vice  of  the  criminal,  and  of  the  coarsely 
selfish  man  is  to  disturb  the  aims  and  the  good  of  others ;  if  the  vice 
of  the  ordinary  egoist,  and  of  every  man,  upon  his  egoistic  side,  is  to 
neglect  the  interests  of  others ;  the  vice  of  the  social  leader,  of  the 
reformer,  of  the  philanthropist  and  the  specialist  in  every  worthy  cause 
of  science,  or  art,  or  politics,  is  to  seek  ends  which  promote  the  social 
welfare  in  ways  which  fail  to  engage  the  active  interest  and  coopera- 


40 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


tion  of  others.1  The  conception  of  conferring  the  good  upon  others, 
or  at  least  of  attaining  it  for  them,  which  is  our  inheritance  from  the 
aristocratic  civilization  of  the  past,  is  so  deeply  embodied  in  religious, 
political,  and  charitable  institutions  and  in  moral  teachings,  that  it 
dies  hard.  Many  a  man,  feeling  himself  justified  by  the  social  char¬ 
acter  of  his  ultimate  aim  (it  may  be  economic,  or  educational,  or 
political),  is  genuinely  confused  or  exasperated  by  the  increasing  an¬ 
tagonism  and  resentment  which  he  evokes,  because  he  has  not  enlisted 
in  his  pursuit  of  the  "common”  end  the  freely  cooperative  activities 
of  others.  This  cooperation  must  be  the  root  principle  of  the  morals 
of  democracy.  It  must  be,  however,  confessed  that  it  has  as  yet  made 
little  progress. 

Our  traditional  conceptions  of  the  morally  great  man,  the  moral 
hero  and  leader,  the  exceptionally  good  social  and  political  character, 
all  work  against  the  recognition  of  this  principle  either  in  practice  or 
theory.  They  foster  the  notion  that  it  is  somebody’s  particular  busi¬ 
ness  to  reach  by  his  more  or  less  isolated  efforts  (with  "following,”  or 
obedience,  or  unreflective  subordination  on  the  part  of  others)  a 
needed  social  good.  Some  genius  .is  to  lead  the  way;  others  are  to 
adopt  and  imitate.  Moreover,  the  method  of  awakening  and  enlisting 
the  activities  of  all  concerned  in  pursuit  of  the  end  seems  slow;  it 
seems  to  postpone  accomplishment  indefinitely.  But  in  truth  a  com¬ 
mon  end  which  is  not  made  such  by  common,  free  voluntary  coop¬ 
eration  in  process  of  achievement  is  such  in  name  only.  It  has  no 
support  and  guarantee  in  the  activities  which  it  is  supposed  to  benefit, 
because  it  is  not  the  fruit  of  those  activities.  Hence,  it  does  not  stay 
put.  It  has  to  be  continually  buttressed  by  appeal  to  external,  not 
voluntary,  considerations ;  bribes  of  pleasure,  threats  of  harm,  use  of 
force.  It  has  to  be  undone  and  done  over.  There  is  no  way  to  escape 
or  evade  this  law  of  happiness,  that  it  resides  in  the  exercise  of  the 
active  capacities  of  a  voluntary  agent ;  and  hence  no  way  to  escape  or 
evade  the  law  of  a  common  happiness,  that  it  must  reside  in  the  con¬ 
gruous  exercise  of  the  voluntary  activities  of  all  concerned.  The  in¬ 
herent  irony  and  tragedy  of  much  that  passes  for  a  high  kind  of 
socialized  activity  is  precisely  that  it  seeks  a  common  good  by  methods 
which  forbid  its  being  either  common  or  a  good. 

’The  recognition  of  this  type  of  spiritual  selfishness  is  modern.  It  is  the 
pivot  upon  which  the  later  (especially)  of  Ibsen’s  tragedies  turn. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


4i 


6.  Egoism  and  Altruism1 

For  the  last  three  centuries,  the  most  discussed  point  in  English 
ethical  literature  (save  perhaps  whether  moral  knowledge  is  intuitive 
or  derived  from  experience)  has  been  the  relation  of  regard  for  one’s 
own  self  and  for  other  selves  as  motives  of  action — "the  crux  of  all 
ethical  speculation,”  Spencer  terms  it.  All  views  have  been  repre¬ 
sented  :  ( 1 )  That  man  naturally  acts  from  purely  selfish  motives  and 
that  morality  consists  in  an  enforced  subjection  of  self-love  to  the 
laws  of  a  common  social  order.  (2)  That  man  is  naturally  selfish, 
while  morality  is  an  "enlightened  selfishness,”  or  a  regard  for  self 
based  upon  recognition  of  the  extent  to  which  its  happiness  requires 
consideration  of  others.  (3)  That  the  tendencies  of  the  agent  are 
naturally  selfish,  but  that  morality  is  the  subjection  of  these  tendencies 
to  the  law  of  duty.  (4)  That  man’s  interests  are  naturally  partly 
egoistic  and  partly  sympathetic,  while  morality  is  a  compromise  or 
adjustment  of  these  tendencies.  (5)  That  man’s  interests  are  nat¬ 
urally  both,  and  morality  a  subjection  of  both  to  conscience  as  umpire. 
(6)  That  they  are  both,  while  morality  is  a  subjection  of  egoistic  to 
benevolent  sentiments.  (7)  That  the  individual’s  interests  are  nat¬ 
urally  in  objective  ends  which  primarily  are  neither  egoistic  nor  al¬ 
truistic  ;  and  these  ends  become  either  selfish  or  benevolent  at  special 
crises,  at  which  times  morality  consists  in  referring  them,  equally  and 
impartially  for  judgment,  to  a  situation  in  which  the  interests  of  the 
self  and  of  others  concerned  are  involved :  to  a  common  good. 

Three  underlying  psychological  principles.  We  shall  make  no  at¬ 
tempt  to  discuss  these  various  views  in  detail ;  but  will  bring  into 
relief  some  of  the  factors  in  the  discussion  which  substantiate  the 
view  (7)  stated  last.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  theories  rank  them¬ 
selves  under  three  heads  with  reference  to  the  constitution  of  man’s 
tendencies:  holding  they  (a)  naturally  have  in  view  personal  ends 
exclusively  or  all  fall  under  the  principle  of  self-love  or  self-regard ; 
that  ( b )  some  of  them  contemplate  one’s  own  happiness  and  some  of 
them  that  of  others;  that  (c)  primarily  they  are  not  consciously  con¬ 
cerned  with  either  one’s  own  happiness  or  that  of  others.  Memory 
and  reflection  may  show  (just  as  it  shows  other  things)  that  their 
consequences  affect  both  the  self  and  others,  when  the  recognition  of 


1  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics ,  pp.  375-391  ■ 


42 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


this  fact  becomes  an  additional  element,  either  for  good  or  for  evil,  in 
the  motivation  of  the  act.  We  shall  consider,  first,  the  various  senses 
in  which  action  occurs,  or  is  said  to  occur,  in  behalf  of  the  person’s 
own  self ;  and  then  take  up,  in  similar  fashion,  its  reference  to  the 
interests  of  others. 

I.  Action  in  Behai j  of  Self 

i.  Motives  as  selfish.  The  Natural  Selfishness  of  Man  is  main¬ 
tained  from  such  different  standpoints  and  with  such  different  objects 
in  view  that  it  is  difficult  to  state  the  doctrine  in  any  one  generalized 
form.  By  some  theologians,  it  has  been  associated  with  an  innate 
corruption  or  depravity  of  human  nature  and  been  made  the  basis  of 
a  demand  for  supernatural  assistance  to  lead  a  truly  just  and  benevo¬ 
lent  life.  By  Hobbes  (1588-1679)  it  was  associated  with  the  anti¬ 
social  nature  of  individuals  and  made  the  basis  for  a  plea  for  a  strong 
and  centralized  political  authority1  to  control  the  natural  "war  of  all 
against  all”  which  flows  inevitably  from  the  psychological  egoism. 
By  Kant,  it  was  connected  with  the  purely  sense  origin  of  desires,  and 
made  the  basis  for  a  demand  for  the  complete  subordination  of  desire 
to  duty  as  a  motive  for  action.  Morals,  like  politics,  make  strange 
bedfellows!  The  common  factor  in  these  diverse  notions,  however, 
is  that  every  act  of  a  self  must,  when  left  to  its  natural  or  psychological 
course,  have  the  interest  of  the  self  in  view ;  otherwise  there  would  be 
no  motive  for  the  deed  and  it  would  not  be  done.  This  theoretical 
and  a  priori  view  is  further  supported  by  pointing  out,  sometimes  in 
reprobation  of  man’s  sinful  nature,  sometimes  in  a  more  or  less 
cynical  vein,  the  lurking  presence  of  some  subtle  regard  for  self  in 
acts  that  apparently  are  most  generous  and  "disinterested.”2 

Ambiguity  of  the  psychological  basis.  The  notion  that  all  action 
is  "for  the  self”  is  infected  with  the  same  ambiguity  as  the  (analo¬ 
gous)  doctrine  that  all  desire  is  for  happiness.  Like  that  doctrine,  in 
one  sense  it  is  a  truism,  in  another  a  falsity — this  latter  being  the 
sense  in  which  its  upholders  maintain  it.  Psychologically,  any  object 
that  moves  us,  any  object  in  which  we  imagine  our  impulses  to  rest 

1Machiavelli,  transferring  from  theology  to  statecraft  the  notion  of  the  cor¬ 
ruption  and  selfishness  of  all  men,  was  the  first  modern  to  preach  this  doctrine. 

2See,  for  example,  Hobbes,  Leviathan ;  Mandeville,  Fable  oj  the  Bees ;  and 
Rochefoucauld,  Maxims. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


43 


satisfied  or  to  find  fulfillment,  becomes,  in  virtue  of  that  fact,  a  factor 
in  the  self.  If  I  am  enough  interested  in  collecting  postage  stamps, 
a  collection  of  postage  stamps  becomes  a  part  of  my  "ego,”  which  is 
incomplete  and  restless  till  filled  out  in  that  way.  If  my  habits  are 
such  that  I  am  not  content  when  I  know  my  neighbor  is  suffering  from 
a  lack  of  food  until  I  have  relieved  him,  then  relief  of  his  suffering 
becomes  a  part  of  my  selfhood.  If  my  desires  are  such  that  I  have  no 
rest  of  mind  until  I  have  beaten  my  competitor  in  business,  or  have 
demonstrated  my  superiority  in  social  gifts  by  putting  my  fellow  at 
some  embarrassing  disadvantage,  then  that  sort  of  thing  constitutes 
my  self.  Our  instincts,  impulses,  and  habits  all  demand  appropriate 
objects  in  order  to  secure  exercise  and  expression ;  and  these  ends  in 
their  office  of  furnishing  outlet  and  satisfaction  to  our  powers  form  a 
cherished  part  of  the  "me.”  In  this  sense  it  is  true,  and  a  truism, 
that  all  action  involves  the  interest  of  self. 

True  and  false  interpretation.  But  this  doctrine  is  the  exact  op¬ 
posite  of  that  intended  by  those  who  claim  that  all  action  is  from 
self-love.  The  true  doctrine  says,  the  self  is  constituted  and  developed 
through  instincts  and  interests  which  are  directed  upon  their  own 
objects  with  no  conscious  regard  necessarily  for  anything  except  those 
objects  themselves.  The  false  doctrine  implies  that  the  self  exists  by 
itself  apart  from  these  objective  ends,  and  that  they  are  merely  means 
for  securing  it  a  certain  profit  or  pleasure. 

Suppose,  for  example,  it  is  a  case  of  being  so  disturbed  in  mind  by 
the  thought  of  another  in  pain  that  one  is  moved  to  do  something  to 
relieve  him.  This  means  that  certain  native  instincts  or  certain  ac¬ 
quired  habits  demand  relief  of  others  as  part  of  themselves.  The  well¬ 
being  of  the  other  is  an  interest  of  the  self :  is  a  part  of  the  self. 
This  is  precisely  what  is  meant  ordinarily  by  unselfishness :  not  lack 
or  absence  of  a  self,  but  such  a  self  as  identifies  itself  in  action  with 
others’  interests  and  hence  is  satisfied  only  when  they  are  satisfied. 
To  find  pain  in  the  thought  of  others  pained  and  to  take  pleasure  in 
the  thought  of  their  relief,  is  to  have  and  to  be  moved  by  personal 
motives,  by  states  which  are  "selfish”  in  the  sense  of  making  up  the 
self ;  but  which  are  the  exact  opposite  of  selfish  in  the  sense  of  being 
the  thought  of  some  private  advantage  to  self.1  Putting  it  roundly, 

Compare  also  the  following  from  Leslie  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics ,  p.  241. 
It  is  often  "insinuated  that  I  dislike  your  pain  because  it  is  painful  to  me  in  some 


44 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


then,  the  fallacy  of  the  selfish  motive  theory  is  that  it  fails  to  see  that 
instincts  and  habits  directed  upon  objects  are  primary,  and  that  they 
come  before  any  conscious  thought  of  self  as  end,  since  they  are  neces¬ 
sary  to  the  constitution  of  that  thought. 

The  following  quotation  from  James1  states  the  true  doctrine: 

When  I  am  led  by  selflove  to  keep  my  seat  whilst  ladies  stand,  or  to 
grab  something  first  and  cut  out  my  neighbor,  what  I  really  love  is  the 
comfortable  seat;  it  is  the  thing  itself  which  I  grab.  I  love  them  primarily, 
as  the  mother  loves  her  babe,  or  a  generous  man  an  heroic  deed.  Wher¬ 
ever,  as  here,  selfseeking  is  the  outcome  of  simple  instinctive  propensity,  it 
is  but  a  name  for  certain  reflex  acts.  Something  rivets  my  attention  fatally 
and  fatally  provokes  the  "selfish”  response.  ...  It  is  true  I  am  no  autom¬ 
aton,  but  a  thinker.  But  my  thoughts,  like  my  acts,  are  here  concerned 
only  with  the  outward  things.  ...  In  fact  the  more  utterly  selfish  I  am 
in  this  primitive  way,  the  more  blindly  absorbed  my  thought  will  be  in  the 
objects  and  impulses  of  my  lust  and  the  more  devoid  of  any  inward 
looking  glance. 

2.  Results  as  selfish:  ambiguity  in  the  notion.  JVe  must  then 
give  up  the  notion  that  motives  are  inherently  self-seeking,  in  the 
sense  that  there  is  in  voluntary  acts  a  thought  of  the  self  as  the  end 
for  the  sake  of  which  the  act  is  performed.  The  self-seeking  doctrine 
may,  however,  be  restated  in  these  terms:  Although  there  is  no 
thought  of  self  or  its  advantage  consciously  entertained,  yet  our 
original  instincts  are  such  that  their  objects  do  as  matter  of  result 
conduce  primarily  to  the  well-being  and  advantage  of  the  self.  In  this 
sense,  anger,  fear,  hunger,  and  thirst,  etc.,  are  said  to  be  egoistic  or 
self-seeking — not  that  their  conscious  object  is  the  self,  but  that  their 
inevitable  effect  is  to  preserve  and  protect  the  self.  The  fact  that  an 
instinct  secures  self-preservation  or  self-development  does  not,  how¬ 
ever,  make  it  "egoistic”  or  "selfish”  in  the  moral  sense;  nor  does  it 
throw  any  light  upon  the  moral  status  of  the  instinct.  Everything  de¬ 
pends  upon  the  sort  of  self  which  is  maintained.  There  is,  indeed, 

special  relation.  I  do  not  dislike  it  as  your  pain,  but  in  virtue  of  some  particular 
consequence,  such,  for  example,  as  its  making  you  less  able  to  render  me  a  service. 
In  that  case  I  do  not  really  object  to  your  pain  as  your  pain  at  all,  but  only  to 
some  removable  and  accidental  consequences.”  The  entire  discussion  of  sympathy 
(pp.  230-245),  which  is  admirable,  should  be  consulted. 

1  Psychology,  Vol.  I,  p.  320.  The  whole  discussion  (pp.  317-329)  is  very 
important. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


45 


some  presumption  (Dewey  and  Tufts,  p.  294)  that  the  act  sustains  a 
social  self,  that  is,  a  self  whose  maintenance  is  of  social  value.  If  the 
individual  organism  did  not  struggle  for  food ;  strive  aggressively 
against  obstacles  and  interferences;  evade  or  shelter  itself  against 
menacing  superior  force,  what  would  become  of  children,  fathers  and 
mothers,  lawyers,  doctors  and  clergymen,  citizens  and  patriots — in 
short,  of  society?  If  we  avoid  setting  up  a  purely  abstract  self,  if 
we  keep  in  mind  that  every  actual  self  is  a  self  which  includes  social 
relations  and  offices,  both  actual  and  potential,  we  shall  have  no  dif¬ 
ficulty  in  seeing  that  self-preservative  instincts  may  be,  and  taken  by 
and  large,  must  be,  socially  conservative.  Moreover,  while  it  is  not 
true  that  if  "a  man  does  not  look  after  his  own  interests  no  one  else 
will”1  (if  that  means  that  his  interests  are  no  one  else’s  affair  in  any 
way),  it  is  true  that  no  one  has  a  right  to  neglect  his  own  interests  in 
the  hope  that  some  one  else  will  care  for  them.  "His  own  interests,” 
properly  speaking,  are  precisely  the  ends  which  concern  him  more 
directly  than  they  concern  any  one  else.  Each  man  is,  so  to  say, 
nearer  himself  than  is  any  one  else,  and,  therefore,  has  certain  duties 
to  and  about  himself  which  cannot  be  performed  by  any  other  one. 
Others  may  present  food  or  the  conditions  of  education,  but  the  in¬ 
dividual  alone  can  digest  the  food  or  educate  himself.  It  is  profitable 
for  society,  not  merely  for  an  individual,  that  each  of  us  should  in¬ 
stinctively  have  his  powers  most  actively  and  intensely  called  out  by 
the  things  that  distinctively  affect  him  and  his  own  welfare.  Any 
other  arrangement  would  mean  waste  of  social  energy,  inefficiency  in 
securing  social  results. 

The  quotation  from  James  also  makes  it  clear,  however,  that  under 
certain  circumstances  the  mere  absorption  in  a  thing,  even  without 
conscious  thought  of  self,  is  morally  offensive.  The  "pig”  in  manners 
is  not  necessarily  thinking  of  himself ;  all  that  is  required  to  make  him 
a  pig  is  that  he  should  have  too  narrow  and  exclusive  an  object  of 
regard.  The  man  sees  simply  the  seat,  not  the  seat  and  the  lady. 
The  boor  in  manners  is  unconscious  of  many  of  the  objects  in  the 
situation  which  should  operate  as  stimuli.  One  impulse  or  habit  is 
operating  at  the  expense  of  others ;  the  self  in  play  is  too  petty  or 
narrow.  Viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  results,  the  fact  which  con¬ 
stitutes  selfishness  in  the  moral  sense  is  not  that  certain  impulses  and 
habits  secure  the  well-being  of  the  self,  but  that  the  well-being  secured 


46 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


is  a  narrow  and  exclusive  one.  The  forms  of  coarse  egoism  which 
offend  us  most  in  ordinary  life  are  not  usually  due  to  a  deliberate  or 
self-conscious  seeking  of  advantage  for  self,  but  to  such  preoccupation 
with  certain  ends  as  blinds  the  agent  to  the  thought  of  the  interests 
of  others.  Many  whose  behavior  seems  to  others  most  selfish  would 
deny  indignantly  (and,  from  the  standpoint  of  their  definite  conscious¬ 
ness,  honestly)  any  self-seeking  motives:  they  would  point  to  certain 
objective  results,  which  in  the  abstract  are  desirable,  as  the  true  ends 
of  their  activities.  But  none  the  less,  they  are  selfish,  because  the 
limitations  of  their  interests  make  them  overlook  the  consequences 
which  affect  the  freedom  and  happiness  of  others. 

3.  There  are  also  cases  in  which  the  thought  of  the  resulting  con¬ 
sequence  to  the  self  consciously  enters  in  and  modifies  the  motive  of 
the  act.  With  increasing  memory  and  foresight,  one  can  no  more 
ignore  the  lesson  of  the  past  as  to  the  consequences  of  an  act  upon 
himself  than  he  can  ignore  other  consequences.  A  man  who  has 
learned  that  a  certain  act  has  painful  consequences  to  himself,  whether 
to  his  body,  his  reputation,  his  comfort,  or  his  character,  is  quite  likely 
to  have  the  thought  of  himself  present  itself  as  part  of  the  foreseen 
consequences  when  the  question  of  a  similar  act  recurs.  In  and  of 
itself,  once  more,  this  fact  throws  no  light  upon  the  moral  status  of 
the  act.  Everything  depends  upon  what  sort  of  a  self  moves  and  how 
it  moves.  A  man  who  hesitated  to  rush  into  a  burning  building  to 
rescue  a  suit  of  clothes  because  he  thought  of  the  danger  to  himself, 
would  be  sensible;  a  man  who  rushed  out  of  the  building  just  because 
he  thought  of  saving  himself  when  there  were  others  he  might  have 
assisted,  would  be  contemptible. 

The  one  who  began  taking  exercise  because  he  thought  of  his  own 
health,  would  be  commended ;  but  a  man  who  thought  so  continually 
of  his  own  health  as  to  shut  out  other  objects,  would  become  an  object 
of  ridicule  or  worse.  There  is  a  moral  presumption  that  a  man  should 
make  consideration  of  himself  a  part  of  his  aim  and  intent.  A  certain 
care  of  health,  of  body,  of  property,  of  mental  faculty,  because  they  are 
one’s  own  is  not  only  permissible,  but  obligatory.  This  is  what  the  older 
moral  writers  spoke  of  as  "prudence,”  or  as  "reasonable  self-love.” 

a.  It  is  a  stock  argument  of  the  universal  selfishness  theory  to 
point  out  that  a  man’s  acknowledgment  of  some  public  need  or  benefit 
is  quite  likely  to  coincide  with  his  recognition  of  some  private  advan- 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


47 


tage.  A  statesman’s  recognition  of  some  measure  of  public  policy 
happens  to  coincide  with  perceiving  that  by  pressing  it  he  can  bring 
himself  into  prominence  or  gain  office.  A  man  is  more  likely  to  see 
the  need  of  improved  conditions  of  sanitation  or  transportation  in  a 
given  locality  if  he  has  property  there.  A  man’s  indignation  at  some 
prevalent  public  ill  may  sleep  till  he  has  had  a  private  taste  of  it.  We 
may  admit  that  these  instances  describe  a  usual,  though  not  universal, 
state  of  affairs.  But  does  it  follow  that  such  men  are  moved  merely  by 
the  thought  of  gain  to  themselves  ?  Possibly  this  sometimes  happens ; 
then  the  act  is  selfish  in  the  obnoxious  sense.  The  man  has  isolated 
his  thought  of  himself  as  an  end  and  made  the  thought  of  the  im¬ 
provement  or  reform  merely  an  external  means.  The  latter  is  not 
truly  his  end  at  all ;  he  has  not  identified  it  with  himself.  In  other 
cases,  while  the  individual  would  not  have  recognized  the  end  if  the 
thought  of  himself  had  not  been  implicated,  yet  after  he  has  recog¬ 
nized  it,  the  two — the  thought  of  himself  and  of  the  public  advan¬ 
tage — may  blend.  His  thought  of  himself  may  lend  warmth  and 
intimacy  to  an  object  which  otherwise  would  have  been  cold,  while, 
at  the  same  time,  the  self  is  broadened  and  deepened  by  taking  in  the 
new  object  of  regard. 

b.  Take  the  case  of  amusement  or  recreation.  To  an  adult  usu¬ 
ally  engaged  in  strenuous  pursuits,  the  thought  of  a  pleasure  for  the 
mere  sake  of  pleasure,  of  enjoyment,  of  having  a  "good  time,”  may 
appeal  as  an  end.  And  if  the  pleasure  is  itself  "innocent,”  only  the 
requirements  of  a  preconceived  theory  (like  the  Kantian)  would  ques¬ 
tion  its  legitimacy.  Even  its  moral  necessity  is  clear  when  relaxation 
is  conducive  to  cheerfulness  and  efficiency  in  more  serious  pursuits. 
But  if  a  man  discriminates  mentally  between  himself  and  the  play  or 
exercise  in  which  he  finds  enjoyment  and  relief,  thinking  of  himself  as 
a  distinct  end  to  which  the  latter  is  merely  means,  he  is  not  likely  to 
get  the  recreation.  It  is  by  forgetting  the  self,  that  is  by  taking  the 
light  and  easy  activity  as  the  self  of  the  situation,  that  the  benefit 
comes.  To  be  a  "lover  of  pleasure”  in  the  bad  sense  is  precisely  to 
seek  amusements  as  excitements  for  a  self  which  somehow  remains 
outside  them  as  their  fixed  and  ulterior  end. 

c.  Exactly  the  same  analysis  applies  to  the  idea  of  the  moral  culture 
of  the  self,  of  its  moral  perfecting.  Every  serious-minded  person  has, 
from  time  to  time,  to  take  stock  of  his  status  and  progress  in  moral 


48 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


matters — to  take  thought  of  the  moral  self  just  as  at  other  times  he 
takes  thought  of  the  health  of  the  bodily  self.  But  woe  betides  that 
man  who,  having  entered  upon  a  course  of  reflection  which  leads  to  a 
clearer  conception  of  his  own  moral  capacities  and  weaknesses,  main¬ 
tains  that  thought  as  a  distinct  mental  end,  and  thereby  makes  his 
subsequent  acts  simply  means  to  improving  or  perfecting  his  moral 
nature.  Such  a  course  defeats  itself.  At  the  least,  it  leads  to  prig¬ 
gishness,  and  its  tendency  is  towards  one  of  the  worst  forms  of  selfish¬ 
ness:  a  habit  of  thinking  and  feeling  that  persons,  that  concrete 
situations  and  relations,  exist  simply  to  render  contributions  to  one’s 
own  precious  moral  character.  The  worst  of  such  selfishness  is  that 
having  protected  itself  with  the  mantle  of  interest  in  moral  goodness, 
it  is  proof  against  that  attrition  of  experience  which  may  always  recall 
a  man  to  himself  in  the  case  of  grosser  and  more  unconscious  absorp¬ 
tion.  A  sentimentally  refined  egoism  is  always  more  hopeless  than  a 
brutal  and  naive  one — though  a  brutal  one  not  infrequently  protects 
itself  by  adoption  and  proclamation  of  the  language  of  the  former. 

II.  Benevolence  or  Regard  for  Others 

Ambiguity  in  conception.  There  is  the  same  ambiguity  in  the  idea 
of  sympathetic  or  altruistic  springs  to  action  that  there  is  in  that  of 
egoistic  and  self-regarding.  Does  the  phrase  refer  to  their  conscious 
and  express  intent  ?  or  to  their  objective  results  when  put  into  opera¬ 
tion,  irrespective  of  explicit  desire  and  aim?  And,  if  the  latter,  are 
we  to  believe  contribution  to  the  welfare  of  others  to  be  the  sole  and 
exclusive  character  of  some  springs  of  action,  or  simply  that,  under 
certain  circumstances,  the  emphasis  falls  more  upon  the  good  result¬ 
ing  to  others  than  upon  other  consequences?  The  discussion  will 
show  that  the  same  general  principles  hold  for  "benevolent”  as  for 
self-regarding  impulses:  namely  (i)  that  there  are  none  which  from 
the  start  are  consciously  such ;  (2)  that  while  reflection  may  bring  to 
light  their  bearing  upon  the  welfare  of  others  so  that  it  becomes  an 
element  in  the  conscious  desire,  this  is  a  matter  of  relative  preponder¬ 
ance,  not  of  absolute  nature;  and  (3)  that  just  as  conscious  regard 
for  self  is  not  necessarily  bad  or  "selfish,”  so  conscious  regard  for 
others  is  not  necessarily  good :  the  criterion  is  the  whole  situation  in 
which  the  desire  takes  effect. 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


49 


1.  The  existence  oj  other-regarding  springs  to  action.  Only  the 
preconceptions  of  hedonistic  psychology  would  ever  lead  one  to  deny 
the  existence  of  reactions  and  impulses  called  out  by  the  sight  of 
others’  misery  and  joy  and  which  tend  to  increase  the  latter  and  to 
relieve  the  former.  Recent  psychologists  (writing,  of  course,  quite 
independently  of  ethical  controversies)  offer  lists  of  native  instinctive 
tendencies  such  as  the  following :  Anger,  jealousy,  rivalry,  secretive¬ 
ness,  acquisitiveness,  fear,  shyness,  sympathy,  affection,  pity,  sexual 
love,  curiosity,  imitation,  play,  constructiveness.1  In  this  inventory, 
the  first  seven  may  be  said  to  be  aroused  specially  by  situations  having 
to  do  with  the  preservation  of  the  self ;  the  next  four  are  responses  to 
stimuli  proceeding  especially  from  others  and  tending  to  consequences 
favorable  to  them,  while  the  last  four  are  mainly  impersonal.  But 
the  division  into  self-regarding  and  other-regarding  is  not  exclusive 
and  absolute.  Anger  may  be  wholly  other-regarding,  as  in  the  case  of 
hearty  indignation  at  wrongs  suffered  by  others ;  rivalry  may  be  gen¬ 
erous  emulation  or  be  directed  toward  surpassing  one’s  own  past 
record.  Love  between  the  sexes,  which  should  be  the  source  of  steady, 
far-reaching  interest  in  others,  and  which  at  times  expresses  itself  in 
supreme  abnegation  of  devotion,  easily  becomes  the  cause  of  brutal 
and  persistent  egoism.  In  short,  the  division  into  egoistic  and  altruis¬ 
tic  holds  only  "other  things  being  equal.” 

Confining  ourselves  for  the  moment  to  the  native  psychological 
equipment,  we  may  say  that  man  is  endowed  with  instinctive  prompt¬ 
ings  which  naturally  (that  is,  without  the  intervention  of  deliberation 
or  calculation)  tend  to  preserve  the  self  (by  aggressive  attack  as  in 
anger,  or  in  protective  retreat  as  in  fear)  ;  and  to  develop  his  powers 
(as  in  acquisitiveness,  constructiveness,  and  play)  ;  and  which  equally, 
without  consideration  of  resulting  ulterior  benefit  either  to  self  or  to 
others,  tend  to  bind  the  self  closer  to  others  and  to  advance  the 
interests  of  others — as  pity,  affectionateness,  or  again,  constructive¬ 
ness  and  play.  Any  given  individual  is  naturally  an  erratic  mixture 
of  fierce  insistence  upon  his  own  welfare  and  of  profound  susceptibility 
to  the  happiness  of  others — different  individuals  varying  much  in  the 
respective  intensities  and  proportions  of  the  two  tendencies. 

2.  The  moral  status  oj  altruistic  tendencies.  We  have  expressly 
devoted  considerable  space  to  showing  that  there  are  no  motives 

1See,  for  example,  James,  Principles  oj  Psychology ,  Vol.  II,  chap.  xxiv. 


50 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


which  in  and  of  themselves  are  right;  that  any  tendency,  whether 
original  instinct  or  acquired  habit,  requires  sanction  from  the  special 
consequences  which,  in  the  special  situation,  are  likely  to  flow  from 
it.  The  mere  fact  that  pity  in  general  tends  to  conserve  the  welfare 
of  others  does  not  guarantee  the  rightness  of  giving  way  to  an  impulse 
of  pity,  just  as  it  happens  to  spring  up.  This  might  mean  sentimen¬ 
talism  for  the  agent,  and  weakening  of  the  springs  of  patience,  cour¬ 
age,  self-help,  and  self-respect  in  others.  The  persistence  with  which 
the  doctrine  of  the  evils  of  indiscriminate  charity  has  to  be  taught  is 
sufficient  evidence  that  the  so-called  other-regarding  impulses  require 
the  same  control  by  reason  as  do  the  " egoistic”  ones.  They  have  no 
inherent  sacredness  which  exempts  them  from  the  application  of  the 
standard  of  the  common  and  reasonable  happiness. 

Evils  of  unregulated  altruism.  So  much  follows  from  the  general 
principles  already  discussed.  But  there  are  special  dangers  and  evils 
attendant  upon  an  exaggeration  of  the  altruistic  idea,  (i)  It  tends  to 
render  others  dependent,  and  thus  contradicts  its  own  professed  aim : 
the  helping  of  others.  Almost  every  one  knows  some  child  who  is  so 
continuously  "helped”  by  others,  that  he  loses  his  initiative  and 
resourcefulness.  Many  an  invalid  is  confirmed  in  a  state  of  helpless¬ 
ness  by  the  devoted  attention  of  others.  In  large  social  matters  there 
is  always  danger  of  the  substitution  of  an  ideal  of  conscious  "be¬ 
nevolence”  for  justice :  it  is  in  aristocratic  and  feudal  periods  that  the 
idea  flourishes  that  "charity”  (conceived  as  conferring  benefits  upon 
others,  doing  things  for  them)  is  inherently  and  absolutely  a  good. 
The  idea  assumes  the  continued  and  necessary  existence  of  a  depend¬ 
ent  "lower”  class  to  be  the  recipients  of  the  kindness  of  their  supe¬ 
riors  ;  a  class  which  serves  as  passive  material  for  the  cultivation  in 
others  of  the  virtue  of  charity,  the  higher  class  "acquiring  merit”  at 
expense  of  the  lower,  while  the  lower  has  gratitude  and  respect  for 
authority  as  its  chief  virtues. 

(2)  The  erection  of  the  "benevolent”  impulse  into  a  virtue  in  and 
of  itself  tends  to  build  up  egoism  in  others.  The  child  who  finds  him¬ 
self  unremittingly  the  object  of  attention  from  others  is  likely  to  de¬ 
velop  an  exaggerated  sense  of  the  relative  importance  of  his  own  ego. 
The  chronic  invalid,  conspicuously  the  recipient  of  the  conscious 
altruism  of  others,  is  happy  in  nature  who  avoids  the  slow  growth  of 
an  insidious  egoism.  Men  who  are  the  constant  subjects  of  abnegation 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


5i 

on  the  part  of  their  wives  and  female  relatives  rarely  fail  to  develop 
a  self-absorbed  complacency  and  unconscious  conceit. 

(3)  Undue  emphasis  upon  altruism  as  a  motive  is  quite  likely  to 
react  to  form  a  peculiarly  subtle  egoism  in  the  person  who  cultivates 
it.  Others  cease  to  be  natural  objects  of  interest  and  regard,  and  are 
converted  into  excuses  for  the  manifestation  and  nurture  of  one’s 
own  generous  goodness.  Underlying  complacency  with  respect  to 
social  ills  grows  up  because  they  afford  an  opportunity  for  developing 
and  displaying  this  finest  of  virtues.  In  our  interest  in  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  our  own  benign  altruism  we  cease  to  be  properly  disturbed 
by  conditions  which  are  intrinsically  unjust  and  hateful.1  (4)  As  pres¬ 
ent  circumstances  amply  demonstrate,  there  is  the  danger  that  the 
erection  of  benevolence  into  a  conscious  principle  in  some  things  will 
serve  to  supply  rich  persons  with  a  cloak  for  selfishness  in  other 
directions.  Philanthropy  is  made  an  offset  and  compensation  for 
brutal  exploitation.  A  man  who  pushes  to  the  breaking-point  of 
legality  aggressively  selfish  efforts  to  get  ahead  of  others  in  business, 
squares  it  in  his  own  self-respect  and  in  the  esteem  of  those  classes  of 
the  community  who  entertain  like  conceptions,  by  gifts  of  hospitals, 
colleges,  missions,  and  libraries. 

Genuine  and  false  altruism.  These  considerations  may  be  met  by 
the  obvious  retort  that  it  is  not  true  altruism,  genuine  benevolence, 
sincere  charity,  which  we  are  concerned  with  in  such  cases.  This  is  a 
true  remark.  We  are  not  of  course  criticizing  true  but  spurious  in¬ 
terest  in  others.  But  why  is  it  counterfeit?  What  is  the  nature  of 
the  genuine  article  ?  The  danger  is  not  in  benevolence  or  altruism,  but 
in  that  conception  of  them  which  makes  them  equivalent  to  regard 
for  others  as  others,  irrespective  of  a  social  situation  to  which  all  alike 
belong.  There  is  nothing  in  the  selfhood  of  others,  because  they  are 
others,  which  gives  it  any  supremacy  over  selfhood  in  oneself.  Just 
as  it  is  exclusiveness  of  objective  ends,  the  ignoring  of  relations,  which 
is  objectionable  in  selfishness,  so  it  is  taking  the  part  for  the  whole 
which  is  obnoxious  in  so-called  altruism.  To  include  in  our  view  of 
consequences  the  needs  and  possibilities  of  others  on  the  same  basis 

1  Measures  of  public  or  state  activity  in  the  extension,  for  example,  of  educa¬ 
tion  (furnishing  free  text-books,  adequate  medical  inspection,  and  remedy  of  de¬ 
fects),  are  opposed  by  "good  people”  because  there  are  "charitable”  agencies  for 
doing  these  things. 


52 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


as  our  own,  is  to  take  the  only  course  which  will  give  an  adequate  view 
of  the  situation.  There  is  no  situation  into  which  these  factors  do 
not  enter.  To  have  a  generous  view  of  others  is  to  have  a  larger  world 
in  which  to  act.  To  remember  that  they,  like  ourselves,  are  persons, 
are  individuals  who  are  centers  of  joy  and  suffering,  of  lack  and  of 
potentiality,  is  alone  to  have  a  just  view  of  the  conditions  and  issues 
of  behavior.  Quickened  sympathy  means  liberality  of  intelligence 
and  enlightened  understanding. 

The  social  sense  versus  altruism.  There  is  a  great  difference  in 
principle  between  modern  philanthropy  and  the  " charity”  which 
assumes  a  superior  and  an  inferior  class.  The  latter  principle  tries  to 
acquire  merit  by  employing  one’s  superior  resources  to  lessen,  or  to 
mitigate,  the  misery  of  those  who  are  fixed  in  a  dependent  status.  Its 
principle,  so  far  as  others  are  concerned,  is  negative  and  palliative 
merely.  The  motive  of  what  is  vital  in  modern  philanthropy  is  con¬ 
structive  and  expansive  because  it  looks  to  the  well-being  of  society  as 
a  whole,  not  to  soothing  or  rendering  more  tolerable  the  conditions  of  a 
class.  It  realizes  the  interdependence  of  interests:  that  complex  and 
variegated  interaction  of  conditions  which  makes  it  impossible  for  any 
one  individual  or  "class”  really  to  secure,  to  assure,  its  own  good  as  a 
separate  thing.  Its  aim  is  general  social  advance,  constructive  social 
reform,  not  merely  doing  something  kind  for  individuals  who  are 
rendered  helpless  from  sickness  or  poverty.  Its  aim  is  the  equity  of 
justice,  not  the  inequality  of  conferring  benefits.  That  the  sight  of 
the  misery  that  comes  from  sickness,  from  insanity,  from  defective 
organic  structure  (as  among  the  blind  and  deaf),  from  poverty  that 
destroys  hope  and  dulls  initiative,  from  bad  nutrition,  should  stimu¬ 
late  this  general  quickening  of  the  social  sense  is  natural.  But  just 
as  the  activities  of  the  parent  with  reference  to  the  welfare  of  a  help¬ 
less  infant  are  wisely  directed  in  the  degree  in  which  attention  is 
mainly  fixed  not  upon  weakness,  but  upon  positive  opportunities  for 
growth,  so  the  efforts  of  those  whose  activities,  by  the  nature  of  cir¬ 
cumstances,  have  to  be  especially  remedial  and  palliative  are  most 
effective  when  centered  on  the  social  rights  and  possibilities  of  the 
unfortunate  individuals,  instead  of  treating  them  as  separate  in¬ 
dividuals  to  whom,  in  their  separateness,  "good  is  to  be  done.” 

The  best  kind  of  help  to  others,  whenever  possible,  is  indirect,  and 
consists  in  such  modifications  of  the  conditions  of  life,  of  the  general 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


53 


level  of  subsistence,  as  enables  them  independently  to  help  them¬ 
selves.1  Whenever  conditions  require  purely  direct  and  personal  aid, 
it  is  best  given  when  it  proceeds  from  a  natural  social  relationship, 
and  not  from  a  motive  of  "benevolence”  as  a  separate  force.2  The 
gift  that  pauperizes  when  proceeding  from  a  philanthropist  in  his 
special  capacity,  is  a  beneficent  acknowledgment  of  the  relationships 
of  the  case  when  it  comes  from  a  neighbor  or  from  one  who  has  other 
interests  in  common  with  the  one  assisted. 

The  private  and  the  social  self.  The  contrast  between  the  narrow 
or  restrictive  and  the  general  or  expansive  good  explains  why  evil 
presents  itself  as  a  selfish  end  in  contrast  with  an  authoritative,  but 
faint,  good  of  others.  This  is  not,  as  we  have  seen,  because  regard 
for  the  good  of  self  is  inherently  bad  and  regard  for  that  of  others 
intrinsically  right ;  but  because  we  are  apt  to  identify  the  self  with  the 
habitual,  with  that  to  which  we  are  best  adjusted  and  which  represents 
the  customary  occupation.  Any  moral  crisis  is  thus  fairly  pictured 
as  a  struggle  to  overcome  selfishness.  The  tendency  under  such  cir¬ 
cumstances  is  to  contract,  to  secrete,  to  hang  on  to  what  is  already 
achieved  and  possessed.  The  habitual  self  needs  to  go  out  of  the 
narrowness  of  its  accustomed  grooves  into  the  spacious  air  of  more 
generous  behavior. 

7.  The  Good  as  Self-Realization3 

We  now  come  to  the  theory  which  attempts  to  do  justice  to  the 
one-sided  truths  we  have  been  engaged  with,  viz.,  the  idea  that  the 
moral  end  is  self-realization.  Like  self-assertion  in  some  respects,  it 
differs  in  conceiving  the  self  to  be  realized  as  universal  and  ultimate, 
involving  the  fulfillment  of  all  capacities  and  the  observance  of  all 
relations.  Such  a  comprehensive  self-realization  includes  also,  it  is 
urged,  the  truth  of  altruism,  since  the  "universal  self”  is  realized  only 
when  the  relations  that  bind  one  to  others  are  fulfilled.  It  avoids 
also  the  inconsistencies  and  defects  of  the  notion  of  self-sacrifice  for 
its  own  sake,  while  emphasizing  that  the  present  incomplete  self  must 
be  denied  for  the  sake  of  attainment  of  a  more  complete  and  final  self. 

1  Compare  Spencer’s  criticisms  of  Bentham’s  view  of  happiness  as  a  social 
standard  in  contrast  with  his  own  ideal  of  freedom.  See  Ethics ,  Vol.  I,  pp.  162- 
168.  2  See  Addams,  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics ,  chap.  ii. 

3 Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics ,  pp.  391-397. 


54 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


A  discussion  of  this  theory  accordingly  furnishes  the  means  of  gather¬ 
ing  together  and  summarizing  various  points  regarding  the  role  of  the 
self  in  the  moral  life. 

Ambiguity  in  the  conception.  Is  self-realization  the  end?  As  we 
have  had  such  frequent  occasion  to  observe,  "end”  means  either 
the  consequences  actually  effected,  the  closing  and  completing  phase 
of  an  act,  or  the  aim  held  deliberately  in  view.  Now  realization  of 
self  is  an  end  (though  not  the  only  end)  in  the  former  sense.  Every 
moral  act  in  its  outcome  marks  a  development  or  fulfillment  of  self¬ 
hood.  But  the  very  nature  of  right  action  forbids  that  the  self  should 
be  the  end  in  the  sense  of  being  the  conscious  aim  of  moral  activity. 
For  there  is  no  way  of  discovering  the  nature  of  the  self  except  in 
terms  of  objective  ends  which  fulfill  its  capacities,  and  there  is  no 
way  of  realizing  the  self  except  as  it  is  forgotten  in  devotion  to  these 
objective  ends. 

i.  Self -realization  as  consequence  of  moral  action.  Every  good 
act  realizes  the  selfhood  of  the  agent  who  performs  it ;  every  bad  act 
tends  to  the  lowering  or  destruction  of  selfhood.  This  truth  is  ex¬ 
pressed  in  Kant’s  maxim  that  every  personality  should  be  regarded 
as  always  an  end,  never  as  a  means,  with  its  implication  that  a  wrong 
intent  always  reduces  selfhood  to  the  status  of  a  mere  tool  or  device 
for  securing  some  end  beyond  itself — the  self-indulgent  man  treating 
his  personal  powers  as  mere  means  to  securing  ease,  comfort,  or 
pleasure.  It  is  expressed  by  ordinary  moral  judgment  in  its  view  that 
all  immoral  action  is  a  sort  of  prostitution,  a  lowering  of  the  dignity 
of  the  self  to  base  ends.  The  destructive  tendency  of  evil  deeds  is 
witnessed  also  by  our  common  language  in  its  conception  of  wrong  as 
dissipation,  dissoluteness,  duplicity.  The  bad  character  is  one  which 
is  shaky,  empty,  "naughty,”  unstable,  gone  to  pieces,  just  as  the  good 
man  is  straight,  solid,  four-square,  sound,  substantial.  This  convic¬ 
tion  that  at  bottom  and  in  the  end,  in  spite  of  all  temporary  appear¬ 
ance  to  the  contrary,  the  right  act  effects  a  realization  of  the  self,  is 
also  evidenced  in  the  common  belief  that  virtue  brings  its  own  bliss. 
No  matter  how  much  suffering  from  physical  loss  or  from  material 
and  mental  inconvenience  or  loss  of  social  repute  virtue  may  bring 
with  it,  the  quality  of  happiness  that  accompanies  devotion  to  the 
right  end  is  so  unique,  so  invaluable,  that  pains  and  discomforts  do 
not  weigh  in  the  balance.  It  is  indeed  possible  to  state  this  truth  in 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


55 


such  an  exaggerated  perspective  that  it  becomes  false;  but  taken 
just  for  what  it  is,  it  acknowledges  that  whatever  harm  or  loss  a  right 
act  may  bring  to  the  self  in  some  of  its  aspects, — even  extending  to 
destruction  of  the  bodily  self, — the  inmost  moral  self  finds  fulfillment 
and  consequent  happiness  in  the  good. 

2.  S el j -realization  as  aim  of  moral  action.  This  realization  of  self¬ 
hood  in  the  right  course  of  action  is,  however,  not  the  end  of  a  moral 
act — that  is,  it  is  not  the  only  end.  The  moral  act  is  one  which 
sustains  a  whole  complex  system  of  social  values;  one  which  keeps 
vital  and  progressive  the  industrial  order,  science,  art,  and  the  State. 
The  patriot  who  dies  for  his  country  may  find  in  that  devotion  his 
own  supreme  realization,  but  none  the  less  the  aim  of  his  act  is  pre¬ 
cisely  that  for  which  he  performs  it :  the  conservation  of  his  nation. 
He  dies  for  his  country,  not  for  himself.  He  is  what  he  would  be  in 
dying  for  his  country,  not  in  dying  for  himself.  To  say  that  his 
conscious  aim  is  self-realization  is  to  put  the  cart  before  the  horse. 
That  his  willingness  to  die  for  his  country  proves  that  his  country’s 
good  is  taken  by  him  to  constitute  himself  and  his  own  good  is  true ; 
but  his  aim  is  his  country’s  good  as  constituting  his  self-realization, 
not  the  self-realization.  It  is  impossible  that  genuine  artistic  creation 
or  execution  should  not  be  accompanied  with  the  joy  of  an  expanding 
selfhood,  but  the  artist  who  thinks  of  himself  and  allows  a  view  of 
himself  to  intervene  between  his  performance  and  its  result,  has  the 
embarrassment  and  awkwardness  of  "self-consciousness,”  which  af¬ 
fects  for  the  worse  his  artistic  product.  'And  it  makes  little  difference 
whether  it  is  the  thought  of  himself  as  materially  profiting,  or  as 
famous,  or  as  technical  performer,  or  as  benefiting  the  public,  or  as 
securing  his  own  complete  artistic  culture,  that  comes  in  between.  In 
any  case,  there  is  loss  to  the  work,  and  loss  in  the  very  thing  taken 
as  end,  namely,  development  of  his  own  powers.  The  problem  of 
morality,  upon  the  intellectual  side,  is  the  discovery  of,  the  finding  of, 
the  self,  in  the  objective  end  to  be  striven  for;  and  then  upon  the 
overt  practical  side,  it  is  the  losing  of  the  self  in  the  endeavor  for  the 
objective  realization.  This  is  the  lasting  truth  in  the  conception  of 
self-abnegation,  self-forgetfulness,  disinterested  interest. 

The  thought  of  self-realization.  Since,  however,  the  realization  of 
selfhood,  the  strengthening  and  perfecting  of  capacity,  is  as  matter 
of  fact  one  phase  of  the  objective  end,  it  may,  at  times,  be  definitely 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


56 

present  in  thought  as  part  of  the  foreseen  consequences;  and  even, 
at  times,  may  be  the  most  prominent  feature  of  the  conceived  results. 
The  artist,  for  example  a  musician  or  painter,  may  practice  for  the 
sake  of  acquiring  skill,  that  is,  of  developing  capacity.  In  this  case, 
the  usual  relationship  of  objective  work  and  personal  power  is  re¬ 
versed  ;  the  product  or  performance  being  subordinated  to  the  per¬ 
fecting  of  power,  instead  of  power  being  realized  in  the  use  it  is  put  to. 
Rut  the  development  of  power  is  not  conceived  as  a  final  end,  but  as 
desirable  because  of  an  eventual  more  liberal  and  effective  use.  .It  is 
matter  of  temporary  emphasis.  Something  of  like  nature  occurs  in 
the  moral  life — not  that  one  definitely  rehearses  or  practices  moral 
deeds  for  the  sake  of  acquiring  more  skill  and  power.  At  times  the 
effect  upon  the  self  of  a  deed  becomes  the  conspicuously  controlling 
element  in  the  forecast  of  consequence^  (Dewey  and  Tufts,  p.  382). 
For  example,  a  person  may  realize  that  a  certain  act  is  trivial  in  its 
effects  upon  others  and  in  the  changes  it  impresses  upon  the  world ; 
and  yet  he  may  hesitate  to  perform  it  because  he  realizes  it  would  in¬ 
tensify  some  tendency  of  his  own  in  such  a  way  as,  in  the  delicate 
economy  of  character,  to  disturb  the  proper  balance  of  the  springs  to 
action.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  agent  may  apprehend  that  some 
consequences  that  are  legitimate  and  important  in  themselves  involve, 
in  their  attainment,  an  improper  sacrifice  of  personal  capacity.  In 
such  cases,  the  consideration  of  the  effect  upon  self-realization  is  not 
only  permissible,  but  imperative  as  a  part  or  phase  of  the  total  end. 

The  problem  of  equating  personal  and  general  happiness.  Much 
moral  speculation  has  been  devoted  to  the  problem  of  equating  per¬ 
sonal  happiness  and  regard  for  the  general  good.  Right  moral  action, 
it  is  assumed,  consists  especially  of  justice  and  benevolence, — atti¬ 
tudes  which  aim  at  the  good  of  others.  But,  it  is  also  assumed,  a  just 
and  righteous  order  of  the  universe  requires  that  the  man  who  seeks 
the  happiness  of  others  should  also  himself  be  a  happy  man.  Much 
ingenuity  has  been  directed  to  explaining  away  and  accounting  for 
the  seeming  discrepancies :  the  cases  where  men  not  conspicuous  for 
regard  for  others  or  for  maintaining  a  serious  and  noble  view  of  life 
seem  to  maintain  a  banking-credit  on  the  side  of  happiness;  while 
men  devoted  to  others,  men  conspicuous  for  range  of  sympathetic 
affections,  seem  to  have  a  debit  balance.  The  problem  is  the  more 
serious  because  the  respective  good  and  ill  fortunes  do  not  seem  to  be 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


57 


entirely  accidental  and  external,  but  to  come  as  results  from  the  moral 
factors  in  behavior.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  build  up  an  argu¬ 
ment  to  show  that  while  extreme  viciousness  or  isolated  egoism  is 
unfavorable  to  happiness,  so  also  are  keenness  and  breadth  of  affec¬ 
tions.  The  argument  would  claim  that  the  most  comfortable  course 
of  life  is  one  in  which  the  man  cultivates  enough  intimacies  with 
enough  persons  to  secure  for  himself  their  support  and  aid,  but  avoids 
engaging  his  sympathies  too  closely  in  their  affairs  and  entangling 
himself  in  any  associations  which  would  require  self-sacrifice  or 
exposure  to  the  sufferings  of  others:  a  course  of  life  in  which  the 
individual  shuns  those  excesses  of  vice  which  injure  health,  wealth, 
and  lessen  the  decent  esteem  of  others,  but  also  shuns  enterprises  of 
precarious  virtue  and  devotion  to  high  and  difficult  ends. 

Real  and  artificial  aspects  of  the  problem.  The  problem  thus  put 
seems  insoluble,  or  soluble  only  upon  the  supposition  of  some  pro¬ 
longation  of  life  under  conditions  very  different  from  those  of  the 
present,  in  which  the  present  lack  of  balance  between  happiness  and 
goodness  will  be  redressed.  But  the  problem  is  insoluble  because  it 
is  artificial.1  It  assumes  a  ready-made  self  and  hence  a  ready-made 
type  of  satisfaction  of  happiness.  It  is  not  the  business  of  moral 
theory  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  mathematical  equations,  in  this 
life  or  another  one,  between  goodness  and  virtue.  It  is  the  business 
of  men  to  develop  such  capacities  and  desires,  such  selves  as  render 
them  capable  of  finding  their  own  satisfaction,  their  invaluable  value, 
in  fulfilling  the  demands  which  grow  out  of  their  associated  life.  Such 
happiness  may  be  short  in  duration  and  slight  in  bulk:  but  that  it 
outweighs  in  quality  all  accompanying  discomforts  as  well  as  all 
enjoyments  which  might  have  been  missed  by  not  doing  something 

1  Compare  the  following  extreme  words  of  Sumner  ( Folkways ,  p.  9):  "The 
great  question  of  world  philosophy  always  has  been,  what  is  the  real  relation 
between  happiness  and  goodness?  It  is  only  within  a  few  generations  that  men 
have  found  courage  to  say  there  is  none.”  But  when  Sumner,  in  the  next  sentence, 
says, "  The  whole  strength  of  the  notion  that  they  are  correlated  is  in  the  opposite 
experience  which  proves  that  no  evil  thing  brings  happiness,”  one  may  well  ask 
what  more  relation  any  reasonable  man  would  want.  For  it  indicates  that  "good¬ 
ness”  consists  in  active  interest  in  those  things  which  really  bring  happiness;  and 
while  it  by  no  means  follows  that  this  interest  will  bring  even  a  preponderance  of 
pleasure  over  pain  to  the  person,  it  is  always  open  to  him  to  find  and  take  his 
dominant  happiness  in  making  this  interest  dominant  in  his  life. 


58 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


else,  is  attested  by  the  simple  fact  that  men  do  consciously  choose  it. 
Such  a  person  has  found  himself,  and  has  solved  the  problem  in  the 
only  place  and  in  the  only  way  in  which  it  can  be  solved :  in  action. 
To  demand  in  advance  of  voluntary  desire  and  deliberate  choice  that 
it  be  demonstrated  that  an  individual  shall  get  happiness  in  the  meas¬ 
ure  of  the  rightness  of  his  act,  is  to  demand  the  obliteration  of  the 
essential  factor  in  morality:  the  constant  discovery,. formation,  and 
reformation  of  the  self  in  the  ends  which  an  individual  is  called  upon 
to  sustain  and  develop  in  virtue  of  his  membership  in  a  social  whole. 
The  solution  of  the  problem  through  the  individual’s  voluntary  iden¬ 
tification  of  himself  with  social  relations  and  aims  is  neither  rare  nor 
utopian.  It  is  achieved  not  only  by  conspicuous  social  figures,  but  by 
multitudes  of  "obscure’7  figures  who  are  faithful  to  the  callings  of 
their  social  relationships  and  offices.  That  the  conditions  of  life  for 
all  should  be  enlarged,  that  wider  opportunities  and  richer  fields  of 
activity  should  be  opened,  in  order  that  happiness  may  be  of  a 
more  noble  and  variegated  sort,  that  those  inequalities  of  status  which 
lead  men  to  find  their  advantage  in  disregard  of  others  should  be 
destroyed — these  things  are  indeed  necessary.  But  under  the  most 
ideal  conditions  which  can  be  imagined,  if  there  remain  any  moral 
element  whatsoever,  it  will  be  only  through  personal  deliberation  and 
personal  preference  as  to  objective  and  social  ends  that  the  individual 
will  discover  and  constitute  himself,  and  hence  discover  the  sort  of 
happiness  required  as  his  good. 

Our  final  word  about  the  place  of  the  self  in  the  moral  life  is,  then, 
that  the  problem  of  morality  is  the  formation,  out  of  the  body  of 
original  instinctive  impulses  which  compose  the  natural  self,  of  a 
voluntary  self  in  which  socialized  desires  and  affections  are  dominant, 
and  in  which  the  last  and  controlling  principle  of  deliberation  is  the 
love  of  the  objects  which  will  make  this  transformation  possible.  If 
we  identify,  as  we  must  do,  the  interests  of  such  a  character  with  the 
virtues,  we  may  say  with  Spinoza  that  happiness  is  not  the  reward  of 
virtue,  but  is  virtue  itself. 


CHAPTER  III 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 
8.  Justice  and  Benevolence1 

i.  The  relation  of  the  social  to  the  individual  life.  Man  has 
social  or  other-regarding,  as  well  as  individual  or  self-regarding,  im¬ 
pulses  and  instincts.  By  nature,  and  even  in  his  unmoralised  condi¬ 
tion,  he  is  a  social  being.  But  this  sympathetic  or  altruistic  nature 
must,  equally  with  the  selfish  and  egoistic,  be  formed  and  moulded 
into  the  virtuous  character ;  the  primary  feeling  for  others,  like  the 
primary  feeling  for  self,  is  only  the  raw  material  of  the  moral  life. 
And  the  law  of  the  process  of  moralisation  is  the  same  in  both  cases ; 
the  dutiful  attitude  towards  others  is  essentially  the  same  as  the 
dutiful  attitude  towards  ourselves.  For  in  others,  as  in  ourselves,  we 
are  called  upon  to  recognise  the  attribute  of  personality.  They,  too, 
are  ends  in  themselves;  their  life,  like  our  own,  is  one  of  self- 
realisation,  of  self-development  through  self-discipline.  We  must 
treat  them,  therefore,  as  we  treat  ourselves,  as  persons.  The  law  of 
the  individual  life  is  also  the  law  of  the  social  life,  though  in  a  different 
and  a  wider  application.  Virtue  is  fundamentally  and  always  per¬ 
sonal  ;  and  when  we  have  discovered  the  law  of  the  individual  life, 
we  have  already  discovered  that  of  the  social  life.  Since  men  are  not 
mere  individuals,  but  the  bearers  of  a  common  personality,  the 
development  in  the  individual  of  his  true  selfhood  means  his  emanci¬ 
pation  from  the  limitations  of  individuality,  and  the  path  to  self- 
realisation  is  through  the  service  of  others.  Not  that  we  serve  others, 
the  better  to  serve  ourselves :  we  ought  not  to  regard  another  person 
as  the  instrument  even  of  our  highest  self-development.  They,  too, 
are  ends  in  themselves :  to  them  is  set  the  self-same  task  as  to  our- 

1From  A  Study  of  Ethical  Principles  (pp.  275-285),  by  James  Seth,  M.A., 
LL.D.,  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  W.  Black¬ 
wood  and  Sons,  London,  1898;  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons,  New  York,  1911.  All 
rights  reserved. 


_  59 


6o 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


selves,  the  task  of  self-realisation.  The  law  of  the  moral  life,  the  law 
of  personality,,  covers  the  sphere  of  social  as  well  as  of  individual 
duty ;  and  that  law  is :  "So  act  as  to  treat  humanity,  whether  in  thine 
own  person  or  in  that  of  another,  always  as  an  end,  never  as  a  means 
to  an  end.”  We  may  use  neither  ourselves  nor  others.  Truly  to  serve 
humanity,  therefore,  is  to  realise  ourselves,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
aid  others  in  the  same  task  of  self-realisation.  In  serving  others,  we 
are  serving  ourselves ;  in  serving  ourselves,  we  are  serving  others. 
For,  in  both  cases,  we  serve  that  humanity  which  must  ever  be  served, 
and  never  used. 

The  life  of  virtue,  even  on  its  social  side,  is  still  a  personal,  not  an 
impersonal  life.1  This  is  apt  to  be  overlooked,  owing  to  the  illusion  of 
the  term  'social’  and  the  antithesis,  so  commonly  emphasised,  be¬ 
tween  the  individual  and  the  social  life.  The  individual  and  the  social 
are,  in  reality,  two  aspects  of  the  one  undivided  life  of  virtue,  and 
their  unity  is  discovered  with  their  reduction  to  the  common  principle 
of  personality.  The  social  life  is,  equally  with  the  individual  life, 
personal ;  and  the  personal  life  is  necessarily  at  once  individual  and 
social.  We  must  not  be  misled  by  the  phrase  'social  life,’  as  if  society 
had  a  life  of  its  own  apart  from  its  individual  members ;  society  is  the 
organisation  of  individuals,  and  it  is  they  who  live,  not  it.  Apart 
from  its  individual  members,  society  would  be  a  mere  abstraction ; 
but  we  are  too  apt,  here  as  elsewhere,  to  hypostatise  abstractions. 
In  reality,  society  is  not  an  organism,  but  the  ethical  organisation  of 
individuals.  Obviously,  we  must  not  isolate  the  organisation  or  the 
relation  from  the  beings  organised  or  related ;  this  would  be  a  new 
case  of  the  old  Scholastic  Realism,  or  substantiation  of  the  universal. 
Moral  reality,  like  all  finite  reality,  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  individual. 
But  while  the  life  of  virtue  is  always  individual,  it  is  never  merely 
individual :  to  be  personal,  it  must  be  social.  If  in  one  sense  each  lives 
a  separate  life,  yet  in  another  sense  "no  man  liveth  unto  himself.”  A 
common  personality  is  to  be  realised  in  each,  and  in  infinite  ways  the 
life  of  each  is  bound  up  with  that  of  all.  Only,  the  individual  must 
never  lose  himself  in  the  life  of  others.  As  a  person,  he  is  an  end  in 
himself,  and  has  an  infinite  worth.  Pie  has  a  destiny,  to  be  wrought 
out  for  himself ;  the  destiny  of  society  is  the  destiny  of  its  individual 
members.  The  'progress  of  the  race’  is,  after  all,  the  progress  of  the 
1  For  definition  of  personality  see  ibid.  Part  I,  chap.  iii. —  Ed. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


61 


individual.  The  ethical  end  is  personal,  first  and  last.  As  the  in¬ 
dividual  apart  from  society  is  an  unreal  abstraction,  so  is  society 
apart  from  the  individual.  The  ethical  unit  is  the  person. 

Thus  we  can  see  that  there  is  no  necessary  antagonism  between 
individualism,  truly  understood,  and  socialism,  truly  understood. 
Nay,  the  true  socialism  is  the  true  individualism,  the  discovery  and 
the  development  of  the  person  in  the  individual.  Society  exists  for 
the  individual,  it  is  the  mechanism  of  his  personal  life.  All  social 
progress  consists  in  the  perfecting  of  this  mechanism,  to  the  end  that 
the  moral  individual  may  have  more  justice  and  freer  play  in  the 
working  out  of  his  own  individual  destiny.  The  individualism  of  the 
mere  individual  means  moral  chaos,  and  is  suicidal.  But  the  in¬ 
dividualism  of  the  person  is,  in  its  idea  at  least,  synonymous  with 
the  true  socialism,  and  the  true  democracy  with  the  true  aristocracy. 
For  social  progress  does  not  mean  so  much  the  massing  of  individuals 
as  the  individualisation  of  the  social  mass ;  the  discovery,  in  the 
'masses/  of  that  same  humanity,  individual  and  personal,  which  had 
formerly  been  discerned  only  in  the  'classes.’  The  truly  social  ideal 
is  to  make  possible  for  the  many — n^y,  for  all,  or  better  for  each — 
that  full  and  total  life  of  personality  which,  to  so  large  an  extent,  is 
even  still  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  few.  Social  organisation  is 
never  an  end  in  itself,  it  is  always  a  means  to  the  attainment  of 
individual  perfection. 

2.  Social  virtue:  its  nature  and  its  limit .  We  have  seen  that 
social  or  altruistic  impulse,  like  individual  or  egoistic,  is  only  the  raw 
material  of  virtue,  part  of  that  nature  which  has  to  be  moralised  into 
character.  Mere  'good-will’  or  'sociality’  is  not  the  virtue  of  be¬ 
nevolence  ;  the  natural  inclination  to  help  others  needs  guidance,  and 
may  have  to  be  restrained.  So  true  is  Kant’s  contention  that  natural 
impulse  or  inclination  has,  as  such,  no  ethical  value.  We  have  also  seen 

0 

that  the  law,  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  is  found  in  personality. 
Each  man,  being  an  ego  or  person,  has  the  right  to  the  life  of  a 
person.  The  true  moral  attitude  of  other  persons  to  him,  therefore, 
is  the  same  as  his  attitude  towards  himself ;  and  accordingly  social, 
like  individual,  virtue  has  two  sides,  a  negative  and  a  positive.  The 
attitude  of  the  virtuous  man  towards  his  fellows  is  first,  negatively, 
the  making  room  for,  or  not  hindering,  their  personal  life,  and  sec¬ 
ondly,  the  positive  helping  of  them  to  such  a  life,  the  removing  of 


62 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


obstacles  from  their  way,  and  the  bringing  about  of  conditions  favour¬ 
able  to  their  personal  development.  Here,  with  the  conditions  of  the 
moral  life  in  our  fellows,  we  must  stop ;  no  man  can  perform  the  moral 
task  for  another,  there  is  no  vicariousness  in  the  moral  life.  Not 
even  God  can  make  a  man  good.  Goodness,  by  its  very  nature, 
must  be  the  achievement  of  the  individual:  each  must  work  out 
his  own  salvation.  The  individual  must  fight  his  own  battles,  and 
win  his  own  victories ;  and  if  he  is  defeated,  he  must  suffer,  and  strive 
through  suffering  to  his  final  perfection.  The  moral  life  is  essentially 
a  personal  life ;  in  this  sense  all  morality  is  private.  Life  lies  for  each 
in  '  the  realisation  of  self  by  self  ’ ;  that  is  our  peculiar  human  dignity 
and  privilege  and  high  responsibility,  and  it  is  not  allowed  that  any 
man  come  between  us  and  our  'proper  business.’  But  everything 
short  of  this  moral  interference  and  impertinence  we  may  do  for  our 
fellows.  'Environment’  counts  for  much,  especially  the  social  en¬ 
vironment  ;  and  we  can  improve  the  moral  environment  of  those  whom 
we  wish  to  aid.  The  will  may  be  stimulated  by  suggestions  from  an¬ 
other,  though  no  amount  of  pressure  can  coerce  it.  Ideals  are  potent, 
and,  once  accepted,  seem  to  reajise  themselves ;  and,  especially  by  our 
own  practice  and  example,  we  may  suggest  true  moral  ideals  to  others. 
In  such  ways,  society  can  stimulate  in  the  individual,  and  individuals 
can  stimulate  in  their  fellows,  the  life  of  virtue.  Only,  we  cannot 
take  the  moral  task  out  of  the  hands  of  the  individual,  we  cannot  even 
strictly  co-operate  with  him  in  the  execution  of  that  task.  Such  is  the 
solitariness  of  the  moral  life. 

3.  Its  two  aspects ,  negative  and  positive:  justice  and  benevolence. 
Social  virtue,  on  its  negative  side,  we  may  call  justice,  with  its 
corresponding  duty  of  freedom  or  equality;  on  its  positive  side,  we 
may  call  the  virtue  benevolence,  and  the  duty  fraternity  or  brother¬ 
liness.  I  use  these  terms,  of  course,  very  generally,  to  cover  much 
more  than  civic  excellence  in  the  one  case,  and  than  what  is  ordi¬ 
narily  called  philanthropy  in  the  other.  Whenever  we  do  not  repress 
another  personality,  but  allow  it  room  to  develop,  we  are  just  to  it ; 
whenever,  in  any  of  the  senses  above  suggested,  we  help  another  in 
the  fulfilment  of  his  moral  task,  we  exercise  towards  him  the  virtue 
of  benevolence. 

There  is  the  same  kind  of  relation  between  justice  and  benevolence 
in  the  social  life  as  between  temperance  and  culture  in  the  individual 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


63 


life.  As  temperance  is  the  presupposition  of  a  true  culture,  so  is 
justice  the  presupposition  of  a  true  benevolence.  This  logical  priority 
is  also  a  practical  priority.  We  must  be  just  before  we  can  be  gener¬ 
ous  :  we  earn  the  higher  power  by  our  faithful  exercise  of  the  lower. 
This  is  obvious  enough  in  the  case  of  political  action;  the  philan¬ 
thropy  of  the  State  must  be  founded  on  justice,  the  interests  of 
security  form  the  basis  of  the  interests  of  well-being.  Indeed,  the 
benevolence  of  the  State  is  really  a  higher  justice.  But  the  principle 
is  not  less  true  of  the  relations  of  individuals  to  one  another ;  here, 
too,  benevolence  is  only  justice  made  perfect.  When  the  parent,  out 
of  a  full  heart  and  without  a  thought  of  self-interest,  does  his  best  for 
his  child,  when  friend  acts  thus  by  friend,  or  teacher  by  scholar,  what 
is  each  doing  but  striving  to  mete  out  to  the  other  the  full  measure  of 
a  perfect  justice?  More  or  higher  than  that,  no  man  can  ask  from 
another  and  no  man  can  give  to  his  fellow.  The  distinction,  though 
so  convenient,  is  artificial ;  it  is  one  of  those  division-lines  which,  since 
they  do  not  exist  in  reality,  disappear  with  a  deeper  insight  into  the 
nature  of  things.  Most  pernicious  have  been  the  effects  of  the  neglect 
of  the  true  relation  of  priority  in  which  justice  stands  to  benevolence. 
The  Christian  morality,  as  actually  preached  and  practised,  has  been 
largely  chargeable  with  this  misinterpretation.  ' Charity’  has  been 
magnified  as  the  grand  social  virtue,  and  has  been  interpreted  as  a 
'giving  of  alms’  to  the  poor,  a  doing  for  them  of  that  which  they  are 
unable  to  do  for  themselves,  an  alleviation,  more  or  less  temporary, 
of  the  evils  which  result  from  the  misery  of  their  worldly  circum¬ 
stances.  But  this  charity  has  coexisted  with  the  utmost  injustice  to 
those  who  have  been  its  objects.  Instead  of  attacking  the  stronghold 
of  the  enemy — the  poverty  itself,  the  shameful  inequality  of  condi¬ 
tions — the  Church  as  a  social  institution,  and  individuals  in  their 
private  capacity  or  in  other  forms  of  association,  have  apparently 
accepted  the  evil  as  permanent  and  inevitable,  or  have  even  welcomed 
it  as  the  great  opportunity  of  the  moral  life.  It  has  been  assumed 
that  we  must  have  the  poor  always  with  us,  and  their  poverty  has 
been  regarded  as  a  splendid  field  for  the  exercise  of  the  virtue  of 
benevolence.  Yet  a  moment’s  reflection  will  convince  us  that  this 
virtue  cannot  find  its  exercise  in  the  field  of  injustice:  the  only  field 
for  its  development  is  one  which  has  been  prepared  for  it  by  the  sharp 
ploughshare  of  a  thoroughgoing  justice.  Injustice  and  benevolence 


64 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


cannot  dwell  together;  and  when  justice  has  done  its  perfect  work, 
there  will  be  little  left  for  the  elder  philanthropy  to  do,  and  charity 
will  be  apt  to  find  its  occupation  gone.  When  the  causes  of  distress 
have  been  removed,  the  distress  itself  will  not  have  to  be  relieved,  and 
benevolence  will  have  its  hands  free  for  other  and  better  work.  When 
all  have  justice,  those  who  now  need  help  will  be  independent  of  it, 
and  men  will  learn  at  last  that  the  best  help  one  man  can  give  to 
another  is  to  help  him  to  help  himself.  It  is  because  we  have  really 
given  our  fellows  less  than  justice  that  we  have  seemed  to  give 
them  more. 

For  what  is  justice?  Is  it  not  to  recognise  in  our  fellow-man  an 
alter  ego,  and  to  love  our  neighbour  as  ourselves  ?  Is  it  not  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  moral  equality — that  each  shall  count  for  one,  and  no  one 
for  more  than  one  ?  And  when  we  remember  that  the  reckoning  is  to 
be  made  not  merely  in  terms  of  physical  life  or  of  material  well-being, 
but  in  terms  of  personality;  that  we  are  called  upon  to  treat  our 
fellow-man  as  literally  another  self,  to  put  ourselves  in  his  place,  and 
to  take  towards  him,  as  far  as  may  be,  his  own  attitude  towards 
himself, — do  we  not  find  that  such  equality  is  synonymous  with 
fraternity,  that  others  are  in  very  truth  our  fellows  and  our  brothers 
in  the  moral  life?  Might  it  not  be  less  misleading  to  speak  only 
of  justice  in  the  social  relations — of  negative  and  positive  justice — 
than  of  justice  and  benevolence  ? 

The  fact  of  the  essential  identity  of  justice  and  benevolence  suggests 
that  they  have  a  common  sphere.  That  sphere  is  the  social,  and,  more 
particularly,  the  political  life.  Yet  here  also  there  is  a  distinction 
within  the  identity.  While  both  virtues  may  be  exercised  in  the 
political  sphere,  it  is  of  the  genius  of  justice  to  spend  itself  upon  the 
community,  of  benevolence  to  single  out  the  individual.  The  State 
is  the  sphere  of  justice,  and  in  the  eyes  of  the  State  all  its  citizens  are 
alike — each  counts  for  one,  and  no  one  for  more  than  one.  The 
peculiar  sphere  of  benevolence  or  the  higher  justice  is  that  of  private 
and  domestic  life,  and  of  the  non-political  association  of  individuals. 
The  characteristically  individual  nature  of  this  aspect  of  virtue  was 
recognised  by  the  Greeks,  whose  name  for  it  was  'friendship.’  So 
far  is  the  conception  carried  that  Aristotle  is  led  to  question  whether 
we  can  have  more  than  one  true  friend,  whether  it  is  possible  to  stand 
in  this  relation  of  perfect  fellowship  to  more  than  one  individual ;  for 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


65 


hardly  shall  we  find  more  than  one  alter  ego ,  happy  indeed  are  we  if 
we  find  even  one.  The  modern  conception  is  that  of  universal  love  or 
'  humanity.’  But  the  essence  of  the  virtue  is  the  same  in  both  cases, 
— brotherliness  or  fellowship.  This  conception  signalises  that  in¬ 
timateness  of  the  relation  which  converts  justice  into  benevolence,  or 
imperfect  into  perfect  justice.  Where  justice  insists  upon  the  equal¬ 
ity  of  men  in  virtue  of  their  common  personality,  benevolence  seizes 
the  individuality  in  each.  Benevolence  is  more  just  than  justice,  be¬ 
cause  it  is  enlightened  by  the  insight  into  that  ' inequality’  and 
uniqueness  of  individuals  which  is  no  less  real  than  the  'equality’ 
of  persons. 

4.  Benevolence.  It  is  in  the  case  of  benevolence  especially  that 
we  realise  the  necessity  of  the  regulation  or  moralisation  of  the  orig¬ 
inal  natural  impulse  or  affection.  Whether  we  take  the  promptings 
of  the  parent,  of  the  friend,  of  the  patriot,  or  of  the  philanthropist,  we 
see  that  altruistic  impulse  is  originally  as  blind  as  egoistic,  and  that 
it  needs,  no  less  than  the  latter,  the  illumination  of  reason.  We  need 
the  wisdom  of  rational  insight  into  the  good  of  another,  if  we  are  in 
any  measure  to  aid  him  in  the  attainment  of  that  good ;  and  all  our 
benevolent  activity  must  be  informed  and  directed  by  such  insight. 
Without  its  guidance,  we  cannot  be  really  'kind’  to  another.  Unwise 
kindness  is  not  kindness, — that,  for  example,  of  the  'indulgent’ 
parent,  teacher,  or  friend,  of  blind  philanthropy,  of  indiscriminate 
charity.  The  vice  of  such  conduct  is  that  it  destroys  the  self-reliance 
and  self-dependence  of  the  individual  so  blindly  'loved.’  The  only 
true  benevolence  is  that  which  helps  another  to  help  himself ;  which, 
by  the  very  aid  it  gives,  inspires  in  the  recipient  a  new  sense  of  his 
own  responsibility,  and  rouses  him  to  a  better  life. 

It  is  amazing  how  potent  for  good  is  such  a  true  benevolence ;  it 
seems  to  touch  the  very  springs  of  the  moral  life.  By  this  intimate 
apprehension  of  a  brother’s  nature  and  a  brother’s  task,  it  may  be 
given  to  us  to  stir  within  him  the  dying  embers  of  a  faith  and  hope 
blighted  by  failure  after  failure,  and  to  reawaken  in  him  the  old  high 
purpose  and  ideal  of  his  life.  The  fact  that  some  one  else  has  a  real 
and  unwavering  confidence  in  him,  sees  still  in  him  the  lineaments  of 
a  complete  and  noble  manhood,  will  inspire  such  a  man  with  a  new 
strength,  born  of  a  new  hope.  There  was  once  a  purpose  in  his  life, 
but  it  has  long  ago  escaped  his  grasp,  and  seems  for  ever  frustrated ; 


66 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


what  once  was  possible  seems  possible  no  longer,  his  life  is  broken 
and  can  never  again  be  whole.  But  one  comes  who  reminds  him  of 
that  former  and  truer  self,  and  reawakens  in  him  the  old  ideal.  The 
way  back  may  be  long  and  difficult ;  but  the  sight  of  the  goal,  even 
at  such  a  distance  and  up  such  steeps,  will  give  the  traveller  strength 
for  the  journey.  What  does  he  not  owe  to  him  who  shows  him  the 
open  path?  Zaccheus,  the  'publican  and  sinner,’  owed  his  'salvation’ 
— so  far  as  this  can  be  a  debt — to  One  who  reminded  him  that,  in 
his  deepest  nature  and  best  possibility,  he  was  still  a  'son  of  Abra¬ 
ham’;  and  others  who  had  fallen  lowest,  when  they  heard  from  the 
same  wise  and  tender  lips,  instead  of  the  scathing  condemnation  they 
had  feared,  the  words  of  a  deeper  insight  and  a  larger  hope,  "Neither 
do  I  condemn  thee,” — were  filled  with  a  new  strength  to  obey  the 
authoritative  command,  "  Go,  and  sin  no  more.”  It  must  have  been  this 
grand  insight,  this  hand  of  brotherly  sympathy  and  sublime  human 
hope,  stretched  out  to  raise  a  fallen  humanity  to  his  own  ideal  of  it,  that 
made  tolerable  that  teacher’s  scathing  exposure  of  every  hidden  evil. 

And  even  in  the  ordinary  course  and  less  grave  occasions  of  human 
life,  we  must  acknowledge  the  power  for  good  that  lies  in  a  sym¬ 
pathetic  appreciation  of  another’s  task,  and  of  his  capabilities  for  its 
discharge.  The  parent  may  thus  discover  in  the  child,  possibilities 
which  had  else  remained  undiscovered  and  unrealised.  The  teacher 
may  thus  discover  in  the  pupil  the  potential  thinker,  scholar,  artist, 
and  awaken  in  him  the  hope  and  ambition  which  will  be  a  life-long 
inspiration.  Here  is  the  moral  value  of  optimism  and  enthusiasm,  as 
contrasted  with  pessimism  and  cynicism.  If  we  would  help  another, 
in  this  high  sense  of  helpfulness,  we  must  believe  deeply,  and  hope 
strenuously,  and  bear  courageously  the  disappointment  of  our  ex¬ 
pectations  and  desires.  The  gloomy  severity  of  condemnation,  unlit 
by  any  ray  of  hope  of  better  things,  which  marks  the  Puritanical  tem¬ 
per,  will  crush  a  life  which  might  otherwise  have  been  lifted  up  to  a 
higher  plane.  What  many  a  struggling  soul  needs  most  of  all  is  a 
little  more  self-reliance  and  buoyancy  of  hope;  and  the  knowledge 
that  another  has  confidence  in  him  will  breed  a  new  confidence  in 
himself.  Why  leave  unspoken  the  word  of  encouragement  or  praise 
which  might  mean  to  him  so  much  good,  out  of  the  foolish  fear  of 
nourishing  in  him  that  quality  of  self-conceit  which  may  be  entirely 
absent  from  his  character?  Aristotle’s  observation  was  that  most 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES  67 

men  suffered  from  the  opposite  fault  of  'mean-spiritedness’  and  a 
deficient  appreciation  of  their  own  powers. 

This  true  benevolence  means  getting  very  near  to  our  fellow-man, 
becoming  indeed  his  fellow,  identifying  ourselves  with  him.  It  means 
the  power  of  sympathy.  We  are  apt  to  be  so  external  to  one  another, 
and  'charity’  is  so  easily  given:  we  must  give  ourselves.  We  must 
put  ourselves  alongside  our  fellow;  we  must  enter  into  his  life  and 
make  it  our  own,  if  we  would  understand  it.  For  such  an  under¬ 
standing  of  another’s  life,  such  a  right  appreciation  of  another’s  task, 
is  not  easy.  It  is  apt  to  seem  a  gift  of  moral  genius,  rather  than  a 
thing  which  may  be  learned.  The  perfection  of  it  is  found  in  love 
and  in  true  friendship,  where  a  man  finds  an  alter  ego  in  another ;  and 
perhaps,  as  Aristotle  says,  it  is  only  possible  to  have  one  such  '  friend.’ 
But  there  is  a  great  call  for  the  quality,  in  some  measure  of  it,  in  all 
the  relations  of  life ;  without  it,  no  true  benevolence  is  possible. 

9.  Justice1 

The  appeal  for  "Justice”  is  urgent  in  the  social  literature  of  the 
day.  It  is  one  that  goes  straight  to  every  human  heart.  No  one  who 
has  read  it  can  forget  how  Dante  tells  of  the  poor  widow  who  con¬ 
vinced  the  reluctant  Emperor  Trajan  that  he  must  do  her  justice  be¬ 
fore  he  stirs  from  the  spot. 

What  is  the  nature  of  this  appeal?  What  is  its  precise  demand? 
How  does  it  find  its  place  among  other  human  necessities  ? 

It  seems  to  be  based  on  the  fact  that  human  nature  lives  in  a  multi¬ 
tude  of  individuals,  who  have  a  common  quality  which  demands  that 
they  should  be  treated  by  a  common  rule.  Thus  the  cry  for  justice  is 
effective  at  once  through  a  direct  comparison.  Whenever  a  difference 
of  treatment  appears,  Justice  will  ask  "Why?”  It  is  always  the  op¬ 
posite  of  dealing  with  human  beings  differently  without  a  reason  for 
the  difference.  So  Justice  has  to  do  with  "rights.”  Right  is  the  rule, 
the  straight  or  undeviating  line  {droit,  diritto).  It  is  just  to  protect 
all  men’s  life  and  liberty,  because  it  is  the  rule,  the  right,  for  human 
beings.  What  makes  it  the  right  or  rule  ?  That,  I  hope,  we  shall  see 

1From  Social  and  International  Ideals  (pp.  195-211),  by  Bernard  Bosanquet, 
M.A.,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.,  Fellow  of  the  British  Academy,  author  of  The  Philosophi¬ 
cal  Theory  of  the  State.  Copyright,  Macmillan  and  Co.,  Limited,  London,  1917. 


68 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


directly ;  but  that  it  is  recognised  as  the  rule  is  what  makes  the 
doing  of  it  just.  Injustice,  in  the  simplest  sense,  is  to  recognise  a 
rule,  but  only  to  follow  it  in  some  cases  and  not  in  others. 

Plainly,  there  are  different  rules  or  standards.  The  letter  of  the 
law  is  not  the  only  rule ;  Shylock  had  law  apparently  on  his  side  and 
then  against  him ;  both,  I  should  think,  we  all  feel  were  unjust  by 
the  better  rule.  Summum  jus ,  summa  injuria.  The  extreme  of  law 
is  the  extreme  of  wrong. 

So  Justice  has  two  factors :  one  constant,  the  other  variable.  First, 
it  is  keeping  the  rule  you  profess  to  keep  and  allowing  nothing  to 
interfere  with  its  application.  Secondly,  it  depends  on  what  rule  you 
recognise.  Some  rules  are  shallower,  some  are  deeper.  But  with  all, 
if  you  profess  them,  it  is  so  far  unjust  to  depart  from  them. 

If  it  is  ordered  that  every  tenth  man  is  to  be  shot,  it  is  unjust  for 
the  officer  carrying  out  the  order  to  shoot  a  ninth  man  and  spare  a 
tenth  man  for  private  reasons. 

But,  also,  such  an  order  may  be  itself  called  unjust  as  compared, 
e.g.,  with  a  more  adequate  rule  for  treating  human  beings,  such  as  to 
proceed  only  on  prqyed  individual  guilt.  The  former  is,  then,  seen  to 
be  a  rule  which  is  itself  a  single  large  violation  of  the  rule,  and  so  un¬ 
just.  You  are  not  even  professing  the  rule  which  you' are  forced  to 
admit  to  be  the  rule  you  ought  to  profess. 

We  must  distinguish  the  two  forms  of  injustice.  If  you  make 
arbitrary  exceptions  to  your  rule,  you  break  the  rule,  and  so  far  as  it 
is  concerned,  you  are  unjust,  though  you  may  be  just  by  a  higher 
rule.  You  are  treating  in  different  ways  cases  which  your  rule  calls 
the  same — e.g.,  again,  if  you  make  exceptions  at  your  discretion  in 
levying  a  universal  tax.  You  can  only  be  just  by  your  rule  if  you 
treat  all  cases  under  its  terms  in  the  same  way. 

But  there  is  another  alternative :  you  may  not  break  the  rule,  but 
the  rule  itself  may  break  down  by  proving  itself  unjust.  This  is 
when  it  treats  in  the  same  way  cases  which  for  its  purpose  are  dif¬ 
ferent — e.g.  if  it  levies  the  same  tax  on  people  who  can  afford  to 
pay  and  people  who  cannot. 

The  reason  for  insisting  on  this  distinction  is  to  show  how  a  rule 
can  break  itself,  so  to  speak,  but  ordering  very  dissimilar  cases  to  be 
treated  in  a  similar  way ;  and  that  this  is  at  bottom  the  same  injus¬ 
tice  as  breaking  a  rule  by  treating  its  similar  cases  in  a  dissimilar 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


69 


way.  If  you  treat  two  quite  different  sets  of  cases  in  a  similar  way, 
you  are  really  treating  them  differently  for  the  purpose  of  your  rule ; 
e.g.  if  you  give  the  same  amount  of  food  to  a  child  and  a  man,  the 
purpose  or  controlling  rule  being  to  nourish  each  sufficiently.  In  the 
end  this  "breaking  down”  will  show  how  Justice  proves  itself  an  im¬ 
perfect  point  of  view. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Justice  has  a  good  side  even  in  strictly  apply¬ 
ing  bad  laws.  They  would  seldom  survive  if  they  were  applied  in 
their  full  rigour.  President  Grant  said  to  the  United  States  Congress : 
"If  you  make  bad  laws  I  shall  enforce  them.” 

Equity  may  seem  to  be  contrasted  with  strict  justice,  as  if  it  were 
not  a  rule.  But  it  only  means  a  more  adequate  rule ;  one  that  goes 
deeper  into  the  cases.  No  one  would  call  it  equity  to  treat  two  quite 
different  cases  similarly. 

Then  we  come  to  this:  Justice  lies  in  impartial  distribution  of  ad¬ 
vantages  and  disadvantages  to  individuals.  In  that  sense  it  is  "in¬ 
dividualistic.”  It  depends  altogether  on  there  being  individuals  who 
have  claims  to  similar  treatment.  The  claim  is  urged,  we  said,  by 
direct  comparison  of  cases.  A  is  rich,  B  is  poor.  Why?  So  it  is 
much  more  impressive  at  first  sight  than  a  claim  like  that  of  patriotism 
or  the  common  good,  which  requires  you  to  give  all  you  can  and  not 
compare  your  burdens  or  your  advantages  with  those  of  others.  These 
are  demands  on  behalf  of  a  unit  which  is  not  present  to  the  bodily 
eye.  Justice,  as  commonly  spoken  of,  is  a  demand  on  behalf  of  a  case 
which  strikes  the  eye  forcibly. 

Justice  is  certainly  not  the  highest  point  of  view ;  but  if  it  is  in  a 
sense  the  lowest  of  social  claims,  that  is  a  way  of  saying  that  it  is  the 
basis  of  all  social  dealing.  A  universal  human  claim  may  be  trans¬ 
formed  by  higher  claims,  but  cannot  be  cancelled.  Individual  human 
beings  have  to  be  taken  account  of ;  each  is  one  among  others,  having 
a  bodily  and  spiritual  life  of  his  own,  which  cannot  even  be  genuinely 
sacrificed  or  surrendered  unless  it  is  first  his  own  to  sacrifice  or 
to  surrender. 

We  saw  there  were  two  factors  in  Justice :  first  keeping  the  rule — 
that  needs  no  further  comment — and,  secondly,  the  rule  itself  which 
is  to  be  kept. 

There  are  many  possible  rules,  we  saw,  lower  and  higher — i.e.  less 
and  more  adequate,  according  to  the  degree  in  -which  each  of  them 


70 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


takes  account  of  people’s  circumstances  and  capacities,  and  so  is  less 
or  more  likely  to  be  adequate — i.e.  not  to  break  down. 

We  will  consider  some  of  these.  They  are  what  express  people’s 
different  ideas  of  the  standard  according  to  which  the  individual’s 
right  to  be  recognised  and  considered  should  be  given  effect  in  a 
human  commonwealth. 

Equality.  "All  men  are  equal”;  usually  "equal  by  nature.”  This 
sounds  like  an  attempt  to  make  a  rule  out  of  the  mere  need  of  having 
a  rule.  Deal  in  exactly  the  same  way  with  all  men,  and  then  you 
are  sure  of  going  by  the  rule  you  profess,  which  we  saw  to  be  the 
essence  of  Justice. 

But  we  saw  that  a  rule  of  Justice  can  itself  break  down  if  you  apply 
it  without  modification  to  cases  which  differ  beyond  a  certain  point. 
And  the  equality  of  man  was  never  asserted  by  serious  thinkers  in  the 
sense  that  all  men  were  so  equal  as  to  demand  the  same  treatment  all 
round.  It  was  asserted  with  a  perfectly  good  meaning  by  Roman 
law,  by  the  English  seventeenth  century,  and  by  Rousseau.  And  by 
being  taken  to  mean  too  much,  it  has  been  deprived  of  the  perfectly 
sound  meaning  which  really  belonged  to  it.  No  one  meant  that  all 
men  were  equally  good  or  equally  capable.  What  they  did  mean,  and 
rightly,  was  that  all  rational  beings  were  "equal”  in  having  within 
them  a  principle  of  self-government.  Sooner  or  later  the  thinking 
creature  will  rebel  against  mere  force.  He  will  evade,  or  resist,  or 
question  it.  Equality  in  this  sense,  as  was  lucidly  explained,  say,  by 
Hobbes  or  Locke,  is  one  with  freedom  or  reason.  It  is  the  quality  of 
man  as  such.  The  capacity  of  self-government  is  in  him,  and,  on  the 
whole,  it  will  come  out.  He  will,  in  the  end,  accept  no  law  but  one 
which  recognises  him,  on  the  same  footing  with  others  who  have  the 
same  capacity,  as  making  it  or  assenting  to  it.  The  domesticated,  I 
believe,  is  the  highest  animal,  but  the  slave  is  the  lowest  man. 

It  is  a  practical  and  disputable  question  how  far  sheer  equality  may 
be  pushed,  and  on  what  lines.  It  is  plain  that  there  cannot  be  all¬ 
round  identity  of  function,  at  any  rate  in  a  civilised  society;  and, 
therefore,  the  apparatus  possessed  by  individuals  for  their  functions, 
what  we  call  property,  must  be  different.  But  this  by  itself  does  not 
suffice  to  prove  that  there  could  not  possibly  be,  for  example,  equality 
of  incomes.  In  as  far  as  it  is  impossible,  this  seems  to  be  a  corollary 
of  permitting  free  acquisition  of  property.  We  shall  return  to  this. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


71 


As  to  the  general  problem  of  equality  and  similarity  in  a  community, 
it  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  two  texts  of  Aristotle,  "No  community 
can  be  constituted  of  similars”  and  "A  community  should  be  con¬ 
stituted  of  equals  and  similars  so  far  as  possible.”  Rousseau  remarks 
that  if  equality  is  impossible  in  modern  society,  that  is  all  the  more 
reason  for  trying  to  promote  it.  There  seems  to  be  something  in  this. 
And  then  we  shall  see  that  some  inequalities  may  be  and  ought  to  be 
ignored — i.e.  ought  not  to  affect  power  or  prestige.  That  is  a  sug¬ 
gestive  topic. 

But  it  is  really  common  ground  that  all-round  equality  is  a  rule 
which  breaks  down,  and  some  kind  of  proportion  has  usually  been 
advocated  as  the  standard  of  Justice ;  that  is,  equality  in  the  shape  of 
equality  of  ratios ;  so  that  advantages  permitted  to  individuals  should 
remain  in  the  same  ratio  to  some  other  term,  some  feature  found  in 
the  individuals.  Plato  and  Aristotle  are  fond  of  insisting  on  this,  that 
true  equality  is  equality  of  ratios — i.e.  proportion.  The  worst  in¬ 
equality,  they  say,  is  equal  treatment  of  unequal  terms — e.g.  the 
same  lifting  force  to  different  weights,  or  the  same  taxation  to  dif¬ 
ferent  taxable  capacity. 

We  will  look  at  some  of  the  proportional  standards  of  Justice  cur¬ 
rently  discussed. 

Advantages  proportional  to  moral  excellence.  Existing  society  is 
often  criticised  for  not  fulfilling  this  standard ;  it  is  said  not  to  bring 
to  the  top  a  good  ethical  type.  In  general  it  is  a  conclusive  objection 
to  such  a  standard  that  it  cannot  possibly  be  applied  by  man.  There 
is  no  safe  moral  judgment  except  our  own  on  ourselves,  and  not  really 
that.  You  may  say,  "It  must  be  a  bad  system  that  brings,  e.g.,  place- 
hunters  to  the  top.”  But,  first,  does  it?  Can  we  know  men’s  mo¬ 
tives?  And  then,  supposing  it  does,  the  men’s  immorality  does  not 
seem  the  right  reason  for  condemning  the  system.  Because  many 
other  faults  are  quite  as  immoral  as  place-hunting,  faults  which  we 
should  not  think  mattered  nearly  so  much  in  a  statesman — e.g.  un¬ 
kindness  to  one’s  wife.  So  it  is  not  the  mere  immorality  we  object  to, 
it  is  something  else. 

We  seem  to  get  nearer  to  it  if  we  say  "Advantages  should  be  pro¬ 
portional  to  contributions  to  public  good.”  The  public  good  does 
seem  a  possible  standard.  But  the  same  question  recurs.  Can  we 
really  judge  what  are  the  greatest  contributions  to  the  public  good? 


72 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


Are  we  to  go  by  labour  expended  or  by  value  attained?  It  seems 
hardly  possible  to  find  a  single  standard  by  which  to  judge.  You  may 
have  immense  labour  with  very  little  value  that  we  can  detect,  and 
great  value  almost  by  luck.  A  recognition  of  the  individual  on  this 
basis  would  be  arbitrary  and  uneven.  And,  in  case  we  agreed  on  the 
really  greatest  contribution — e.g.  the  work  of  a  great  poet — are  your 
"advantages”  comparable  with  it  or  suitable  to  it?  All  you  can  give 
— rank,  wealth,  and  power — seem  too  little ;  yet  so  alien  in  character 
to  the  poet’s  service  as  to  promise  disaster  both  to  the  recipient  and  to 
the  community. 

Proportion  to  the  capacity  for  acquisition.  This  is  alleged  about 
and  against  our  present  system.  Of  course,  it  must  not  be  assumed 
that  all  acquisition  is  at  others’  expense ;  it  may  be  so,  or  may  be  the 
instrument  of  acquisition  to  them  also.1  It  has  been  pointed  out — 
e.g.  by  Durkheim — that  in  an  old  society  all  forms  of  contract  are 
more  or  less  socially  determined,  so  that  acquisition  is  more  or  less 
constrained  toward  the  public  good. 

Waiving  this  for  the  moment,  the  rule  has  two  merits.  It  can  within 
certain  limits  be  really  carried  out,  which  cannot  be  said  of  the  others 
we  have  considered.  And  it  is  compatible  with  an  automatic  system 
of  freedom  in  appropriation,  avoiding  continual  discretionary  inter¬ 
ference,  which  is  almost  impossible  in  a  huge  modern  community.  It 
seems  worth  while  to  pay  a  high  price  for  an  automatic'  arrangement ; 
but,  of  course,  some  prices  may  be  too  high. 

Proportion  to  necessities  of  individuals  with  a  view  to  the  realisa¬ 
tion  of  human  capacity  in  them.  This  seems  to  unite  many  of  the 
good  points  of  the  other  suggestions,  and  to  be  fairly  workable.  We 
should  note  the  substitution  of  "necessities”  for  "merits,”  because 
necessities  can  be  judged  and  merits  cannot.  And  the  former  demand 
adaptation  to  the  type  of  function,  which  the  latter  overlooks.  Pro¬ 
portion  to  merits,  even  if  possible,  neglects  the  question  whether  any 
purpose  is  promoted  by  such  an  assignment.  It  may  frustrate  its  own 
apparent  aim.  Advantages  which  the  community  can  command  are 
instruments,  each  of  which  has  its  special  value  for  some  special  end, 
and  should  be  used  in  view  of  this.  Power,  e.g.,  may  be  obviously  an 
unfit  attachment  to  ethical  merit.  But  if  you  say  not  "merits”  but 

aFor  further  discussion  of  this  point  see  Social  and  International  Ideals ,  pp, 
229-249. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


73 


''necessities,”  it  is  different.  Power,  e.g.,  is  necessary  for  certain 
social  functions,  and  so,  perhaps,  is  wealth.  And  note  the  substitu¬ 
tion  of  "human  capacity”  for  "public  good,”  avoiding  the  possible 
error  of  measuring  by  de  facto  contribution  to  public  service,  which 
may  be  much  short  of  a  true  human  capacity.  There  is  always  the 
danger  of  dropping  into  the  argument  which  Miss  Austen  so  delight¬ 
fully  caricatures  in  Sense  and  Sensibility,  proving  that  people  who 
have  little  must  need  next  to  nothing.  "What  does  a  man  need  to 
make  him  a  good  scavenger?”  But,  then,  it  is  also  his  function  to 
be  a  man.  The  reference  to  "human  capacity”  bars  that  evasion. 
Only,  if  the  rule  is  to  hold,  the  word  necessities  should  be  construed 
to  include  the  objects  of  activity  as  well  as  its  instruments.  Of  course, 
in  a  sense  they  are  its  instruments,  or  its  material.  We  must  not  rule 
out  ab  initio  the  desirability  of,  say,  private  ownership  of  capital  on  a 
large  scale  as  a  field  of  charge  and  responsibility. 

Looking  back  on  all  these  suggested  statements  which  more  or  less 
bear  the  character  of  Justice,  we  note  a  characteristic  peculiarity  in  all 
of  them.  None  of  them  can  be  said  to  be  laid  down  or  constituted  or 
contrived  exclusively  for  the  sake  of  Justice,  except  perhaps  the  rule 
of  equality,  which  is  chimerical.  We  saw  that  no  doubt  a  rule  can  be 
just  or  unjust  in  itself,  and  not  merely  in  its  impartial  or  partial  observ¬ 
ance,  in  as  far  as  the  cases  it  deals  with  in  a  similar  way  are  really 
similar  or  really  dissimilar.  But  this  being  just  or  unjust  is  not  in  gen¬ 
eral  the  reason  why  the  rule  is  made.  Even  in  those  social  formulae, 
public  welfare  is  also  aimed  at ;  but  in  ordinary  rules  this  is  clearer.  A 
tax,  e.g.,  is  imposed  in  order  to  get  money,  not  in  order  to  treat  people 
fairly  or  unfairly.  It  is  a  fault  in  it  if  it  is  unjust,  because  it  contradicts 
the  claim  of  human  beings  to  be  treated  according  to  reason  and  right 
— to  be  treated  similarly  where  the  reason  is  similar,  and  dissimilarly 
where  it  is  dissimilar.  But  that  is  a  condition  of  all  treatment  of  human 
beings,  not  in  general  the  purpose  of  it,  or  not  the  immediate  purpose. 

You  can  have  rules  in  ordinary  use  made  for  the  purpose  of  Justice, 
I  think,  in  two  senses.  Often  you  have  them  made  by  way  of  amend¬ 
ing  rules  made  for  quite  other  purposes,  which  are  seen  to  involve 
Justice.  When  all  men  of  military  age  were  first  appealed  to  to 
enlist,  the  purpose  was,  I  suppose,  purely  and  simply  to  get  soldiers. 
Then  it  was  noticed  that  this  rule  put  very  dissimilar  cases  on  the 
same  footing,  and  it  was  urged  that  there  were  some  who  ought  to  be 


74  SOCIAL  PURPOSE  I 

taken  before  others.  So  a  new  rule  was  made  that  "a  certain  class  1 
must  go  first/’  and  this  was  made,  I  suppose  we  might  say,  for  the 
sake  of  Justice — i.e.  to  carry  out  the  proportion  between  disadvan¬ 
tages  and  the  power  to  bear  them,  by  neglecting  which  the  first  in¬ 
vitation,  considered  as  a  rule,  seemed  to  break  down.  But  still,  all 
this  was  only  a  condition  imposed  on  the  positive  purpose  of  the  whole 
arrangement,  which  was  to  get  soldiers.  The  condition  was  imposed 
by  the  inherent  claim  or  right  of  human  individuals  to  reasonable 
treatment — i.e.  similar  for  similar,  dissimilar  for  dissimilar.  It  is, 
we  saw,  the  human  being’s  nature  to  ask  why :  and  if  you  can  give 
him  a  reason  which  is  to  the  point,  he  is  satisfied.  But  it  is  his  right 
to  be  satisfied,  and  if  he  is  not  satisfied  he  will  be  dissatisfied,  and 
argue  or  rebel  according  to  his  character  and  the  case.  In  other 
words,  the  management  must  spring,  directly  or  indirectly,  from  him¬ 
self.  That  is  his  equality,  freedom,  reasonableness,  the  "  quality 
of  man.” 

Then  later  it  came  to  be  thought  that  the  attempt  to  distinguish 
cases  was  too  complicated,  and  that  equal  sacrifice  for  all  would  be 
best  attained  by  a  uniform  rule,  a  rough  Justice.  All  this  discussion 
about  Justice  may  have  been  desirable  or  necessary ;  but  it  was  really 
a  sort  of  appendage  to  the  purpose  of  the  whole  proceeding — viz.  to 
get  soldiers. 

In  still  the  same  sense  it  might  be  said  that  certain  parts  of  the 
civil  and  criminal  law  are  specially  instituted  for  the  purpose  of  Jus¬ 
tice.  I  mean  all  those  arrangements  which  are  intended  to  obviate 
bias  or  corruption  in  judge  or  jury,  or  to  secure  that  a  poor  suitor 
shall  not  be  placed  at  a  disadvantage.  But  it  does  not  seem  that 
Justice  is  the  primary  purpose  of  the  whole  system  of  law,  because 
every  law,  excepting  those  which  guard  against  corruption  and  undue 
influence,  must  surely  have  its  primary  purpose  in  some  particular 
good  to  be  secured  or  evil  to  be  repressed,  and  these  purposes  cannot 
be  directly  got  under  the  head  of  equality  or  fairness  between  man 
and  man.  The  law,  if  I  am  right,  exists  not  for  the  sake  of  Justice, 
but  to  make  certain  transactions  possible  which  men  are  found  gen¬ 
erally  to  demand — e.g.  transactions  between  landlord  and  tenant; 
or,  again,  to  prevent  certain  nuisances — e.g.  smoky  chimneys.  But 
such  laws  being  necessary  to  life,  it  is  a  defect  in  them  if  they  are  not 
both  just  and  justly  administered.  You  may  say  that  all  law  is  there 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


75 


to  maintain  rights,  the  rules  of  fairness  between  man  and  man ;  and 
so  is  aimed  at  Justice.  But  still,  there  is  always  the  special  motive  for 
every  law,  which  is  its  primary  aim. 

There  is,  however,  another  sense  in  which  the  whole  system  of  social 
and  political  institutions  might  be  said  to  aim  at  Justice,  and  that  is 
if  we  allow  ourselves  to  use  the  conception  of  "Ideal  Justice.” 

For  instance,  a  newspaper  said,  in  commenting  on  the  problem  of 
the  married  men,  "The  problems  which  face  us  cannot  be  solved  on 
any  principle  of  ideal  Justice.”  I  presume  it  meant  that  it  was  prac¬ 
tically  impossible  to  frame  a  rule  or  a  set  of  rules  which  would  provide 
differential  treatment  for  every  different  case.  The  social  call  was 
imperative,  and  furnished  a  rough  rule  of  Justice — a  sort  of  social 
lynch  law — because  there  was  a  very  large  definite  group,  those 
capable  of  military  service,  who  came  under  it  quite  simply.  But  an 
ideal  Justice — that  is,  a  comparative  weighing  of  the  difficulties  of 
every  individual  case,  and  a  nice  adjustment  of  the  obligation  to  serve 
to  every  inequality  of  situation  and  of  mental  and  bodily  fitness — that 
was  an  impossible  thing.  The  rough  Justice  of  the  social  necessity 
must  in  the  main  be  acquiesced  in. 

Still,  the  newspaper  implied  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  ideal 
Justice,  though  it  is  very  difficult  to  realise.  You  might  take  the 
whole  social  system  as  an  attempt  to  do  this — to  arrange  that  for 
every  difference  or  distinction  in  human  capacity  which  seriously 
affected  anyone’s  function  and  happiness,  there  should  be  found  a 
different  external  furniture  such  as  to  adjust  itself  to  that  difference 
of  function  or  capacity  and  give  it  scope.  And  then  ideal  Justice 
would  practically  coincide  with  a  perfect  social  system.  Everybody’s 
advantages  and  burdens  would  be  exactly  apportioned  according  to 
what  he  needed  for  the  function  suitable  to  him.  This  would  be  our 
completest  rule,  but  carried  out  with  an  impossible  perfection.  And 
still  the  function  comes  first  and  dictates  the  whole  arrangement. 

Now,  if  you  let  yourself  be  carried  on  and  on  by  the  demand  for 
Ideal  Justice  and  by  watching  how  simple  rules  break  down  or 
break  themselves,  into  demanding  the  right  conditions  for  every 
function,  where  will  you  be  at  the  end  of  it?  You  will  have  set 
up  a  new  rule  for  every  serious  difference  in  individuals,  and  you 
will  have  got  a  complicated  social  system  involving  all  sorts  of  reser¬ 
vations  and  distinctions,  so  that  the  character  of  a  general  rule  will 


76 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


have  vanished  from  it,  and  it  will  have  taken  on  an  appearance  op¬ 
posed  to  primary  Justice — to  any  simple  rule  of  treating  people  alike. 
We  saw  this  beginning  in  the  case  of  the  married  men’s  service,  and 
how  the  attempt  seemed  likely  to  be  thrown  over  as  too  difficult,  and 
the  first  simple  rule  gone  back  to.  Ideal  Justice,  we  often  say,  is  only 
for  God  to  use,  not  for  man.  Or  we  say  it  is  ultimately  one  with 
mercy  or  love  or  regard  for  the  public  good.1  "Tout  comprendre, 
c’est  tout  pardonner.”  Every  strength  and  weakness  is  allowed  for. 
It  is  not  what  we  commonly  mean  by  Justice. 

So  we  find  that  practically  there  is  a  recognised  opposition  between 
the  maxims  of  common  Justice — the  general  rule  of  equal  treatment 
of  individuals — and  the  maxims  of  political  efficiency  or  the  public 
good  or  safety,  or  love,  or  mercy — anything  in  which  the  individual 
is  absorbed.  "Fiat  justitia,  ruat  coelum”  (Do  Justice,  if  it  ruins  the 
country)  ;  "One  to  count  for  one  and  never  for  more  than  one” ;  con¬ 
trasted  with  "Salus  populi  suprema  lex”  (which  has  won  a  bad  repu- 
tation  as  the  tyrant’s  plea;  cp.  Committee  of  Public  Safety  in  the 
French  Revolution),  or  "Ye  are  members  one  of  another” — i.e. 
thinking  of  yourselves  as  separate  particular  individuals  making 
claims,  you  have  only  a  very  imperfect  apprehension  of  what  you 
really  are. 

It  is  a  strange  meeting  of  extremes  in  many  cases ;  Ideal  Justice — 
the  supreme  duty — or  a  pressing  emergency,  or  a  strong  devotion  to 
the  community,  or  any  overwhelming  purpose,  may  make  a  rough 
call  on  the  individual,  very  much  like  that  which  the  first  rude  sense 
of  lynch  justice  makes.  The  difference  is  that  rough-and-ready  Jus¬ 
tice  does  not  know  what  the  right  claim  on  the  individual  is,  and 
lumps  his  case  along  with  very  dissimilar  cases,  as  in  taxation,  which 
is  unfair  merely  through  the  ruler’s  lack  of  economic  knowledge  or 
experience;  while  Ideal  Justice,  or  the  passion  for  social  or  human 
service,  may  know  well  enough  the  inequality  it  is  imposing,  but  it 
does  not  care  to  insist  upon  it  in  presence  of  more  important  issues. 
If  you  can  do  it  you  must,  never  mind  whether  some  one  else  could  do 
it  as  well ;  and  therefore,  again,  the  man  who  recognises  it  finds  its 
demand  the  hardest  and  sharpest  claim  he  can  conceive.  His  Ideal 
Justice  holds  that  he  has  done  nothing  while  there  is  anything  left  for 

1  These  three  principles  are  alike  in  scorning  equality.  They  ask  you  for  all 
you  can,  not  for  the  same  as  your  neighbour. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


77 


him  to  do.  We  are  unprofitable  servants.  But,  then,  with  this  you 
have  given  up  what  is  peculiar  in  Justice.  You  have  left  the  world 
of  claims. 

This  is  why,  when  you  approach  the  great  thinkers  on  the  topic  of 
Justice,  you  are  apt  at  first  sight  to  be  puzzled.  Instead  of  finding 
some  direct  rule  operating  by  comparison  of  cases  between  man  and 
man,  you  are  met  by  such  a  sentence  as  this  of  Rousseau : 1 

C’est  done  dans  la  loi  fondainentale  et  universelle  du  plus  grand  bien  de 
tous,  et  non  dans  les  relations  particuliers  d’homme  a  homme,  qu’il  faut  cher- 
cher  les  vrais  principes  du  juste  et  de  l’injuste.  ...  En  un  mot,  il  y  a  mille 
cas  ou  c’est  un  acte  de  justice  de  nuire  a  son  prochain,  au  lieu  que  toute 
action  juste  a  necessairement  pour  regie  la  plus  grande  utilite  commune ; 
cela  est  sans  exception.2 

That  really  dissolves  away  what  we  commonly  call  Justice.  In  the 
same  way  we  find  Plato,  in  his  treatise  "On  the  Commonwealth  or 
on  Justice,”  identifying  the  law  of  Justice  with  the  discharge  by 
every  member  of  his  function  as  prescribed  by  the  purpose  of  the 
whole,  and  he  embodies  within  his  systematic  plan  the  hardest  and 
sharpest  contrasts  of  mode  of  living — the  severest  rule  being  assigned 
to  the  governing  class  to  whom,  in  a  sense,  the  whole  city  belongs. 
If  you  complain  of  this,  he  says  in  a  very  famous  passage,  it  is  like 
complaining  that  in  colouring  a  statute  you  paint  the  eyes,  which  are 
the  most  beautiful  feature,  not  with  purple,  which  is  the  most  beautiful 
colour,  but  with  black.  For  you  must  not  make  them  so  beautiful  that 
they  are  not  like  eyes  at  all.  And  so  it  is  the  whole  system  that  dictates 
his  functions  to  every  individual ;  and  the  law  of  Justice  is  that  he 
should  be  what  his  special  duty  demands,  however  hard  or  humble  may 
be  the  place  so  assigned.  We  may  add  that  every  sovereign  community 
(and,  as  is  commonly  held,  the  ultimate  ruler  of  the  universe)  reserves 
to  itself  the  right  of  pardon,  that  is  to  say,  the  right  of  treating  the 
direct  justice  of  general  rules  as  not  being  the  final  or  highest  law. 

All  this,  it  will  be  said,  is  commonplace  and  familiar,  and  has  to  a 

aThis  is  no  doubt  directed  against  Locke,  who  had  maintained  that  the  law  of 
justice  and  reason  was  one  with  the  golden  rule,  "Do  to  others — .”  Rousseau  has 
pointed  out  that,  strictly  interpreted,  this  will  not  hold.  It  would,  for  instance, 
not  allow  a  judge  to  do  his  duty.  The  true  end  must  operate  harshly  in  some  cases. 

2  First  draft  of  Contrat  Social ,  Vol.  II,  chap.  iv.  Vaughan’s  Rousseau ,  chap,  i, 
P-  495- 


78 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


great  extent  been  perverted,  as  in  the  doctrine  of  salus  populi ,  to  be  a 
mere  plea  for  tyranny,  or  in  the  most  recent  times  for  the  absoluteness 
of  the  State,  or  of  such  a  principle  as  nationality,  in  opposition  to  the 
rights  of  simple  humanity  whether  within  or  without  a  given  society. 
All  this  has  its  truth.  I  am  merely  making  use  of  this  recognised  op¬ 
position  to  enforce  the  nature  and  urgency  of  our  problem — which 
lies  in  the  truth  that  the  breakdown  of  simple  rules  is  always  in¬ 
evitable,  carrying  you  beyond  the  simple,  direct  justice  of  comparison 
of  individuals;  while  in  complex  systems  and  high  imperatives  of 
public  good  or  something  even  greater  you  have  a  goal  to  which  you 
are  obliged  to  go  forward,  but  in  which  what  we  commonly  mean  by 
justice  is  too  liable  to  be  submerged  without  good  reason,  just  because 
it  is  destined  in  the  end  to  be  transformed  with  the  best  of  all  possible 
reasons.  This  best  of  all  possible  reasons,  if  I  am  challenged  to  state 
it  plainly,  is  that  in  the  end  the  individual’s  true  nature  lies  beyond 
his  visible  self — e.g.  in  religion  the  individual,  as  such,  is  absorbed. 
A  " claim”  becomes  blasphemy.  But,  I  repeat,  I  am  not  using  these 
high  principles  to  support  one  contention  against  the  other,  to  advo¬ 
cate,  i.e.,  the  absolute  State  against  simple  human  justice.  I  am 
using  them  only  to  illustrate  the  difficulty  and  urgency  of  the  problem 
in  which  all  social  dissatisfaction  probably  has  its  root: — the  problem 
of  simple  individualistic  justice  over  against  the  imperative  public 
welfare.  The  lines  of  solution  which  our  discussion  suggests  appear 
to  be  two.  In  the  first  place,  the  claims  of  individuals  based  on  Jus¬ 
tice  must  be  recognised  in  the  structure  of  any  social  system  which  is 
to  be  satisfactory;  and  although  by  proportion,  and  not  by  sheer 
equality,  yet  by  proportion  to  a  standard  which  is  necessary  and 
unambiguous,  and  affords  the  minimum  scope  for  using  the  public 
safety  as  a  tyrant’s  plea.  In  the  second  place  it  is  quite  impossible 
to  avoid  recognising  that  there  are  higher  claims  than  that  of  simple 
justice  to  individuals  as  such,  whether  we  find  these  in  the  transfor¬ 
mation  of  a  direct  rule  of  similar  treatment  into  Ideal  Justice,  or  in 
those  greater  commands  before  which  the  individual  repudiates  his 
separate  claim  and  even  his  separate  being.  Only  it  is  necessary  to 
remember,  as  we  saw  above,  that  in  order  truly  to  sacrifice  himself  a 
man  must  first  have  possessed  himself.  It  is  true  in  the  most  literal 
sense  that  justice  comes  before  generosity,  though  not  above  it.  A 
man  can  only  surrender  what  is  recognised  as  his. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


79 


10.  True  and  False  Idealism1 

The  word  " idealism”  is  something  of  a  spell.  It  possesses  the 
magic  of  a  spell,  and  its  danger.  All  these  great  watchwords  of 
humanity,  that  represent  predominant  leanings  and  accumulating  his¬ 
tories  of  man’s  mind,  have  in  them  something  of  an  enchantment. 
When  we  use  them  we  are  drawing  upon  powers  that  are  greater  than 
our  own,  and  we  are  liable  to  the  fate  of  the  wizard’s  apprentice  who 
roused  immense  forces  which  he  could  not  direct  or  control.  Idealism 
is  a  woi*d  to  conjure  ^vith ;  but  a  wizard  who  does  not  know  what  he 
is  about  is  dangerous  to  himself  and  others. 

The  magic  of  idealism  lies,  I  suppose,  in  its  promise  of  victory  for 
the  human  mind.  Somehow  mind  is  to  triumph;  to  subdue  the 
"real”  or  the  "actual.”  It  is  to  achieve  the  best  we  can  think,  to 
make  a  new  world. 

But  danger  lies  in  all  these  expressions  which  indicate  a  contrast : 
good  and  evil,  beautiful  and  ugly,  true  and  false.  They  seem  to  indi¬ 
cate  a  battle,  but  they  may  indicate  a  flight,  and  often  there  is  really 
a  flight  where  the  victory  seems  to  be  surest.  Take,  for  instance,  a 
"truth”  that  leaves  outside  it,  standing  and  unexplained,  all  the 
falsehood  in  the  world.  Such  a  truth  may  seem  militant  and  trium¬ 
phant,  but  really  it  can  have  very  little  range  and  very  little  strength. 

I  will  give  an  instance  of  the  spirit  of  true  idealism : 

Have  we  ever  noted  the  stages  of  our  "comprehension”  of  a  great 
city?  When  I  was  a  boy  I  was  taken  to  hear  Lord  Shaftesbury 
speak,  and,  like  a  boy,  I  remembered  only  one  thing  he  said,  an 
anecdote. 

He  said  that  when  he  first  came  to  London  a  thing  which  soon 
struck  him  was  that  there  were  parts  of  the  pavement  that  dried  after 
rain  much  sooner  than  the  rest.  These  were  mainly,  he  soon  noticed, 
at  street  corners,  and  then  he  saw  that  they  were  before  the  bakers’ 
shops.  This  put  him  on  inquiring  into  the  conditions  of  the  under¬ 
ground  bakeries  and  of  the  people  who  worked  in  them.  That  was 
one  route  which  took  him  into  the  heart  of  things.  And  all  of  us  have 
in  our  own  way  passed  through  a  similar  training.  Every  one  must, 

iBy  Bernard  Bosanquet,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  Adapted  from  Social  and  In¬ 
ternational  Ideals,  pp.  84-96.  Copyright,  Macmillan  and  Co.,  Limited,  London, 

1917. 


8o 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


more  or  less,  I  suppose ;  though  the  interests  that  guide  it  must  be 
different  in  kind  and  intensity.  When  they  are  wide  and  intense  they 
lead  to  a  true  idealism.  I  mean  that  when  we  first  begin  to  take 
notice,  the  great  city  is  perhaps  just  the  frame  of  our  business  and 
pleasure.  The  streets  that  take  us  from  one  to  the  other  are  meaning¬ 
less,  insignificant  to  us,  but  then  gradually — from  one  suggestion  or 
another,  from  one  starting-point  or  another — our  insight  is  awakened 
and  our  interest  expands.  We  become  able,  more  or  less,  to  interpret 
the  look  of  the  streets  and  of  the  people.  The^  walls  become  trans¬ 
parent  to  us ;  we  see  through  them  into  the  homes,  or  no  homes,  and 
become  alive  with  the  great  life  around  us.  We  see  the  weakness  of 
the  poor  and  their  strength ;  their  goodness  and  courage  and  fun.  I 
don’t  think  I  ever  knew  a  really  good  social  worker  who  had  not  the 
gift  of  sympathetic  humour. 

The  life  which  we  have  learned  to  respond  to,  and  to  feel  ourselves 
a  part  of,  imposes  its  purposes  and  standards  upon  us ;  we  are  united 
with  it  in  its  dangers  and  in  its  hopefulness. 

Now  it  is  a  feeling  of  this  kind  which  suggests  itself  to  me  as  the 
path  towards  a  true  idealism  of  social  work.  Note  how  Mr.  Stephen 
Reynolds  has  recently  spoken  of  the  cruelty  ‘of  intellectual  people. 
The  best  which  we  hope  for  must  spring  out  of  the  life  we  are  learn¬ 
ing  to  know ;  it  must  not  be  brought  to  it  or  stuck  upon  it  from  with¬ 
out.  We  must  learn  from  the  people  before  we  can  teach,  and  as  a 
condition  of  teaching.  More  especialfy  we  should  know  the  life  of  the 
working  people  at  their  best  and  strongest,  or  else  we  can  have  no 
conception  of  what  it  is  that  we  want  them  to  be. 

This  is  what  I  call  idealism ;  when,  instead  of  turning  away  from 
the  life  around  us,  we  have  so  learned  it  that  it  speaks  to  us  at  every 
point,  and  the  streets,  and  the  houses,  and  shops,  and  people  have  all 
"come  alive”  to  us,  and  indicate  human  wants,  and  hopes,  and  powers. 

Our  main  point  is,  then,  that  idealism  is  not  an  escape  from  reality ; 
but,  first,  a  faith  in  the  reality  beneath  appearances,  which,  secondly, 
rorks  by  "comprehension,”  and  not  by  opposition,  and  confers,0 
'v,  a  power  of  transforming  the  appearance  in  the  direction  of 
the  nlity. 

You  o  °pin,  I  suppose,  by  remarking  a  pale  child  at  a  school. 
Then  you  ti^  ’"‘fee  beneath  this  surface  fact  and  work  the  matter 
out,  till  you  have  ./hole  network  of  conditions  before  you,  by  deal- 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


8 1 


ing  with  which  you  may  be  able  to  rescue  a  whole  family  from  some 
misfortune  which  is  affecting  them  all,  or  from  some  foolish  habit ; 
and  to  help  them  to  do  what  you  find  they  really  want.  A  man  must 
be  saved,  some  wise  writer  has  said,  on  his  own  decalogue,  and  not 
on  somebody  else’s. 

We  should  observe  that  true  idealism  is  optimistic,  because  it  grasps 
things,  and  does  not  leave  them  outside  to  become  a  terror.  False 
idealism,  sometimes  called  "pure/’  "lofty,”  "exalted,”  is  pessimistic, 
because  it  is  conscious  of  something  which  it  has  not  the  courage  to 
face  and  overcome.  Plato  has  a  joke  against  this  kind  of  idealism, 
which,  oddly  enough,  people  are  for  ever  ascribing  to  him.  He  depicts 
an  over-zealous  disciple  chiming  in  to  Socrates’  praise  of  astronomy, 
with  the  addition  that  it  is  a  study  which  leads  the  mind  upwards — to 
a  higher  world.  Socrates  answers  that  the  question  is  whether  you 
use  your  intelligence  or  not;  and  if  you  do  not  do  this,  your  mind 
will  not  be  looking  upward,  even  if  you  float  on  your  back  in  the  sea. 

So,  with  this  incomplete  idealism,  we  have  a  wave  of  pessimism  in 
England  to-day — almost  always  in  people  who  are  not  active  social 
workers.  All  through  life  the  weaker  mind  recoils  from  what  it  will 
not  grasp.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  condemn  than  to  comprehend.  We 
have  an  output  of  pessimistic  fiction,  and  then  a  description  of  the 
state  of  England  founded  upon  it ;  what  Plato  would  call,  I  think,  two 
removes  from  the  facts. 

One  point  in  this  prevailing  temper  is  well  worth  reflecting  upon — 
the  use  made  of  the  idea  of  justice.  Almost  all  pessimism  rests  on  the 
thoroughly  individualistic  question:  Why  this  particular  suffering? 
in  the  sense  of  asking,  Is  this  man’s  suffering  due  to  this  man’s  fault  ? 
The  novels  are  quite  full  of  it ;  after  the  manner  of  "Did  this  man  sin, 
or  his  parents,  that  he  was  born  blind  ?  ”  We  should  note  the  answer, 
which  they  do  not  give.  It  was  that  the  works  of  God  should  be 
revealed  in  him. 

Justice,  of  course,  may  mean  .that  the  best  should  be  done  for  every 
body  and  soul  that  they  can  receive ;  and,  as  a  rule  for  our  action,  is 
in  this  sense  obviously  right.  But  to  the  popular  pessimist  it  means : 
"The  world  is  all  askew  if  any  one  suffers,  except  by  his  own  fault”; 
and  this  principle,  the  root  of  bad  individualism,  would  make  man’s 
life  as  cheap  as  beast’s — nay,  very  much  cheaper,  for  the  beasts  will 
on  occasion  suffer  for  each  other.  We  should  rather  think  of  the  great 


82 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


idea  which,  as  Professor  Bradley  tells  us,  occupied  the  mind  of  Keats, 
that  the  world  is  a  place  for  the  making  of  souls ;  and  consider  what 
part  the  suffering  not  by  one’s  own  fault  may  play  in  that. 

Our  conclusion  then,  so  far,  is  this:  Idealism  is  not  the  power  or 
habit  of  escaping  from,  or,  in  a  customary  sense  of  the  words,  raising 
oneself  above  reality.  It  is  the  power  and  habit  of  diving  into  the 
core  of  appearance,  until  the  real  reality  discloses  itself.  Its  appro¬ 
priate  epithets  are  not  so  much  "pure,”  "lofty,”  as  "thorough,”  "com¬ 
prehensive” — the  latter  word  in  its  double  sense  of  inclusion  and 
understanding. 

This  idealism  is  not  a  matter  of  the  dreaming  imagination;  but  of 
what  Ruskin  once  called  the  penetrative  imagination — what  Words¬ 
worth  was  unmatched  in.  "Love  had  he  seen  in  huts  where  poor 
men  lie.” 

A  word  about  the  kind  of  emotion,  the  passion  or  enthusiasm,  that 
goes  with  true  idealism. 

Notice  that  we  are  quite  right  to  be  modest  about  our  personal 
work,  our  own  performance ;  but  we  are  not  right  if  we  entertain  a 
discouraging  idea  of  the  rank  and  quality  of  our  work.  In  fact,  the 
higher  the  idea  of  it  that  we  cherish,  the  more  personally  modest  we 
shall  tend  to  be.  But  it  is  not  right  to  admit,  or  to  pass  without  pro¬ 
test,  any  notion  that  our  work  goes  along  with  a  cold  heart  and  a  lack 
of  human  love.  There  is  really  a  point  here  in  which  explanation  may 
be  of  use. 

There  is  a  vulgar  prejudice,  which  appeals  to  all  of  us  in  our  weaker 
moments,  that  it  is  one  thing  to  be  reasonable,  and  quite  another 
thing  to  be  full  of  love  or  devotion.  This  is  wholly  false.  It  arises 
from  taking  the  terms  compared  at  their  most  commonplace  level; 
reason,  perhaps,  as  addition  and  subtraction,  which  really  have  only  a 
little  emotion,  because  they  have  only  a  little  reason ;  love  or  devotion 
as  blind  desire  or  foolish  sentiment,  which  again  have  only  a  little 
reason,  because  as  emotion  they  awaken  none  of  the  depths  of  our 
nature.  Foolish  sentiment  goes  very  well  with  false  idealism.  Neither 
of  them  need  any  strength  or  effort ;  they  have  nothing  to  compre¬ 
hend,  nothing  which  feeds  their  ardour  by  being  overcome.  But  what 
is  so  cheap  cannot  be  really  dear. 

If  you  go  to  any  of  the  world’s  great  men,  you  do  not  find  them 
talking  like  that.  What  you  find  is  that  they  bring  together  reason 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


83 


and  love  in  a  way  that  puzzles  us,  though  we  find  it  true  in  proportion 
as  we  are  anywhere  near  doing  our  best.  The  two  moods  come  to¬ 
gether  in  the  yearning  for  completeness,  for  the  escape  from  contra¬ 
diction  ;  the  longing  to  find  something  which  achieves  or  expresses  the 
consummation  which  we  want.  We  do  not  know,  indeed,  what  it  is 
we  want.  But  the  working  of  reason  is  just  the  way  we  build  it  up  or 
track  it  out ;  and  feeling  is  the  response  of  the  whole  mind  and  body 
— the  joy  or  depression,  the  sense  of  life  or  of  failure  to  live,  which 
goes  along  with  this  seeking,  and  with  the  expansion  of  finding  or  the 
privation  of  failing  to  find.  And  this  feeling,  this  aspiration,  is  good 
and  valuable  in  proportion  as  it  means  a  vitality  of  our  entire  soul, 
an  utterance  of  all  that  we  want.  The  yearning  for  completeness,  in 
a  word,  is  at  once  the  spur  of  logic  and  the  wings  of  love.  Plato 
called  it,  in  both  senses,  " Passion”  (Eros).  But  there  is  something 
more,  and  it  bears  on  our  practical  difficulties.  To  do  or  to  feel  things 
thus  completely  is  exacting  work.  We  are  not  always  up  to  it.  And 
then  it  may  seem  rather  flat ;  that  is  to  say,  we  may  feel  rather  flat 
in  presence  of  it.  Mountain-climbing  is  a  fine  thing,  but  we  are  not 
always  in  the  mood  for  it.  And  this  is  why  we  may  find  ourselves 
dull  and  cold,  not  merely  in  presence  of  addition  and  subtraction,  but 
in  presence  of  very  great  works  of  reason  and  of  passion.  We  cannot 
get  at  them.  We  are  like  the  people  who  mock  at  classical  music — 
so  dull,  they  say.  That  is  literally  because  it  has  more  emotion  in  it 
than  they  are  able  to  receive.  Give  them  a  music-hall  tune  and  they 
would  be  happy.  But,  of  course,  in  a  great  work  of  a  great  master 
there  is  actually  present  immensely  more  of  what  they  want ;  but  it  is 
like  a  food  that  a  man  cannot  digest,  it  is  too  much  for  them  and  they 
cannot  receive  it. 

So  people  are  always  telling  you  that  primitive  language,  or  primi¬ 
tive  songs  or  primitive  sketches,  are  so  much  more  "expressive,”  or 
have  so  much  more  feeling  in  them,  than  the  language,  or  music,  or 
art  of  civilisation.  Or  a  savage  blind  desire  seems  as  much  more 
passionate  than  the  devotion  of  an  educated  mind.  It  is  the  old  story 
of  preferring  the  noble  savage  to  the  civilised  man.  Such  things  are 
easier  to  get  hold  of  because  there  is  so  much  less  in  them. 

The  whole  problem  may  best  be  explained  by  a  comparison  with 
fine  art.  Many  years  ago  a  friend  told  me  that  I  could  not  think  of 
Charity  Organisation  Society  work  in  an  artistic  light.  The  remark 


84 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


cut  so  wholly  at  the  root  of  all  my  convictions  that  I  could  never 
forget  it.  [Compare  Part  IV,  Chapter  XXVI.] 

What  it  meant,  I  take  it,  was  that  first-rate  social  work  seems  to 
some  people  (and  perhaps  to  ourselves  when  we  are  feeling  flat)  cold 
and  dull,  hard  and  austere,  dirty  and  ugly.  It  is  so  full  of  planning, 
contriving,  carefully  observing,  sticking  to  the  point,  severity,  ex¬ 
ploring  unlikely  corners  for  a  ray  of  light  or  hope. 

But  all  this  is  just  like  the  austere  demand  of  great  art.  It  springs 
from  the  same  cause;  which  is,  that  a  great  eagerness  or  a  great 
vitality  demands  to  construct  something  which  is  careful  and  complete, 
and  precise  and  well-ordered  throughout.  A  blind  desire  smothers 
and  chokes  utterance ;  a  loose  sentimentalism  issues  in  nerveless  and 
sloppy  productions.  But  a  really  strong  and  healthy  emotion  de¬ 
mands  for  its  embodiment  an  orderly  variety,  a  precise  and  careful  fit¬ 
ting  of  part  to  part,  the  accurate  and  living  logic  that  constitutes  the 
austerity,  which  is  an  aspect  of  all  great  beauty.  Let  me  read  a  pas¬ 
sage  from  a  writer  who  stated  all  this  far  better  than  any  one  else 
could  state  it.1 

What  seems  to  me  to  be  true  ...  is  that  feeling  is  worthless  or  precious 
in  proportion  as  it  is  not  or  is  translated  into  something  which  by  an 
extension  might  be  called  action.  The  ordinary  form  of  trouble  about 
it  ...  is  that  either  I  feel,  and  nothing  comes  of  it,  or  I  do,  and  there  is 
no  self,  no  life,  in  what  is  done.  .  .  .  But  it  is  true — isn’t  it  ? — that  action 
is  good  just  according  to  the  amount  of  feeling  which,  speaking  chemically, 
is  set  free  in  it.  The  most  perfect  illustration  seems  to  me  to  be  art.  In 
any  art,  the  more  artistic  the  work  is,  the  more  form  is  there  —  i.  e.  the  more 
measurable,  definable,  calculable  is  it — the  more  rational  or  intellectual. 
Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  everybody  since  the  world  began  has  associated  with 
art,  strength  of  feeling  and  unconsciousness  of  effort.  A  great  piece  of  music 
can  be  taken  to  pieces  like  a  clock;  a  great  poem,  compared  with  any  other 
piece  of  language,  is  intensely  artificial;  and  yet  the  amount  of  feeling 
which  they  represent  is  stupendous  when  compared  with  the  song  of  a  bird 
or  a  simple  story.  And  this  relation  of  feeling  seems  to  hold  good  both  of 
the  artist  and  of  his  public.  Nobody  doubts  that  artists  are  more  emotional 
than  other  men;  nobody  ought  to  doubt  that  they  apply  more  intellect  than 
other  men.  And  as  to  the  audience,  I  think  what  you  say  is  frightfully  true, 
that  if  you  go  to  art  to  get  your  own  feeling  reproduced,  you  find  it  useless 
and  flat,  just  because  mere  feeling  can’t  find  expression,  and  your  feeling 


iNettleship,  Philosophical  Lectures  and  Remains,  chap,  i,  p.  60. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES  85 

must  be,  at  any  rate  potentially,  endowed  with  form  before  you  can  be 
emotionally  receptive  to  real  form. 

Doesn’t  the  same  apply  to  action  in  the  ordinary  sense  ?  A  strong  man 
is  always  a  man  who  feels  strongly,  and  who  can  get  his  feeling  out;  and  it 
may  seem  fanciful,  but  as  far  as  I  can  see,  if  you  are  asked  to  describe 
action,  you  have  to  do  it  in  some  such  way  as  you  would  do  in  the  case 
of  art.  I  mean  any  act,  like  any  work  of  art,  is  measurable  in  time  and 
space,  and  the  more  of  an  act  it  is,  the  more  measurable  is  it,  the  more 
form  there  is  in  it. 

Does  all  this  sound  mere  pedantry  ?  I  do  not  know ;  but  it  seemed 
to  me  that  it  might  help  to  cut  up  by  the  root  a  dangerous 
and  recurrent  fallacy,  that  which  arouses  the  fear  of  measurableness 
and  co-ordination  and  precision  in  social  work. 

This  fallacy  is  a  great  danger.  For  our  social  work  only  lives  in 
the  doing,  and  changes  if  and  as  our  faith  and  courage  change.  If  a 
reader  thinks  George  Meredith  dull,  or  prefers  Ouida’s  tales  to  An¬ 
tony  and  Cleopatra ,  he  can  do  little  harm,  except  to  himself.  Fortu¬ 
nately,  so  far,  Meredith  and  Shakespeare  are  dead,  and  he  cannot  get 
at  their  works  to  put  his  own  faint-heartedness  into  them.  But  with 
our  social  work,  if  we  let  ourselves  be  over-persuaded  that  it  is  hard, 
and  cold,  and  dull,  because  it  is  precise  and  systematic ;  why,  then 
we  shall  make  it  so.  Wordsworth,  we  are  told,  spoilt  several  passages 
in  his  poems  by  changing  them  to  meet  his  friends’  objections ;  because 
his  friends  could  not  understand  the  poetry  of  them.  That  is  what 
we  are  being  constantly  urged  to  do ;  to  change  something  essential 
in  our  work,  not  in  the  way  of  growth,  to  remedy  any  defect  ex¬ 
hibited  to  us,  but  to  bring  it  down  to  the.  minds  of  people  who  will  not 
take  the  trouble  to  get  abreast  of  it. 

"Precision,”  you  know;  "you  can’t  have  feeling  and  the  passion 
for  humanity  if  you  will  be  so  precise.”  Why,  what  is  the  precision  of 
our  case  papers,  say,  to  the  precision  of  the  rhythm  of  a  great  poem, 
or  to  the  adjustments  of  the  parts  of  a  flower?  No  great  feeling  can 
be  uttered,  nothing  can  really  live  and  be  strong,  without  extreme 
precision  of  adjustment.  This  is  the  simple  secret  of  Aristotle’s  doc¬ 
trine  that  virtue  lies  in  an  adjustment  governed  by  a  right  ratio.  We 
all  know  it — we  know  how  a  secret  stinginess  or  jealousy  spoils  the 
act  of  generosity,  or  ostentation  or  evil  temper  the  act  of  courage.  In 
some  one  of  its  numerous  adjustments  to  external  circumstance  the 


86 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


imperfect  motive  betrays  itself  and  the  act  breaks  down,  rings  false; 
we  give,  for  instance,  too  much  or  too  little,  or  in  the  wrong  way,  or 
at  the  wrong  time,  or  to  the  wrong  person.  You  only  get  the  perfect 
act  when  it  is  "the  flower  and  native  growth  of  noble  mind.” 

11.  Rights,  Duties,  and  the  Problem  of  Expediency1 

All  moral  laws,  I  wish  to  shew,  are  merely  statements  that  certain 
kinds  of  actions  will  have  good  effects.  The  very  opposite  of  this 
view  has  been  generally  prevalent  in  Ethics.  'The  right’  and  'the 
useful’  have  been  supposed  to  be  at  least  capable  of  conflicting  with 
one  another,  and,  at  all  events,  to  be  essentially  distinct.  It  has  been 
characteristic  of  a  certain  school  of  moralists,  as  of  moral  common 
sense,  to  declare  that  the  end  will  never  justify  the  means.  What  I 
wish  first  to  point  out  is  that  '  right  ’  does  and  can  mean  nothing  but 
'cause  of  a  good  result,’  and  is  thus  identical  with  'useful’;  whence 
it  follows  that  the  end  always  will  justify  the  means,  and  that  no 
action  which  is  not  justified  by  its  results  can  be  right.  That  there 
may  be  a  true  proposition,  meant  to  be  conveyed  by  the  assertion 
'The  end  will  not  justify  the  means,’  I  fully  admit:  but  that,  in  an¬ 
other  sense,  and  a  sense  far  more  fundamental  for  ethical  theory,  it  is 
utterly  false,  must  first  be  shewn. 

That  the  assertion  'I  am  morally  bound  to  perform  this  action’  is 
identical  with  the  assertion  'This  action  will  produce  the  greatest 
possible  amount  of  good  in  the  Universe’  has  already  been  briefly 
shewn;  but  it  is  important  to  insist  that  this  fundamental  point  is 
demonstrably  certain.  This  'may,  perhaps,  be  best  made  evident  in 
the  following  way.  It  is  plain  that  when  we  assert  that  a  certain 
action  is  our  absolute  duty,  we  are  asserting  that  the  performance  of 
that  action  at  that  time  is  unique  in  respect  of  value.  But  no  dutiful 
action  can  possibly  have  unique  value  in  the  sense  that  it  is  the  sole 
thing  of  value  in  the  world ;  since,  in  that  case,  every  such  action 
would  be  the  sole  good  thing,  which  is  a  manifest  contradiction.  And 
for  the  same  reason  its  value  cannot  be  unique  in  the  sense  that  it 

iFrom  Principia  Ethica  (pp.  146-148,  167-170,  180-182),  by  George  Edward 
Moore,  Litt.  D.,  LL.D.,  Lecturer  in  Moral  Science  in  the  University  of  Cambridge. 
The  Cambridge  University  Press,  1903;  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York. 
Reprinted  by  permission. 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


87 


has  more  intrinsic  value  than  anything  else  in  the  world ;  since  every 
act  of  duty  would  then  be  the  best  thing  in  the  world,  which  is  also  a 
contradiction.  It  can,  therefore,  be  unique  only  in  the  sense  that  the 
whole  world  will  be  better,  if  it  be  performed,  than  if  any  possible 
alternative  were  taken.  And  the  question  whether  this  is  so  cannot 
possibly  depend  solely  on  the  question  of  its  own  intrinsic  value.  For 
any  action  will  also  have  effects  different  from  those  of  any  other 
action ;  and  if  any  of  these  have  intrinsic  value,  their  value  is  exactly 
as  relevant  to  the  total  goodness  of  the  Universe  as  that  of  their  cause. 
It  is,  in  fact,  evident  that,  however  valuable  an  action  may  be  in  itself, 
yet,  owing  to  its  existence,  the  sum  of  good  in  the  Universe  may  con¬ 
ceivably  be  made  less  than  if  some  other  action,  less  valuable  in  itself, 
had  been  performed.  But  to  say  that  this  is  the  case  is  to  say  that  it 
would  have  been  better  that  the  action  should  not  have  been  done ; 
and  this  again  is  obviously  equivalent  to  the  statement  that  it  ought 
not  to  have  been  done — that  it  was  not  what  duty  required.  'Fiat 
justitia,  ruat  coelum’  can  only  be  justified  on  the  ground  that  by  the 
doing  of  justice  the  Universe  gains  more  than  it  loses  by  the  falling 
of  the  heavens.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  this  is  the  case :  but,  at 
all  events,  to  assert  that  justice  is  a  duty,  in  spite  of  such  conse¬ 
quences,  is  to  assert  that  it  is  the  case. 

Our  'duty,’  therefore,  can  only  be  defined  as  that  action,  which  will 
cause  more  good  to  exist  in  the  Universe  than  any  possible  alternative. 
And  what  is  'right’  or  'morally  permissible’  only  differs  from  this, 
as  what  will  not  cause  less  good  than  any  possible  alternative.  When, 
therefore,  Ethics  presumes  to  assert  that  certain  ways  of  acting  are 
'duties’  it  presumes  to  assert  that  to  act  in  those  ways  will  always 
produce  the  greatest  possible  sum  of  good.  If  we  are  told  that  to  '  do 
no  murder’  is  a  duty,  we  are  told  that  the  action,  whatever  it  may  be, 
which  is  called  murder,  will  under  no  circumstances  cause  so  much 
good  to  exist  in  the  Universe  as  its  avoidance. 

A  conclusion,  which  follows  from  the  fact  that  what  is  'right’  or 
what  is  our  'duty’  must  in  any  case  be  defined  as  what  is  a  means 
to  good,  is  that  the  common  distinction  between  these  and  the  'ex¬ 
pedient’  or  'useful,’  disappears.  Our  'duty’  is  merely  that  which  will 
be  a  means  to  the  best  possible,  and  the  expedient,  if  it  is  really  expe¬ 
dient,  must  be  just  the  same.  We  cannot  distinguish  them  by  saying 
that  the  former  is  something  which  we  ought  to  do,  whereas  of  the 


88 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


latter  we  cannot  say  we  'ought.’  In  short  the  two  concepts  are  not, 
as  is  commonly  assumed  by  all  except  Utilitarian  moralists,  simple 
concepts  ultimately  distinct.  There  is  no  such  distinction  in  Ethics. 
The  only  fundamental  distinction  is  between  what  is  good  in  itself  and 
what  is  good  as  a  means,  the  latter  of  which  implies  the  former.  But 
it  has  been  shewn  that  the  distinction  between  '  duty  ’  and  '  expediency  ’ 
does  not  correspond  to  this :  both  must  be  defined  as  means  to  good, 
though  both  may  also  be  ends  in  themselves.  The  question  remains, 
then :  What  is  the  distinction  between  duty  and  expediency  ? 

One  distinction  to  which  these  distinct  words  refer  is  plain  enough. 
Certain  classes  of  action  commonly  excite  the  specifically  moral  sen¬ 
timents,  whereas  other  classes  do  not.  And  the  word  'duty’  is  com¬ 
monly  applied  only  to  the  class  of  actions  which  excite  moral 
approval,  or  of  which  the  omission  excites  moral  disapproval — 
especially  to  the  latter.  Why  this  moral  sentiment  should  have  be¬ 
come  attached  to  some  kinds  of  actions  and  not  to  others  is  a  question 
which  can  certainly  not  yet  be  answered ;  but  it  may  be  observed  that 
we  have  no  reason  to  think  that  the  actions  to  which  it  was  attached 
were  or  are,  in  all  cases,  such  as  aided  or  aid  the  survival  of  a  race : 
it  was  probably  originally  attached  to  many  religious  rites  and  cere¬ 
monies  which  had  not  the  smallest  utility  in  this  respect.  It  appears, 
however,  that,  among  us,  the  classes  of  action  to  which  it  is  attached 
also  have  two  other  characteristics  in  enough  cases  to  have  influenced 
the  meaning  of  the  words  'duty’  and  'expediency.’  One  of  these  is 
that  'duties’  are,  in  general,  actions  which  a  considerable  number  of 
individuals  are  strongly  tempted  to  omit.  The  second  is  that  the 
omission  of  a  'duty’  generally  entails  consequences  markedly  dis¬ 
agreeable  to  some  one  else.  The  first  of  these  is  a  more  universal 
characteristic  than  the  second :  since  the  disagreeable  effects  on  other 
people  of  the  'self-regarding  duties,’  prudence  and  temperance,  are 
not  so  marked  as  those  on  the  future  of  the  agent  himself ;  whereas 
the  temptations  to  imprudence  and  intemperance  are  very  strong. 
Still,  on  the  whole,  the  class  of  actions  called  duties  exhibit  both 
characteristics:  they  are  not  only  actions,  against  the  performance 
of  which  there  are  strong  natural  inclinations,  but  also  actions  of 
which  the  most  obvious  effects,  commonly  considered  goods,  are  effects 
on  other  people.  Expedient  actions,  on  the  other  hand,  are  actions  to 
which  strong  natural  inclinations  prompt  us  almost  universally,  and 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


89 


of  which  all  the  most  obvious  effects,  commonly  considered  good,  are 
effects  upon  the  agent.  We  may  then  roughly  distinguish  'duties’ 
from  expedient  actions,  as  actions  with  regard  to  which  there  is  a 
moral  sentiment,  which  we  are  often  tempted  to  omit,  and  of  which 
the  most  obvious  effects  are  effects  upon  others  than  the  agent. 

But  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  none  of  these  characteristics,  by  which 
a  'duty’  is  distinguished  from  an  expedient  action,  gives  us  any 
reason  to  infer  that  the  former  class  of  actions  are  more  useful  than 
the  latter — that  they  tend  to  produce  a  greater  balance  of  good.  Nor, 
when  we  ask  the  question,  'Is  this  my  duty?’  do  we  mean  to  ask 
whether  the  action  in  question  has  these  characteristics :  we  are  asking 
simply  whether  it  will  produce  the  best  possible  result  on  the  whole. 
And  if  we  asked  this  question  with  regard  to  expedient  actions,  we 
should  quite  as  often  have  to  answer  it  in  the  affirmative  as  when  we 
ask  it  with  regard  to  actions  which  have  the  three  characteristics  of 
'duties.’  It  is  true  that  when  we  ask  the  question,  'Is  this  expe¬ 
dient  ?  ’  we  are  asking  a  different  question — namely,  whether  it  will 
have  certain  kinds  of  effect,  with  regard  to  which  we  do  not  enquire 
whether  they  are  good  or  not.  Nevertheless,  if  it  should  be  doubted 
in  any  particular  case  whether  these  effects  were  good,  this  doubt  is 
understood  as  throwing  doubt  upon  the  action’s  expediency :  if  we  are 
required  to  prove  an  action’s  expediency,  we  can  only  do  so  by  asking 
precisely  the  same  question  by  which  we  should  prove  it  a  duty^ — 
namely,  '  Has  it  the  best  possible  effects  on  the  whole  ?  ’ 

Accordingly  the  question  whether  an  action  is  a  duty  or  merely  ex¬ 
pedient,  is  one  which  has  no  bearing  on  the  ethical  question  whether 
we  ought  to  do  it.  In  the  sense  in  which  either  duty  o’r  expediency 
are  taken  as  ultimate  reasons  for  doing  an  action,  they  are  taken  in 
exactly  the  same  sense :  if  I  ask  whether  an  action  is  really  my  duty 
or  really  expedient,  the  predicate  of  which  I  question  the  applicability 
to  the  action  in  question  is  precisely  the  same.  In  both  cases  I  am 
asking,  '  Is  this  event  the  best  on  the  whole  that  I  can  effect  ?  ’ ;  and 
whether  the  event  in  question  be  some  effect  upon  what  is  mine  (as  it 
usually  is,  where  we  talk  of  expediency)  or  some  other  event  (as  is 
usual,  where  we  talk  of  duty),  this  distinction  has  no  more  relevance 
to  my  answer  than  the  distinction  between  two  different  effects  on  me 
or  two  different  effects  on  others.  The  true  distinction  between  duties 
and  expedient  actions  is  not  that  the  former  are  actions  which  it  is  in 


90 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


any  sense  more  useful  or  obligatory  or  better  to  perform,  but  that 
they  are  actions  which  it  is  more  useful  to  praise  and  to  enforce  by 
sanctions  since  they  are  actions  which  there  is  a  temptation  to  omit. 


( i )  Practical  Ethics  asks,  not  'What  ought  to  be  ?  ’  but  'What  ought 
we  to  do  ?  ’ ;  it  asks  what  actions  are  duties,  what  actions  are  right,  and 
what  wrong :  and  all  these  questions  can  only  be  answered  by  shewing 
the  relation  of  the  actions  in  question,  as  causes  or  necessary  condi¬ 
tions,  to  what  is  good  in  itself.  The  enquiries  of  Practical  Ethics  thus 
fall  entirely  under  the  third  division  of  ethical  questions — questions 
which  ask, '  What  is  good  as  a  means  ?  ’  which  is  equivalent  to  '  What  is 
a  means  to  good — what  is  cause  or  necessary  condition  of  things  good 
in  themselves?’  But  (2)  it  asks  this  question,  almost  exclusively, 
with  regard  to  actions  which  it  is  possible  for  most  men  to  perform, 
if  only  they  will  them;  and  with  regard  to  these,  it  does  not  ask 
merely,  which  among  them  will  have  some  good  or  bad  result,  but 
which,  among  all  the  actions  possible  to  volition  at  any  moment,  will 
produce  the  best  total  result.  To  assert  that  an  action  is  a  duty,  is 
to  assert  that  it  is  such  a  possible  action,  which  will  always,  in  certain 
known  circumstances,  produce  better  results  than  any  other.  It  fol¬ 
lows  that  universal  propositions  of  which  duty  is  predicate,  so  far  from 
being  self-evident,  always  require  a  proof,  which  it  is  beyond  our 
present  means  of  knowledge  ever  to  give.  But  (3)  all  that  Ethics 
has  attempted  or  can  attempt,  is  to  shew  that  certain  actions,  pos¬ 
sible  by  volition,  generally  produce  better  or  worse  total  results  than 
any  probable  alternative :  and  it  must  obviously  be  very  difficult 
to  shew  this  with  regard  to  the  total  results  even  in  a  comparatively 
near  future ;  whereas  that  what  has  the  best  results  in  such  a  near 
future,  also  has  the  best  on  the  whole,  is  a  point  requiring  an  investi¬ 
gation  which  it  has  not  received.  If  it  is  true,  and  if,  accordingly,  we 
give  the  name  of  'duty’  to  actions  which  generally  produce  better 
total  results  in  the  near  future  than  any  possible  alternative,  it  may 
be  possible  to  prove  that  a  few  of  the  commonest  rules  of  duty  are 
true,  but  only  in  certain  conditions  of  society,  which  may  be  more  or 
less  universally  presented  in  history ;  and  such  a  proof  is  only  possible 
in  some  cases  without  a  correct  judgment  of  what  things  are  good  or 
bad  in  themselves — a  judgment  which  has  never  yet  been  offered  by 


SOCIAL  VIRTUES 


9i 


ethical  writers.  With  regard  to  actions  of  which  the  general  utility  is 
thus  proved,  the  individual  should  always  perform  them ;  but  in  other 
cases,  where  rules  are  commonly  offered,  he  should  rather  judge  of 
the  probable  results  in  his  particular  case,  guided  by  a  correct  con¬ 
ception  of  what  things  are  intrinsically  good  or  bad.  (4)  In  order 
that  any  action  may  be  shewn  to  be  a  duty,  it  must  be  shewn  to  fulfil 
the  above  conditions;  but  the  actions  commonly  called  'duties7  do 
not  fulfil  them  to  any  greater  extent  than  'expedient7  or  'interested5 
actions:  by  calling  them  'duties7  we  only  mean  that  they  have,  in 
addition,  certain  non-ethical  predicates.  Similarly  by  'virtue7  is 
mainly  meant  a  permanent  disposition  to  perform  'duties7  in  this 
restricted  sense :  and  accordingly  a  virtue,  if  it  is  really  a  virtue,  must 
be  good  as  a  means,  in  the  sense  that  it  fulfils  the  above  conditions ; 
but  it  is  not  better  as  a  means  than  non-virtuous  dispositions;  it 
generally  has  no  value  in  itself ;  and,  where  it  has,  it  is  far  from  being 
the  sole  good  or  the  best  of  goods. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 
12.  The  Ethical  Basis  and  Function  of  the  State1 

The  social  organisation  of  life:  society  and  the  State.  The  moral 
life,  on  its  social  side,  organises  itself  in  certain  external  forms,  gen¬ 
erally  described  as  the  ethical  institutions — for  example,  the  Family, 
the  State,  the  Church.  The  total  social  organisation  may  be  called 
Society,  and  the  most  important  of  its  special  forms — that  which  in  a 
sense  includes  all  the  others — is  the  political  organisation,  or  the 
State.  Since  man  is  by  nature  and  in  his  ethical  life  a  social  being,  he 
is  inevitably  also  a  political  being  (£wov  ttoXltlkov).  The  question 
is  thus  raised,  What  is  the  true  form  of  social  organisation?  and, 
more  particularly,  What  is  the  ethical  basis  and  function  of  the  State  ? 
How  far  should  Society  become  political  ? 

The  Greek  world,  we  may  say,  had  no  idea  of  a  non-political  so¬ 
ciety  ;  to  it  society  and  the  State  were  synonymous  terms,  the  social 
life  was  a  life  of  citizenship.  The  distinction  between  society  and  the 
State  is  a  modern  one.  The  Hellenic  State  was  an  adequate  and  satis¬ 
fying  social  sphere  for  the  individual ;  he  wanted  no  other  life  than 
that  of  citizenship,  and  could  conceive  no  perfect  life  for  himself  in 
any  narrower  social  world  than  that  of  the  State.  So  perfect  was  the 
harmony  between  the  individual  and  the  State  that  any  dissociation 
of  the  one  from  the  other  contradicted  the  individual’s  conception  of 
ethical  completeness.  It  is  to  this  sense  of  perfect  harmony,  this  deep 
and  satisfying  conviction  that  the  State  is  the  true  and  sufficient  ethi¬ 
cal  environment  of  the  individual,  that  we  owe  the  Greek  conception 
of  the  ethical  significance  of  the  State.  Our  modern  antithesis  of  the 
individual  and  the  State  is  unknown ;  the  individual  apart  from  the 
State  is  to  the  Greek  an  unethical  abstraction.  The  ethical  individual 
is,  as  such,  a  citizen;  and  the  measure  of  his  ethical  perfection  is 
found  in  the  perfection  of  the  State  of  which  he  is  a  citizen,  and  in 

1  James  Seth,  A  Study  of  Ethical  Principles ,  pp.  287-302. 

92 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


93 


the  perfection  of  his  citizenship.  We  find  this  characteristic  Greek 
conception  carried  to  its  consummation  in  the  Republic  of  Plato. 
This  is  at  once  a  treatise  on  politics  and  on  ethics,  on  the  State  and  on 
justice.  Plato’s  problem  is  to  find  the  ideal  State,  or  the  perfect 
sphere  of  the  perfect  life.  The  good  man  will  be  the  good  citizen  of 
the  good  State,  and  without  the  outer  or  political  excellence  the  inner 
or  ethical  excellence  is  of  little  avail.  The  just  man  is  not  an  isolated 
product,  he  is  not  even  'self-made’ ;  he  grows  up  in  the  perfect  State, 
and  unconsciously  takes  on  the  colour  of  its  laws ;  he  is  its  scholar, 
and,  even  in  the  inmost  centres  of  his  life,  he  feels  its  beneficent  con¬ 
trol.  To  separate  himself  from  it,  in  any  particular,  were  moral  sui¬ 
cide;  to  seek  to  have  a  'private  life,’  or  to  call  anything  'his  own,’ 
were  to  destroy  the  very  medium  of  his  moral  being,  to  seek  to  play  his 
part  without  a  stage  on  which  to  play  it.  That  is  to  say,  social  or¬ 
ganisation  is  necessary  to  the  perfection  of  the  individual  life ;  and  the 
only  perfect  social  organisation  is  the  communistic  State,  which  di¬ 
rectly  and  immediately  controls  the  individual,  and  recognises  no 
rights,  individual  or  social,  but  its  own. 

But  the  growing  complexity  of  the  ethical  problem,  the  growing 
perception  of  the  significance  of  personality,  and  the  growing  dissatis¬ 
faction  with  the  State  as  the  ethical  sphere  of  the  individual,  led  even 
the  Greeks  themselves  to  a  revision  of  their  view  of  the  relation  of  the 
individual  to  the  State.  Greek  ethics  close  with  the  cry  of  individual¬ 
ism  and  cosmopolitanism.  The  State  proved  its  ethical  insufficiency, 
as  the  individual  discovered  his  ethical  self-sufficiency ;  the  outward 
failure  co-operated  with  the  deeper  inward  reflection,  to  effect  the 
transition  from  the  ancient  to  the  modern  standpoint.  Christianity, 
with  its  universal  philanthropy,  its  obliteration  of  national  distinc¬ 
tions,  its  insistence  upon  the  absolute  value  of  the  individual,  its  deeper 
and  intenser  appreciation  of  personality,  added  its  new  strength  to  the 
forces  already  in  operation.  The  political  societies  of  the  ancient 
world  were  gradually  supplanted  by  a  Catholic  ecclesiastical  society. 
The  Church  to  a  large  extent  displaced  the  State,  and  reasserted  on  its 
own  behalf  the  State’s  exclusive  claim  upon  the  life  of  the  individual. 
Controversy  was  thus  inevitably  aroused  as  to  the  respective  jurisdic¬ 
tions  of  Church  and  State.  The  Family,  too,  acquired  a  new  impor¬ 
tance  and  a  new  independence.  The  break-down  of  feudalism — the 
political  order  of  the  Middle  Ages — was  followed  by  the  break-down 


94 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


of  its  ecclesiastical  order  also,  and  the  individual  at  last  stood  forth  in 
all  the  importance  of  his  newly  acquired  independence.  Our  modern 
history  has  been  the  story  of  the  gradual  emancipation  of  the  in¬ 
dividual  from  the  control  of  the  State,  and  its  product  has  been  an 
individualism  in  theory  and  in  practice  which  represents  the  opposite 
extreme  from  the  political  socialism  of  the  classical  world.  The  prin¬ 
ciple  of  individual  liberty  has  taken  the  place  of  the  ancient  principle 
of  citizenship.  We  have  become  very  jealous  for  the  rights  of  the 
individual,  very  slow  to  recognise  the  rights  of  the  State.  Its  legiti¬ 
mate  activity  has  been  reduced  to  a  minimum,  it  has  been  assigned 
a  merely  regulative  or  '  police ’  function,  and  has  been  regarded  as 
only  a  kind  of  balance-wheel  of  the  social  machine.  Not  that  the  in¬ 
dividual  has  emancipated  himself  from  society.  That  is  only  a  part 
of  the  historical  fact ;  it  is  no  less  true  that  the  various  extra-political 
forms  of  social  organisation  have  assumed  functions  formerly  dis¬ 
charged  by  the  State.  But  the  result  is  the  same  in  either  case — 
namely,  the  narrowing  of  the  sphere  of  the  State’s  legitimate  activity. 

Various  forces  have  conspired  to  bring  about  a  revision  of  this 
modern  theory  of  the  State  in  its  relation  to  the  individual  and  to  the 
other  forms  of  social  organisation.  The  interests  of  security  have  been 
threatened  by  the  development  of  the  principle  of  individual  liberty 
to  its  extreme  logical  consequences  in  Anarchism  and  Nihilism ;  the 
very  life,  as  well  as  the  property,  of  the  individual  is  seen  to  be  en¬ 
dangered  by  the  gradual  disintegration  of  the  State ;  and  the  strong 
arm  of  the  civil  power  has  come  to  seem  a  welcome  defence  from  the 
misery  of  subjection  to  the  incalculable  caprice  of  'mob-rule.’  In¬ 
dividualism  has  almost  reached  its  reductio  ad  absurdum ;  the  principle 
of  the  mere  particular  has,  here  as  elsewhere,  proved  itself  to  be  a  prin¬ 
ciple  of  disintegration.  That  each  shall  be  allowed  to  live  for  himself 
alone,  is  seen  to  be  an  impossible  and  contradictory  ideal.  Experi¬ 
ence  has  taught  us  that  the  State  is  the  friend  of  the  individual,  secur¬ 
ing  for  him  that  sacred  sphere  of  individual  liberty  which,  if  not  thus 
secured,  would  soon  enough  be  entered  and  profaned  by  other  individ¬ 
uals.  The  evils  of  a  non-political  or  anti-political  condition  of  atomic 
individualism  have  been  brought  home  to  us  by  stern  experiences  and 
by  the  threatenings  of  experiences  even  sterner  and  more  disastrous. 

The  complications  which  have  resulted  from  industrial  competition, 
the  new  difficulties  of  labour  and  capital  which  have  come  in  the  train 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


95 


of  laisser  faire,  have  lent  their  strength  to  emphasise  the  conviction 
that  the  State,  instead  of  being  the  worst  enemy,  is  the  true  friend  of 
the  individual.  The  doctrine  of  the  non-interference  by  the  State 
with  the  industrial  life  of  the  individual  has  very  nearly  reached  its 
reduction  to  absurdity.  The  evils  of  unlimited  and  unregulated  com¬ 
petition  have  thrown  into  clear  relief  the  advantages  of  co-operation ; 
the  superiority  of  organised  to  unorganised  activity  has  become  mani¬ 
fest.  And  what  more  perfect  form,  it  is  asked,  can  the  organisation 
of  industry  take  than  the  political  ?  Only  through  the  nationalisation 
of  industry,  it  is  felt  in  many  quarters,  can  we  secure  that  liberty  and 
equality  which  capitalism  has  destroyed ;  only  by  making  the  State 
the  common  guardian,  can  we  hope  for  an  emancipation  from  that 
industrial  slavery  which  now  degrades  and  impoverishes  the  lives  of 
so  many  of  our  citizens.  Capitalism  has  given  us  a  plutocracy  which 
is  as  baneful  as  any  political  despotism  the  world  has  seen ;  we  have 
escaped  from  the  serfdom  of  the  feudal  State,  only  to  fall  into  the 
new  serfdom  of  an  unregulated  industrialism. 

The  evils  of  leaving  everything  to  private  enterprise  force  them¬ 
selves  upon  our  attention  especially  in  the  case  of  what  are  generally 
called  public  interests — those  branches  of  activity  which  obviously 
affect  all  alike,  such  as  the  means  of  communication,  railways,  roads, 
and  telegraphs.  A  more  careful  reflection,  however,  discovers  a  cer¬ 
tain  public  value  in  all  forms  of  industry,  even  in  those  which  are 
apparently  most  private.  That  mutual  industrial  dependence  of  each 
on  all  and  all  on  each,  in  which  Plato  found  the  basis  of  the  State,  has 
once  more  come  to  constitute  a  powerful  plea  for  the  necessity  of 
political  organisation  ;  and  we  have  a  new  State-socialism  which  main¬ 
tains  that  the  equal  interests  of  each  can  be  conserved  only  by  the 
sacrifice  of  all  private  interests  to  the  public  interest,  at  least  in  the 
means  of  production,  that  only  by  identifying  the  interest  of  each 
with  that  of  all,  in  the  industrial  sphere,  can  we  hope  to  establish  the 
reign  of  justice  among  men. 

One  other  force  has  contributed  to  the  change  of  standpoint  which 
we  are  considering,  namely,  the  changed  conception  of  the  State  itself. 
The  progress  towards  individual  freedom  has  at  the  same  time  been  a 
progress  towards  the  true  form  of  the  State ;  and  as  the  oligarchical 
and  despotic  have  yielded  to  the  democratic  type  of  government,  it 
has  been  recognised  that  the  State  is  not  an  alien  force  imposed  upon 


g6 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


the  individual  from  without,  but  that,  in  their  true  being,  the  State 
and  the  individual  are  identical.  Upon  the  ruins  of  the  feudal  State 
the  individual  has  at  length  built  for  himself  a  new  State,  a  form  of 
government  to  which  he  can  yield  a  willing  obedience,  because  it  is 
the  creation  of  his  own  will  and,  in  obeying  it,  he  is  really  obeying 
himself.  L’etat  c’est  moi. 

Such  causes  as  these  have  led  to  the  return,  in  our  own  time,  to  the 
classical  conception  of  the  State  and  its  functions,  and  to  the  substitu¬ 
tion  of  the  question  of  the  rights  of  the  State  for  the  question  of  the 
rights  of  the  individual.  The  tendency  of  contemporary  thought  and 
effort  is,  on  the  whole,  to  extend  the  political  organisation  of  society,  to 
socialise  the  State  or  to  nationalise  society.  What,  then,  we  are  forced 
to  ask,  is  the  ethical  basis  of  the  State?  What,  in  its  principle  and 
idea,  is  it  ?  If  we  can  answer  this  question  of  the  ethical  basis  of  the 
State,  we  shall  not  find  much  difficulty  in  determining,  on  general 
lines,  its  ethical  functions,  whether  negative  or  positive,  whether  in 
the  sphere  of  justice  or  in  that  of  benevolence. 

Is  the  State  an  end-in-itself  ?  From  an  ethical  standpoint  the 
State  must  be  regarded  as  a  means,  not  as  in  itself  an  end.  The  State 
exists  for  the  sake  of  the  person,  not  the  person  for  the  sake  of  the 
State.  The  ethical  unit  is  the  person ;  and  the  function  of  the  State 
is  not  to  supersede  the  person,  but  to  aid  him  in  the  development  of 
his  personality — to  give  him  room  and  opportunity.  It  exists  for  him, 
not  he  for  it ;  it  is  his  sphere,  the  medium  of  his  moral  life.  Here 
there  is  no  real  difference  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern  views 
of  the  State ;  in  principle  they  are  one.  For  Plato  and  Aristotle,  as 
for  ourselves,  the  State  is  the  sphere  of  the  ethical  life,  the  true  State 
is  the  complement  of  the  true  individual — his  proper  milieu.  The 
Hellenic  State,  it  is  true,  as  it  actually  existed  and  even  as  Plato 
idealised  it,  contradicts  in  some  measure  our  conception  of  person¬ 
ality  ;  but  it  did  not  contradict  the  Greek  conception  of  personality. 
From  our  modern  standpoint,  we  find  it  inadequate  for  two  reasons. 
First,  it  exists  only  for  the  few,  the  many  exist  for  it :  the  Greek  State 
is,  in  our  view,  an  exclusive  aristocracy,  from  the  privileges  of  whose 
citizenship  the  majority  are  excluded.  Yet,  in  the  last  analysis,  we 
find  that  the  end  for  which  the  State  exists  is  the  person ;  those  who 
exist  merely  for  the  State  are  not  regarded  as  persons.  If  the  Greeks 
could  have  conceived  the  modern  extension  of  the  idea  of  personality, 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


97 


it  is  safe  to  say  that  they  would  have  entirely  agreed  with  the  modern 
interpretation  of  the  relation  of  the  State  to  the  individual.  In  the 
second  place,  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  with  all  their  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  appreciation,  the  Greeks  had  not  yet  so  fully  discovered  the 
riches  of  the  ethical  life.  With  our  profounder  appreciation  of  the 
significance  of  personality,1  the  merely  instrumental  value  of  the  State 
is  more  clearly  perceived.  But  to  those  who  did  reflect  upon  its  essen¬ 
tial  nature  the  Greek  State  also  was  a  creation  of  the  ethical  spirit — 
the  great  ethical  institution.  The  ancient,  as  well  as  the  modern  State, 
based  its  right  to  the  loyal  service  of  its  citizens  upon  the  plea  that, 
in  serving  it,  the  individual  was  really  serving  himself ;  that,  in  giving 
up  even  his  all  to  it  and  counting  nothing  his  own,  he  himself,  or  other 
persons,  would  receive  from  it  a  return  of  full  and  joyous  life,  out  of 
all  proportion  to  what  he  gave. 

It  is  only  when  we  reflect,  however,  that  we  fully  realise  this  in¬ 
strumental  value  of  the  State.  In  our  ordinary  unreflective  thought 
we  are  the  victims  of  the  association  of  ideas,  and  in  this,  as  in  so 
many  other  cases,  we  confuse  the  means  with  the  end.  We  cannot 
rationalise  our  loyalty  to  the  State,  any  more  than  we  can  rationalise 
our  other  loyalties.  It  is  a  case  of  the  familiar  *  miser’s  consciousness.’ 
As  the  miser  comes  to  think  of  money,  because  of  its  supreme  instru¬ 
mental  importance,  as  an  end-in-itself,  and  to  regard  the  real  ends  of 
life  as  only  means  to  this  fictitious  end,  so  does  the  citizen  come  to 
regard  the  State,  because  of  its  supreme  importance  as  the  medium  of 
the  ethical  life,  as  itself  the  end,  and  himself  as  but  its  instrument. 
Yet  it  is  the  function  of  a  medium  to  mediate  and  fulfil,  not  to  negate 
and  destroy,  that  which  it  mediates ;  and  whenever  we  reflect  we  see 
that  the  true  function  of  the  State  is  to  mediate  and  fulfil  the  personal 
life  of  the  citizen.  This  theoretic  insight  is,  of  course,  not  necessary 
to  the  life  of  citizenship ;  we  may  most  truly  use  the  State  for  this 
highest  end,  when  we  act  under  the  impulse  of  an  unreflecting  and 
uncalculating  loyalty  to  the  State  itself.  But  the  very  fact  that  we 
can  thus  serve  the  State  without  disloyalty  to  our  highest  self  implies 
that  we  are  not  serving  two  masters,  that  the  only  master  of  our  loyal 
service  is  the  ethical  and  personal  ideal.  The  ultimate  sanction  and 
measure  of  political  obedience  is  found  in  the  ethical  value  of  the 
State  as  the  vehicle  of  the  personal  life  of  its  citizens. 

1  Compare  this  discussion  of  personality  with  that  in. Chapter  XXVI. —  Ed 


98 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


The  true  relation  of  the  State  to  the  individual  has  been  obscured 
in  modern  discussion  by  the  constant  antithesis  of  'State-action’  and 
'individualism.’  The  antithesis  is  inevitable,  so  long  as  we  regard 
the  individual  as  a  mere  individual.  So  regarded,  he  is  like  an  atom 
that  resists  the  intrusion  of  every  other  atom  into  its  place :  the  mere 
individual  is  anti-social  and  anti-political,  and  to  'socialise’  or  'na¬ 
tionalise’  him  is  to  negate  and  destroy  him.  His  life  is  one  of  'go-as- 
you-please,’  of  absolute  laisser  faire.  But  the  ethical  unit  is  not  such 
a  mere  atomic  individual ;  it  is  the  person,  who  is  social  and  political 
as  well  as  individual,  and  whose  life  is  forwarded  and  fulfilled,  rather 
than  negated,  by  the  political  and  other  forms  of  social  organisation. 
To  isolate  him  from  others,  would  be  to  maim  and  stunt  his  life.  That 
the  State  has  seemed  to  encroach  upon  the  life  of  the  ethical  person, 
is  largely  due  to  the  constant  use  of  the  term  'State-interference.’  In 
so  far  as  the  State  may  be  said  to  interfere,  it  is  only  with  the  individ¬ 
ual,  not  with  the  person ;  and  the  purpose  of  its  interference  is  always 
to  save  the  person  from  the  interference  of  other  individuals.  Neither 
the  State  nor  the  individual,  but  the  person,  is  the  ultimate  ethical  end 
and  unit.  "The  State  at  best  is  the  work  of  man’s  feeble  hands,  work¬ 
ing  with  unsteady  purpose ;  the  person,  with  all  his  claims,  is  the  work 
of  God.”1  What  is  called  'State-interference’  is  in  reality  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  this  ethical  possibility,  the  making  room  for  the  life  of  the 
person.  If  all  individuals  were  left  to  themselves,  they  would  not  leave 
each  other  to  themselves :  individual  would  encroach  upon  individual, 
and  none  would  have  the  full  opportunity  of  ethical  self-realisation. 

The  ethical  basis  of  the  State.  Just  here  lies  the  ethical  problem 
of  the  basis  of  the  State.  The  essence  of  the  State  is  sovereignty,  and 
the  maintenance  of  the  sovereign  power  through  coercion  or  control. 
In  order  that  each  may  have  freedom  of  self-development,  each  must 
be  restrained  in  certain  ways.  Is  not  the  process  ethically  suicidal  ? 
Is  not  the  personality  destroyed  in  the  very  act  of  allowing  it  free¬ 
dom  of  self-development?  Does  not  State-control  supplant  self- 
control,  the  sovereignty  of  the  State  the  sovereignty  of  personality? 
Does  not  the  political  negate  the  ethical  life,  and  the  State  constrain 
the  person  to  act  impersonally  ? 

Two  extreme  answers  are  offered  to  this  question.  The  first  is  the 
answer  of  Anarchism,  the  refusal  of  the  self  to  acknowledge  any  con- 

iS.  S.  Laurie,  Ethica  (2d  ed.),  p.  69. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


99 


trol  from  without.  This  is  the  answer  of  pure  individualism,  and  con¬ 
fuses  liberty  with  license.  The  individual  who  refuses  to  acknowledge 
any  obligations  to  other  individuals,  and  denies  the  right  of  society  to 
control  his  life,  will  not  control  himself.  The  life  of  individuals  who 
refuse  to  become  'political’  will  be  a  'state  of  war,’  if  not  so  absolute 
as  Hobbes  has  pictured  it,  yet  deplorable  enough  to  teach  its  posses¬ 
sors  the  distinction  between  liberty  and  license,  and  to  awaken  in 
them  the  demand  for  that  deliverance  from  the  evils  of  unrestrained 
individualism  which  comes  only  with  the  strong  arm  of  law  and  gov¬ 
ernment.  The  other  answer  is  that  of  Despotism,  which  allows  no 
freedom  to  the  individual.  This  would  obviously  de-personalise  man, 
and,  depriving  him  of  his  ethical  prerogative  of  self-government,  would 
make  him  the  mere  instrument  or  organ  of  the  sovereign  power.  Do 
these  alternative  extremes  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  the  case?  Is 
despotism  the  only  escape  from  anarchy ;  can  we  not  have  liberty 
without  license? 

It  seems  at  first  as  if  there  were  no  third  possibility,  as  if  the  very 
existence  of  the  State,  of  law,  of  government,  carried  with  it  a  deroga¬ 
tion  from  the  personal  life  of  the  citizen.  So  far  as  its  dominion  ex¬ 
tends,  the  State  seems  to  take  the  management  of  his  life  out  of  the 
individual’s  hands,  and  to  manage  it  for  him.  The  will  of  another 
seems  to  impose  its  behests  upon  the  individual  will  or  person,  so  that 
he  becomes  its  creature  and  servant ;  losing  his  self-mastery,  he  seems 
to  be  controlled  and  mastered  by  another  will. 

It  is  the  specific  function  of  government  to  impose  upon  the  individual,  in 
apparent  violation  of  his  claim  to  free  self-determination,  an  alien  will,  an 
alien  law.  .  .  .  Preachers  and  teachers  try  to  instruct  us  as  to  what  course 
our  own  highest  reason  approves,  and  to  persuade  us  to  follow  that  course. 
When  they  have  failed,  government  steps  in  and  says :  "  Such  and  such  are 
the  true  principles  of  justice.  I  command  you  to  obey  them.  If  you  do 
not,  I  will  punish  you.”1 

Autonomy  is  of  the  essence  of  the  moral  life,  since  that  life  is  essen¬ 
tially  personal.  But  the  very  existence  of  the  State  seems  to  imply 
heteronomy,  or  an  impersonal  life  in  the  citizen.  The  difficulty  does 
not  arise,  it  is  to  be  observed,  from  the  artificiality  of  the  State,  or 
from  the  natural  egoism  of  human  nature.  Let  us  admit  that  the 

1F.  M.  Taylor,  The  Right  of  the  State  to  Be,  p.  44. 


100 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


State  itself  is  the  product  and  creation  of  the  human  spirit,  that  man 
is  by  nature  a  political  being,  that  is,  a  being  whose  life  tends  naturally 
to  the  political  form.  The  question  is,  whether  the  human  spirit  is 
not  imprisoned  in  its  own  creation ;  whether  the  ethical  life  is  not  lost 
in  the  political,  autonomy  in  heteronomy. 

The  first  thing  to  be  noted  is,  that  the  imposition  of  the  will  of 
another  upon  the  individual  does  not  destroy  the  individual  will.  We 
are  apt  to  think  of  the  divine  will  as  so  imposed,  of  certain  restrictions 
as  laid  by  the  very  nature  of  things  upon  the  life  of  the  individual ; 
yet  we  do  not  find  in  this  any  infraction  of  human  personality  or  will. 
All  that  is  imposed  is  a  certain  form  of  outward  activity ;  the  inward 
movement  of  the  will  is  not  necessarily  touched.  Thus  all  that  is 
enforced  by  the  political  will  or  the  sovereign  power  is  outward  obedi¬ 
ence,  not  the  inward  obedience  of  the  will  itself.  It  is  for  the  in¬ 
dividual  to  say  whether  he  will  complete  the  outward  surrender  by 
the  inward  self-surrender.  Pie  may  yield  either  an  outward  con¬ 
formity  or  an  inward  conformity ;  the  act  required  may  be  performed 
either  willingly  or  unwillingly.  The  appeal  is  to  the  will  or  person¬ 
ality,  and  it  is  for  the  will  to  respond  or  not  to  the  appeal.  What  is 
coerced  is  the  expression  of  the  individuality  in  outward  act :  the  citi¬ 
zen  is  not  allowed  to  act  as  the  creature  of  ungoverned  impulse.  Not 
that  the  task  of  self-control  is  taken  out  of  his  hands,  or  his  individ¬ 
uality  mastered  by  another  will  or  personality  rather  than  by  his  own. 
The  mastery  of  the  State  extends  only  to  the  expression  of  individual 
impulse  in  the  corresponding  outward  activities.  The  citizen  may  still 
cherish  those  impulsive  tendencies  the  expression  of  which  in  the  field 
of  overt  activity  has  been  restrained,  as  the  criminal  so  often  does 
cherish  his  criminal  instincts  and  habits,  notwithstanding  the  outward 
repression.  The  criminal  may  remain  a  criminal,  though  the  State 
prevents  his  commission  of  further  crime.  He  cannot  be  mastered  by 
another,  but  only  by  himself :  it  is  for  himself  alone,  by  an  act  of 
deliberate  choice,  to  say  whether  he  will  remain  a  criminal  or  not. 

By  its  punishments  the  State  not  merely  restrains  the  outward 
activity  of  its  citizens;  it  further,  by  touching  the  individual  sensi¬ 
bility,  appeals  to  the  person  to  exercise  that  self-restraint  which  is 
alone  permanently  effective.  It  is  for  the  person  to  say  whether  he 
will,  or  will  not,  exercise  such  self-restraint.  Just  in  so  far  as  he  re¬ 
enacts  the  verdict  of  the  State  upon  his  life,  or  recognises  the  justice 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


ioi 


of  its  punishment ;  just  in  so  far  as  he  identifies  his  will  with  the  will 
that  expresses  itself  in  the  punishment,  so  that  what  was  the  will  of 
another  becomes  his  own  will, — is  the  result  of  such  treatment  per¬ 
manently,  and  thoroughly,  and  in  the  highest  sense  successful.  When 
the  person  has  thus  taken  the  reins  of  the  government  of  sensibility 
into  his  own  hands,  political  coercion  ceases  to  be  necessary.  The  will 
now  expresses  itself  in  the  act,  the  dualism  of  inward  disposition  and 
outward  deed  has  disappeared,  and  the  life  is,  even  in  these  particu¬ 
lars,  a  personal  life. 

Thus  interpreted,  the  coercion  of  the  State  is  seen  to  be  an  extension 
of  the  coercion  of  nature.  Nature  itself  disallows  certain  lines  of 
activity,  does  not  permit  us  to  follow  every  impulse.  The  organisa¬ 
tion  of  life  in  political  society  implies  a  further  restraint  upon  in¬ 
dividual  tendencies  to  activity,  a  certain  further  organisation  and 
co-ordination  of  the  outward  activities.  But  the  organisation  and 
co-ordination  of  the  impulsive  tendencies  to  activity — this  is  in  the 
hands  not  of  the  State,  but  of  the  individual  will.  The  right  of  the 
State  to  coerce  the  individual,  in  the  sense  indicated,  is  grounded  in 
the  fact  that  it  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  interests  of  personality.  As 
these  interests  are  superior  in  right  to  the  interests  of  mere  individual 
caprice,  so  are  the  laws  of  the  State  superior  to  the  instincts  and  im¬ 
pulses  of  the  individual.  The  State  restrains  the  expression  of  the 
individuality,  that  it  may  vindicate  the  sacred  rights  of  personality  in 
each  individual.  Its  order  is  an  improvement  upon  the  order  of 
nature ;  it  is  more  discriminating,  more  just,  more  encouraging  to 
virtue,  more  discouraging  to  vice.  The  political  order  foreshadows 
the  moral  order  itself ;  it  is  a  version,  the  best  available  for  the  time 
and  place  and  circumstances,  of  that  order. 

And  although  the  action  of  the  State  seems  at  first  sight  to  be 
merely  coercive,  and  its  will  the  will  of  another,  a  closer  analysis 
reveals  the  fundamental  identity  of  the  State,  in  its  idea  at  least,  with 
the  ethical  person.  The  sovereign  will  represents  the  individual  will, 
or  rather  the  general  will  of  the  individual  citizens.  Here,  in  the 
general  will  of  the  people,  in  the  common  personality  of  the  citizens, 
is  the  true  seat  of  sovereignty.  The  actual  and  visible  sovereign  or 
government  is  representative  of  this  invisible  sovereign.  The  supreme 
power  in  the  State,  whatever  be  the  form  of  government,  is  therefore, 
truly  regarded,  the  'public  person/  and,  in  obeying  it,  the  citizens 


102 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


are  really  obeying  their  common  personality.  The  sovereign  power  is 
"the  public  person  vested  with  the  power  of  the  law,  and  so  is  to  be 
considered  as  the  image,  phantom,  or  representative  of  the  common¬ 
wealth  .  .  .  and  thus  he  has  no  will,  no  power,  but  that  of  the  law.”1 
Obedience  to  the  State  is  obedience  to  the  citizen’s  own  better  self ; 
and,  like  Socrates,  we  ought  to  be  unwilling  to  'disobey  a  better.’ 
The  apparent  heteronomy  is  really  autonomy  in  disguise ;  I  am,  after 
all,  sovereign  as  well  as  subject,  subject  of  my  own  legislation.  The 
right  of  the  State  is  therefore  supreme,  being  the  right  of  personality 
itself.  For  the  individual  to  assert  his  will  against  the  will  of  the 
State,  is  ethically  suicidal.  Socrates  went  willingly  to  death,  because 
he  could  not  live  and  obey  the  State  rather  than  God ;  he  accepted  the 
will  of  the  people  that  he  should  die,  and  saw  in  their  will  the  will 
of  God.  Death  was  for  him  the  only  path  of  obedience  to  both  the 
outward  and  the  inward  'better.’  The  individual  may  criticise  the 
political  order,  as  an  inadequate  version  of  the  moral  order.  He  may 
try  to  improve  upon,  and  reform  it.  He  may  even,  like  Socrates, 
'obey  God  rather  than  man,’  and  refuse  the  inner  obedience  of  the 
will.  But,  where  the  State  keeps  within  its  proper  function,  he  may 
not  openly  violate  its  order. 

The  limit  of  State  action.  If  the  State  should  step  beyond  its 
proper  function,  and  invade,  instead  of  protecting,  the  sphere  of  per¬ 
sonality  ;  if  the  actual  State  should  not  merely  fall  short  of,  but  con¬ 
tradict  the  ideal — then  the  right  of  rebellion  belongs  to  the  subject. 
If  a  revolution  has  become  necessary,  and  if  such  revolution  can  be 
accomplished  only  by  rebellion,  rebellion  takes  the  place  of  obedience 
as  the  duty  of  the  citizen.  Even  in  his  rebellion  he  is  still  a  citizen, 
loyal  to  the  law  and  constitution  of  the  ideal  State  which  he  seeks  by 
his  action  to  realise. 

This  contradiction  may  occur  in  either  of  two  ways.  In  the  first 
place,  the  action  of  the  sovereign  power  may  not  be  representative  or 
'  public  ’ :  it  may  act  as  a  private  individual,  or  body  of  individuals. 
As  Locke  again  says : 

When  he  quits  this  public  representation,  this  public  will,  and  acts  by  his 
own  private  will,  he  degrades  himself,  and  is  but  a  single  private  person 
without  power,  and  without  will  that  has  any  right  to  obedience — the  mem¬ 
bers  owing  no  obedience  but  to  the  public  will  of  the  society. 

1  Locke,  Treatise  of  Civil  Government ,  Book  II,  chap.  xiii. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


103 


The  true  sovereign  must  count  nothing  'his  own,’  must  have  no  private 
interests  in  his  public  acts :  his  interests  must  be  those  of  the  people, 
and  their  will  his.  If  he  acts  otherwise,  asserting  his  own  private  will, 
and  subordinating  the  good  of  the  citizens  to  his  own  individual  good, 
he  thereby  uncrowns  himself,  and  abnegates  his  sovereignty.  Then 
comes  the  time  for  the  exercise  of  'the  supreme  power  that  remains 
still  in  the  people.’  The  necessity  of  the  English  and  the  French 
Revolution,  for  example,  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  actual  State  con¬ 
tradicted  the  ideal,  seeking  to  destroy  those  rights  of  personality  of 
which  it  ought  to  have  been  the  custodian,  and  before  which  it  was 
called  to  give  an  account  of  its  stewardship.  At  such  a  time  the  com¬ 
mon  personality,  in  whose  interest  the  State  exists,  must  step  forth, 
assert  itself  against  the  so-called  'State,’  and,  condemning  the  actual, 
give  birth  |o  one  that  shall  be  true  to  its  own  idea,  that  shall  help  and 

not  hinder  its  citizens  in  their  life  of  self-realisation.  The  power  re- 

% 

turns  to  its  source,  the  general  will,  which  is  thus  forced  to  find  for 
itself  a  new  and  more  adequate  expression. 

This  brings  us  to  the  second  form  of  the  contradiction  between  the 
actual  and  the  ideal  State.  When  the  present  formulation  of  the 
general  will  has  become  inadequate,  it  must  be  re-formulated ;  and 
this  re-formulation  of  its  will  by  the  people  may  mean  revolution  as 
well  as  reformation.  Such  a  criticism  and  modification  of  the  State 
is  indeed  always  going  on,  public  opinion  is  always  more  or  less  active 
and  more  or  less  articulate ;  and  it  is  the  function  of  the  statesman  to 
interpret,  as  well  as  to  guide  and  form,  this  public  opinion.  As  long 
as  there  is  harmony  between  the  general  will  and  the  will  of  the  gov¬ 
ernment,  as  long  as  the  government  is  truly  representative  of  the 
governed,  so  long  the  State  exists  and  prospers. 

13.  The  Ethics  of  the  Family  versus  the 
Ethics  of  the  State1 

The  salvation  of  every  society,  as  of  every  species,  depends  on  the 
maintenance  of  an  absolute  opposition  between  the  regime  of  the  fam¬ 
ily  and  the  regime  of  the  State.  To  survive,  every  species  of  creature 
must  fulfil  two  conflicting  requirements.  During  a  certain  period  each 

1  From  The  Principles  of  Sociology  (Vol.  I,  pp.  719-721),  by  Herbert  Spencer. 
D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York,  1901. 


104 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


member  must  receive  benefits  in  proportion  to  its  incapacity.  After 
that  period,  it  must  receive  benefits  in  proportion  to  its  capacity. 
Observe  the  bird  fostering  its  young  or  the  mammal  rearing  its  litter, 
and  you  see  that  imperfection  and  inability  are  rewarded ;  and  that 
as  ability  increases,  the  aid  given  in  food  and  warmth  becomes  less. 
Obviously  this  law  that  the  least  worthy  shall  receive  most  aid,  is 
essential  as  a  law  for  the  immature :  the  species  would  disappear  in  a 
generation  did  not  parents  conform  to  it.  Now  mark  what  is,  con¬ 
trariwise,  the  law  for  the  mature.  Here  individuals  gain  benefits 
proportionate  to  their  merits.  The  strong,  the  swift,  the  keen-sighted, 
the  sagacious,  profit  by  their  respective  superiorities — catch  prey  or 
escape  enemies  as  the  case  may  be.  The  less  capable  thrive  less,  and 
on  the  average  of  cases  rear  fewer  offspring.  The  least  capable  dis¬ 
appear  by  failure  to  get  food  or  from  inability  to  escape,  i^id  by  this 
process  is  maintained  that  quality  of  the  species  which  enables  it  to 
survive  in  the  struggle  for  existence  with  other  species.  There  is  thus, 
during  mature  life,  a  reversal  of  the  principle  that  ruled  during  im¬ 
mature  life. 

Already  we  have  seen  that  a  society  stands  to  its  citizens  in  the 
same  relation  as  a  species  to  its  members ;  and  the  truth  which  we 
have  just  seen  holds  of  the  one  holds  of  the  other.  The  law  for  the 
undeveloped  is  that  there  shall  be  most  aid  where  there  is  least  merit. 
The  helpless,  useless  infant,  extremely  exigeant,  must  from  hour  to 
hour  be  fed,  kept  warm,  amused,  exercised.  As  fast  as,  during  child¬ 
hood  and  boyhood,  the  powers  of  self-preservation  increase,  the  at¬ 
tentions  required  and  given  become  less  perpetual,  but  still  have  to 
be  great.  Only  with  approach  to  maturity,  when  some  value  and 
efficiency  have  been  acquired,  is  this  policy  considerably  qualified. 
But  when  the  young  man  enters  into  the  battle  of  life,  he  is  dealt  with 
after  a  contrary  system.  The  general  principle  now  is  that  his  reward 
shall  be  proportioned  to  his  value.  Though  parental  aid,  not  abruptly 
ending,  may  soften  the  effects  of  this  social  law,  yet  the  mitigation  of 
them  is  but  slight ;  and,  apart  from  parental  aid,  this  social  law  is  but 
in  a  small  degree  traversed  by  private  generosity.  Then  in  subse¬ 
quent  years  when  parental  aid  has  ceased,  the  stress  of  the  struggle 
becomes  greater,  and  the  adjustment  of  prosperity  to  efficiency  more 
rigorous.  Clearly  with  a  society,  as  with  a  species,  survival  depends 
on  conformity  to  both  of  these  antagonist  principles.  Import  into  the 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


105 


family  the  law  of  the  society,  and  let  children  from  infancy  upwards 
have  life-sustaining  supplies  proportioned  to  their  life-sustaining 
labours,  and  the  society  disappears  forthwith  by  death  of  all  its  young. 
Import  into  the  society  the  law  of  the  family,  and  let  the  life- 
sustaining  supplies  be  great  in  proportion  as  the  life-sustaining  labours 
are  small,  and  the  society  decays  from  increase  of  its  least  worthy 
members  and  decrease  of  its  most  worthy  members.  It  fails  to  hold 
its  own  in  the  struggle  with  other  societies,  which  allow  play  to  the 
natural  law  that  prosperity  shall  vary  as  efficiency. 

Hence  the  necessity  of  maintaining  this  cardinal  distinction  between 
the  ethics  of  the  Family  and  the  ethics  of  the  State.  Hence  the  fatal 
result  if  family  disintegration  goes  so  far  that  family-policy  and  state- 
policy  become  confused.  Unqualified  generosity  must  remain  the 
principle  of  the  family  while  offspring  are  passing  through  their  early 
stages ;  and  generosity  increasingly  qualified  by  justice,  must  remain 
its  principle  as  offspring  are  approaching  maturity.  Conversely,  the 
principle  of  the  society,  guiding  the  acts  of  citizens  to  one  another, 
must  ever  be,  justice,  qualified  by  such  generosity  as  their  several 
natures  prompt ;  joined  with  unqualified  justice  in  the  corporate  acts 
of  the  society  to  its  members.  However  fitly  in  the  battle  of  life 
among  adults,  the  proportioning  of  rewards  to  merits  may  be  tempered 
by  private  sympathy  in  favour  of  the  inferior ;  nothing  but  evil  can 
result  if  this  proportioning  is  so  interfered  with  by  public  arrange¬ 
ments,  that  demerit  profits  at  the  expense  of  merit. 

14.  Society  and  the  Individual1 

This  ancient  theme  is  of  importance  for  us  today  because  un¬ 
doubtedly  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  reaction  from  the  emphasis  upon 
the  social  that  characterized  our  thinking  in  all  the  social  sciences 
during  the  past  two  decades.  For  a  time  the  nineteenth-century  in¬ 
dividualist  was  doing  no  more  than  fighting  an  obstinate  rear-guard 
action.  He  was  content  to  protest  against  extravagant  emphasis  upon 

1  By  Professor  Roscoe  Pound,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  LL.M.,  D.C.L.,  Carter  Professor 
of  General  Jurisprudence  and  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Law,  Harvard  University. 
Adapted  from  the  article  under  this  title  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  National  Con¬ 
ference  of  Social  Work,  1919,  pp.  103-107.  Copyright,  1920,  by  the  National 
Conference  of  Social  Work. 


io6 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


the  social,  and  to  urge  a  certain  verity  in  the  extreme  individualist 
point  of  view.  Of  late  he  has  begun  to  halt  and  hold  his  head  high, 
and  indeed  even  to  make  counter  attacks.  Some  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  urge  that  recent  theories  of  social  interests  have  "abolished  the 
individual.”  In  large  part  this  reaction  seems  to  me  to  proceed  upon 
a  misunderstanding  of  the  significant  features  of  the  social  point  of 
view.  Indeed,  I  venture  to  believe  that  we  are  only  just  beginning  to 
grasp  the  importance  and  to  perceive  the  possibilities  of  that  point 
of  view. 

Our  thinking,  like  our  institutions,  like  our  speech,  like  our  spelling, 
yes,  like  the  ground  plan  of  our  cities,  is  largely  conditioned  by  the 
past.  One  of  our  fundamental  local  units  is  the  county  which  in  its 
very  name  preserves  the  memory  of  the  days  when  the  earl  and  the 
bishop  administered  in  their  territorial  domain.  In  our  representative 
government  the  representatives  still  represent  soil — the  paramount 
interest  of  the  Middle  Ages — not  directly  modern  interests.  The 
words  we  use  by  which  our  thinking  is  conditioned  have  thousands  of 
years  of  history  behind  them,  and  our  spelling  records  the  vicissitudes 
of  that  history.  In  the  larger  and  older  cities  of  the  Atlantic  coast 
the  very  street  plan  of  the  city  represents,  not  the  needs  of  the  traffic 
of  today,  but  the  caprice  or  convenience  of  the  first  settler  in  pioneer 
days,  or  perhaps  in  the  case  of  one  of  our  oldest  cities,  the  caprice  or 
convenience  of  the  seventeenth-century  cow.  In  like  manner  our 
thinking  on  the  relation  of  society  and  the  individual  is  conditioned 
not  primarily  by  the  circumstances  of  modern  society,  but  by  two 
ideas  of  the  past. 

Older  interpretations  of  the  social  order.  One  of  these  is  the 
idea  of  society  as  a  voluntary  product  of  individual  agreement,  like  a 
partnership  or  a  corporation — an  idea  by  which  after  the  breakdown 
of  the  medieval  social  organization  men  sought  to  give  expression  to 
the  social  interest  in  the  individual  life.  The  other  of  these  ideas  is 
the  Byzantine  conception  of  the  state  as  authority  from  without,  not 
public  service  from  within,  revived  with  the  rise  of  the  national  idea 
after  the  Reformation,  and  given  strength  by  the  development  of 
strong  central  national  governments  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries.  Under  the  influence  of  these  ideas  we  came  to  think  of  the 
conflict  between  individual  interests  and  the  interests  of  politically 
organized  society — or  rather  the  interests  of  the  personified  political 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


107 


organization  of  society — as  a  fundamental  antithesis  between  society 
and  the  individual.  The  circumstances  of  the  contest  between  the 
courts  and  the  Crown  in  seventeenth-century  England  intrenched  this 
mode  of  thought  in  American  law  and  American  politics,  and  our  Bills 
of  Rights  are  full  of  it.  Accordingly  in  the  nineteenth  century  we 
were  wont  to  read  the  history  of  civilization  as  a  history  of  individual 
struggle  against  organized  society  to  establish  and  secure  individual 
rights,  and  our  classical  legal  and  political  thought  put  society  and  all 
social  groups  as  products  of  individual  agreement. 

As  anything  more  than  an  attempt  at  a  rational  account  of  the 
social  interest  in  the  individual  human  life  nothing  could  be  more 
untrue.  Metaphysically  the  individual  conscious  ego  may,  if  you  will, 
be  the  unit.  But  it  is  a  profound  mistake  to  take  that  ego  for  the 
ultimate  reality  in  the  social  world.  You  and  I  are  born  into  the 
great  stream  of  society.  We  die  out  of  it.  But  it  went  on  before  us 
and  will  go  on  after  us,  and  if  some  of  us  are  able  to  do  something  to 
shape  some  part  of  its  course,  yet  how  much  more  will  it  have  shaped 
us,  molding  our  thoughts  by  fixing  the  conditions  under  which  and 
words  by  which  we  think,  controlling  our  actions  by  bonds  of  conven¬ 
tion,  fashion,  general  opinion,  of  which  we  are  hardly  conscious,  which 
we  can  resist  only  here  and  there,  and  then  often  but  feebly,  and 
forming  our  very  personality  by  the  pressure  day  and  night  of  a 
thousand  points  of  contact  with  our  fellows  in  the  stream.  So  true 
is  it  that  the  individual  is  a  social  product  or  a  social  outcome  rather 
than  society  an  individual  product. 

A  few  years  ago  all  this  was,  one  might  say,  trite.  But  a  reaction 
has  set  in.  Men  have  come  to  fear  that  in  this  emphasis  on  the  social 
stream  the  interests  of  the  individual  in  the  stream  will  be  overlooked 
and  neglected — as  it  has  been  said,  that  our  social  thinking  would 
abolish  the  individual.  Thus  there  is  coming  to  be  a  marked  revival 
of  the  abstract  individualism  against  which  we  were  all  in  revolt  a 
decade  ago. 

I  submit  the  way  to  meet  this  reaction  is  to  recognize  the  kernel  of 
truth  in  the  old  individualism — that  is,  that  one  of  the  chiefest  of 
social  interests  is  that  each  individual  have  an  opportunity  to  lead  a 
human  life ;  to  recognize  a  social  interest  in  the  moral  and  social  life 
of  the  individual,  and  to  recognize  that  one  of  the  chief  agencies  of 
social  progress  is  individual  freedom  and  individual  initiative. 


io8 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


An  engineering  interpretation.  Much  of  the  progress  in  thinking 
consists  in  new  ways  of  putting  old  ideas,  and  new  ways  of  stating  old 
problems.  In  the  past  we  have  tried  to  state  the  problem  of  society 
and  the  individual  in  terms  of  law  by  theories  of  a  social  contract,  in 
terms  of  metaphysics  by  theories  of  the  general  will  and  the  state 
personality,  and  in  terms  of  biology  by  theories  of  a  well-ordered 
struggle  for  existence.  I  venture  to  think  we  may  gain  something  by 
stating  it  in  terms  of  engineering.  In  this  belief  I  have  on  several 
occasions  hazarded  an  engineering  interpretation  of  sociology,  juris¬ 
prudence,  and  politics.  Let  us  think  of  a  great  task,  or  rather  a  great 
series  of  tasks,  of  social  engineering.  For  our  problem  is  not  one  of 
abstract  harmonizing  of  human  wills ;  it  is  one  of  concrete  secur¬ 
ing  or  realizing  of  human  interests.  The  central  tragedy  of  existence 
is  that  there  are  not  enough  of  the  material  goods  of  existence,  as  it 
were,  to  go  round ;  that  while  individual  wants  are  infinite  the  mate¬ 
rial  means  of  satisfying  those  wants  are  finite ;  that  while,  in  common 
phrase,  we  all  want  the  earth,  there  are  many  of  us  but  there  is  only 
one  earth.  Thus  our  task  becomes  one  of  conserving  these  goods  of 
existence  in  order  to  make  them  go  as  far  as  possible,  of  eliminating 
friction  and  of  eliminating  waste,  in  order  that  where  each  cannot 
have  all  that  he  claims,  he  may  at  least  have  all  that  is  possible.  Put 
in  this  way  our  problem  becomes  one  of  securing  as  many  interests  as 
we  can  with  as  little  sacrifice  as  possible  of  other  interests. 

Thus  our  first  consideration  must  be  to  take  stock  of  these  interests 
which  we  are  to  secure,  our  second  to  weigh  and  balance  them  and 
determine  which  we  are  to  secure  and  within  what  limits,  and  our 
third  to  find  how  to  secure  those  which  we  have  recognized  and 
defined. 

Of  these  three  problems  the  last  two  are  foreign  to  the  present  pur¬ 
pose.  Let  us  look  a  moment  at  the  first.  Protesting  after  the  fashion 
of  the  common-law  pleader  that  I  mean  nothing  more  than  to  classify, 
I  would  venture  to  suggest  that  the  interests  of  which  we  must  take 
account  fall  into  three  great  groups.  One  group  is  individual  interests 
— the  claims  which  the  human  being  makes  simply  because  hie  is  a 
human  being.  For  example,  the  claims  to  be  secure  in  his  body  and 
life,  in  his  physical  existence  ;  to  be  secure  in  his  reputation  and  honor, 
in  his  social  existence ;  to  be  secure  in  his  belief  and  opinion,  in  his 
spiritual  existence ;  to  be  secure  in  his  domestic  relations,  in  his  ex- 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


109 


panded  individual  existence,  and  to  be  secure  in  his  substance,  in  his 
economic  existence.  Another  group  may  be  called  public  interests — 
that  is,  the  claims  which  the  state  may  make  simply  as  such — the 
claims  which  are  involved  in  the  very  existence  of  a  politically  organ¬ 
ized  society.  Both  these  and  the  next  group  were  thought  of  originally 
as  individual  interests  of  a  personal  sovereign,  and  our  thinking  ever 
since  has  been  conditioned  too  much  by  this  circumstance.  Our  legal 
thinking  today  thinks  of  the  next  group  as  interests  of  the  state  in  its 
capacity  of  guardian  of  social  interests.  Let  us,  however,  think  of 
them  for  the  moment  directly ;  let  us  think  rather  of  the  state  as  an 
instrumentality  through  which  all  interests  are,  or  are  sought  to  be, 
secured.  Looking  at  it  in  that  way  we  may  put  for  our  third  group, 
social  interests,  the  claims  of  human  society,  simply  as  such — the 
claims  involved  in  the  very  existence  of  civilized  human  society.  Such 
claims,  for  instance,  are  the  general  security,  including  in  modern 
times  security  of  acquisitions  and  security  of  transactions,  the  general 
morals,  the  security  of  social  institutions,  domestic,  religious,  and 
political,  the  conservation  of  social  resources,  the  general  progress, 
economic,  political,  and  cultural,  and  last,  but  by  no  means  least,  the 
social  interest  in  the  individual  moral  and  social  life — the  social 
interest  in  the  individual  human  existence.  Here  I  venture  to  think 
we  have  the  key  to  our  problem.  Social  control  is  a  matter  of  com¬ 
promise.  If  I  assert  myself  by  driving  an  automobile  forty  miles  an 
hour,  I  come  into  conflict  with  your  interest  in  freely  crossing  the 
street.  Men  used  to  think  this  was  simply  a  problem  of  compromise 
between  you  and  me.  But  it  is  more  than  that  and  more  even  than  a 
compromise  between  you  and  me  and  politically  organized  society  as 
an  entity.  Over  and  above  the  claims  of  individuals  and  the  claims 
of  the  sovereign  political  organization  there  are  the  claims  made  by 
human  civilized  society,  inherent  in  Jhe  very  nature  of  such  society. 
We  have  lost  sight  of  most  of  these  in  the  first  great  claim  of  society, 
the  claim  to  peace  and  order  and  health  and  public  safety,  and  as 
incidents,  to  the  security  of  property  and  contracts ;  but  beyond  that 
there  are  the  other  social  interests  already  enumerated,  and  above  all, 
and  the  one  I  want  to  emphasize  here,  the  social  interest  in  the  in¬ 
dividual  moral  and  social  life — that  each  human  being  in  society 
may  be  able  to  live  a  human  life.  What  we  have  to  do  is  through 
some  system  of  social  engineering  to  conserve  the  objects  of  human 


1 10 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


claims  so  as  to  eliminate  friction,  eliminate  waste,  and  give  to  these 
claims  the  widest  possible  satisfaction  out  of  the  objects  to  which 
they  apply. 

An  engineering  interpretation  of  the  state.  Out  of  this  engineer¬ 
ing  interpretation  of  the  social  problem  comes  a  significant  change  in 
our  idea  of  the  state.  Let  us  for  a  moment  think  of  it  not  legally  as 
a  relation  created  by  a  social  compact,  nor  metaphysically  as  the 
general  will,  nor  biologically  as  a  huge  super-organism,  but  function¬ 
ally  as  the  chiefest  of  human  agencies  by  which  human  society 
achieves  its  tasks  of  social  engineering.  For  after  all  the  state  is  by 
no  means  the  sole  of  these  agencies.  Religious  organizations,  fraternal 
organizations,  vocational  organizations,  social  and  benevolent  organi¬ 
zations,  even  business  organizations,  do  a  large  part.  The  state  is 
simply  the  chiefest  and  most  enduring  and  most  efficacious  of  these 
agencies.  Thus  in  this  sense  we  may  think  of  it  as  a  great  public 
service  institution — one  might  say  a  great  public  service  company,  as 
truly  as  a  railroad  company,  or  a  lighting  company  or  a  telegraph 
company — bound  from  the  nature  of  its  undertaking  to  furnish  a 
reasonable  service  to  all  alike  at  reasonable  rates  and  without  dis¬ 
crimination,  and  to  provide  a  reasonable  incidental  service  and  inci¬ 
dental  facilities. 

Looking  at  the  state  in  this  fashion  we  may  see  that  it  is  neither  the 
Leviathan  which  Hobbes  pictured — the  monster  armed  with  the 
sword  of  war  and  the  sword  of  justice  ruling  us  from  without — nor 
the  benevolent  and  all-wise  father  which  others  have  pictured,  feeding 
us,  clothing  us,  educating  us,  and  setting  us  to  wholesome  tasks  accord¬ 
ing  to  our  capacity.  Lord  Coke  translated  S.  P.  Q.  R.,  Stultus  populus 
quaerit  Romani — "A  foolish  people  runneth  to  Rome.”  The  individ¬ 
ualism  of  the  seventeenth-century  common  law  saw  no  reason  why 
men  should  run  to  the  great  center  of  authority  at  every  turn. 

Much  undoubtedly  can  be  done,  and  must  be  done,  through  the 
organized  effort  of  all  of  us  directed  from  the  center.  But  the  great 
central  machine  may  attempt  too  much.  Friction  and  waste  are  not 
necessarily  eliminated  by  setting  this  machine  to  do  what  may  be 
done  better  by  spontaneous  individual  initiative.  For,  let  us  repeat, 
what  we  are  trying  to  do  is  to  conserve  the  goods  of  existence,  elimi¬ 
nate  friction  in  the  use  of  them,  and  prevent  waste  in  the  enjoyment 
of  them.  Our  political  organization  seeks  to  do  this,  and  in  doing  it 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


hi 


above  all  to  secure  the  social  interest  in  the  moral  and  social  life  of 
the  individual.  If  it  functions  aright  it  enables  each  of  us  and  all  of 
us  to  live  a  truly  human  life  in  civilized  society.  But  in  doing  this  it 
does  much  more.  If  it  functions  aright  it  preserves  and  orders  and  ad- 
vances  civilization,  which  is  something  older  and  more  enduring  and 
more  precious  than  any  of  us  or  all  of  us,  and  older  and  more  precious 
and  perhaps  more  enduring  than  any  single  organization — to  which 
indeed  all  human  organizations  are  but  means.  And  what  is  civiliza¬ 
tion  after  all  but  an  increasingly  perfect  social  engineering  ? 

15.  The  Individual  and  the  State1 

Our  task  to-day  is  to  examine  the  movement  of  opinion  which  has 
been  outlined,  in  the  light  of  social  theory.  We  held  that  social  prog¬ 
ress  consists  in  a  harmonious  development,  and  we  further  defined 
this  conception  as  including  a  harmony  in  the  development  of  the 
personal  life  of  the  members  of  society,  and  in  the  working  out  and 
fulfilment  of  the  various  and  at  first  sight  divergent  elements  of  value 
which  constitute  the  well-being  of  the  social  order.  In  the  movement 
of  opinion  we  have  seen  a  certain  conflict  of  ideals  and  our  question 
is  whether,  if  we  probe  deeper,  a  basis  of  reconstruction  can  be  found. 
To  find  an  answer  let  us  take  up  the  question  afresh.  Let  us  start 
with  the  conception  of  the  social  order  which  the  principle  of  har¬ 
monious  development  would  suggest.  Let  us  consider  to  what  view 
of  the  functions  of  the  state  and  the  rights  of  the  individual  it  would 
lead  and  let  us,  in  order  to  observe  the  limitations  of  time,  deal  with 
the  question  with  special  reference  to  the  problem  of  liberty. 

To  begin  with,  the  general  theory  of  society  indicated  by  the  ideal 
of  harmonious  development  is  clearly  one  of  cooperation.  We  may 
say,  with  Aristotle,  that  society  is  an  association  of  human  beings 
with  a  view  to  the  good  life.  The  social  life  is  essentially  a  co¬ 
operation  in  the  working  out  of  common  objects,  and  the  best  or¬ 
ganized  society  will  be  that  in  which  the  cooperation  is  most  perfect 
and  complete ;  but  in  saying  this,  two  distinctions  have  to  be  kept  in 
view.  In  the  first  place  cooperation  has  its  negative  as  well  as  its 

1From  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory  (pp.  185-205),  by  Leonard  T. 
Hobhouse,  D.  Lilt.,  Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  London.  Copy¬ 
right,  1911,  by  the  Columbia  University  Press,  New  York. 


1 12 


/ 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


positive  side.  Mutual  aid  is  essential  to  social  life ;  mutual  forbear¬ 
ance  is  equally  necessary;  indeed,  as  a  condition  of  living  together, 
at  least  of  living  a  harmonious  life  together,  it  is  even  the  more  funda¬ 
mental  of  the  two,  and  also  perhaps  the  more  difficult  to  secure.  In 
thinking,  then,  of  social  life  as  a  form  of  cooperation  we  must  lay 
stress  not  only  upon  the  activities  which  it  cultivates  in  common,  but 
on  the  idiosyncrasies  which  it  tolerates,  the  privacy  which  it  allows, 
the  divergent  developments  of  personality  which  it  fosters. 

Secondly,  in  speaking  of  the  ideal  of  society,  we  must  remember 
that  social  life  and  the  life  of  the  state  are  not  one  and  the  same  thing. 
From  the  principle  that  social  life  is  a  mode  of  cooperation  we  cannot 
infer  offhand  that  the  function  of  the  state  is  to  foster  cooperation  of 
the  same  kind  and  in  the  same  degree.  To  determine  what  functions 
the  state  itself  has  to  perform  within  the  cooperative  social  life,  we 
have  to  ask  ourselves,  first,  what  are  the  special  characteristics  of  the 
state  as  a  form  of  society,  and  how  these  special  characteristics  affect 
its  function.  Two  characteristics  which  affect  all  state  action  occur  to 
us  at  once  as  bearing  upon  the  question  of  its  legitimate  sphere.  These 
are,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  life  of  the  state  is  crystallized  into  the 
form  of  definite  institutions,  that  its  ordinances  have  to  be  incor¬ 
porated  in  laws  and  rules  of  universal  application,  that  it  must  deal 
with  men  in  masses  and  with  problems  in  accordance  with  what  is 
general  and  not  with  what  is  particular.  Hence  it  is  with  difficulty 
adapted  to  the  individuality  of  life;  it  is  a  clumsy  instrument,  as  it 
were,  for  handling  human  variation.  It  is  inadequate,  to  adapt 
Bacon’s  phrase,  to  the  subtlety  of  human  nature.  Its  sphere  is  the 
normal,  the  prosaic,  the  commonplace ;  its  business  is  to  solidify  the 
substructure  of  society  rather  than  to  pursue  its  adornment.  It  can 
handle  the  matters  upon  which  ordinary  people  usually  agree  better 
than  those  upon  which  there  is  variety  of  opinion. 

In  the  second  place,  the  state  is  a  compulsory  form  of  association. 
Its  laws  have  force  behind  them,  and  not  only  so,  but  the  state  does 
not  leave  it  open  to  the  inhabitants  of  its  territory  to  decide  whether 
they  will  remain  members  of  the  association  or  not.  In  a  voluntary 
association  there  are  rules  compulsory  upon  all  those  who  remain 
members,  but  the  ultimate  liberty  is  reserved  to  individuals  to  part 
from  the  association  if  they  please.  In  the  case  of  the  state,  this 
ultimate  liberty  can  only  be  exercised  by  quitting  the  state  territory 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


ii3 


altogether,  and  even  that  privilege  has  been  at  various  times  denied 
to  the  subjects  of  the  community,  and  is  to-day  not  unhampered  with 
difficulties  for  the  poor.  Now  it  is  true  that  there  are  important  func¬ 
tions  which  the  state  can  perform  without  the  direct  use  of  compul¬ 
sion.  When  government  conducts  a  business  enterprise  it  does  not 
necessarily  compel  any  one  to  avail  himself  of  its  services,  nor  does 
it  necessarily  suppress  competition.  On  this  side  the  question  as  be¬ 
tween  the  state  and  the  individual  is  not  one  of  the  limits  of  liberty, 
but  of  responsibility.  But  ordinarily  the  intervention  of  the  state 
action  does  involve  some  sort  of  compulsion  upon  the  individual  and 
in  what  follows  we  will  confine  our  attention  to  cases  of  this  kind.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  see  that  functions  maj^  be  useful  and  salutary  when 
freely  performed  which  would  be  useless  and  even  injurious  when 
imposed  on  reluctant  people.  In  a  sense  this  may  be  said  to  be  true 
of  all  moral  and  spiritual  functions  in  so  far  as  they  are  moral  and 
spiritual,  because  when  performed  under  compulsion  they  lose  their 
moral  and  spiritual  value.  It  is  not  to  be  inferred  from  this  that  the 
state  has  no  moral  or  spiritual  functions.  Indeed,  its  action  in  certain 
capacities  may  be  one  way,  and  possibly  the  best  way,  of  expressing 
the  moral  and  spiritual  interests  of  its  members.  It  does  suggest  that 
its  action  as  a  spiritual  body  can  only  have  value  in  as  far  as  it  is 
expressing  the  will  of  its  members,  and  not  imposing  a  law  upon  them 
which  they  do  not  freely  and  voluntarily  accept. 

It  follows  further  that  the  legitimate  functions  of  the  state  must 
depend  upon  the  whole  circumstances  of  the  society  which  is  under 
consideration.  The  kind  of  compulsion  that  is  necessary,  the  degree 
of  success  with  which  compulsion  can  be  applied,  and  the  reflex  con¬ 
sequences  of  its  employment  upon  the  general  life  of  society  will 
depend  essentially  upon  the  composition  of  the  community  and  the 
relation  of  the  government  to  its  subjects.  For  example,  in  a  very 
homogeneous  society,  where  all  the  people  are  of  one  race,  one 
allegiance,  and  one  religion,  there  will  be  a  general  adherence  to  the 
same  customs,  a  general  sympathy  with  the  same  ideals  of  life,  and 
there  will  be  little  difficulty  in  maintaining  laws  which  could  only  be 
imposed  upon  an  alien  race  by  means  of  extreme  severity.  In  such 
a  society,  then,  the  sphere  of  the  state  can  quite  usefully  be  extended 
to  functions  which,  in  a  complex  empire  governing  men  of  different 
nationalities  and  rival  religions,  will  produce  confusion  and  the 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE- 


114 

breaking-up  of  laws.  One  cannot,  then,  lay  down  general  rules  as  to 
the  functions  of  the  state  which  will  apply  to  all  times  and  places. 
Our  only  general  rule  will  be  that,  seeing  that  the  state  is  a  form  of 
association  and  is  limited  by  the  fact  that  its  functions  have  to  be 
crystallized  in  definite  institutions,  expressed  in  universal  laws,  and  in 
large  measure  carried  out  by  the  use  of  compulsion,  their  sphere  must 
be  determined  by  considering  how  far  the  objects  of  social  cooperation 
can  be  furthered  by  methods  of  this  kind,  or  how  far,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  nature  of  the  methods  necessary  will  itself  conflict  with 
the  ends  desired. 

In  this  discussion  we  have  said  nothing  as  yet  of  the  rights  of  the 
individual  as  such,  or  of  the  ideal  of  liberty  as  itself  a  fundamental 
barrier  to  certain  kinds  of  state  action.  In  fact,  this  antithesis  be¬ 
tween  the  rights  of  the  individual  and  the  welfare  of  the  state,  between 
liberty  as  such  and  restraint  as  such,  appears  to  be  a  false  antithesis. 
To  begin  with,  if  liberty  is  a  social  conception,  there  can  be  no  liberty 
without  social  restraint.  For  any  one  person,  indeed,  there  might  be 
a  maximum  of  liberty  if  all  social  restraints  were  removed.  Where 
physical  strength  alone  prevails  the  strongest  man  has  unlimited 
liberty  to  do  what  he  likes  with  the  weaker ;  but  clearly,  the  greater 
the  freedom  of  the  strong  man  the  less  the  freedom  of  the  weaker. 
What  we  mean  by  liberty  as  a  social  conception  is  a  right  to  be  shared 
by  all  members  of  society,  and  very  little  consideration  suffices  to 
show  that,  in  the  absence  of  restraints  enforced  on  and  accepted  by 
all  members  of  a  society,  the  liberty  of  some  must  involve  the  oppres¬ 
sion  of  others.  Just  as  the  liberty  of  the  strong  man  to  assail  the 
weak  destroys  the  liberty  of  the  weak  man  to  call  his  body  his  own, 
so — to  take  an  instance  from  our  own  contemporary  experience — the 
liberty  of  the  motor-car  to  use  the  roads  may,  and  often  does,  go  so 
far  as  to  impair  the  liberty  of  any  other  class  of  vehicle  or  the  liberty 
of  pedestrians  to  use  the  same  road  for  their  purposes.  Excess  of 
liberty  contradicts  itself.  In  short,  there  is  no  such  thing ;  there  is 
only  liberty  for  one  and  restraint  for  another.  If  liberty  then  be  re¬ 
garded  as  a  social  ideal,  the  problem  of  establishing  liberty  must  be  a 
problem  of  organizing  restraints ;  and  thus  the  conception  of  a  liberty 
which  is  to  set  an  entire  people  free  from  its  government  appears  to  be 
a  self-contradictory  ideal.  Like  other  contradictory  ideals,  it  has  in 
fact  an  historical  explanation.  A  community  as  a  whole  may  cherish 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE  115 

the  ideal  of  freedom,  and  by  freedom  may  mean  escape  from  the  whole 
system  of  government  under  which  it  lives,  when  that  system  of  gov¬ 
ernment  is  imposed  by  an  alien  power.  Thus  a  subject  nationality  or  a 
subject  class  may  claim  freedom  in  a  quite  general  sense,  but  it  is  free¬ 
dom,  if  properly  understood,  not  from  government  altogether  but  from 
alien  government,  not  from  law  as  such,  but  from  the  particular  laws 
alien  to  the  good  of  the  subject  people,  which  are  imposed  upon  them 
from  without.  In  a  self-governing  people,  unless  the  machinery  of  de¬ 
mocracy  is  very  sadly  out  of  gear,  so  complete  a  want  of  touch  between 
governing  and  governed  can  hardly  be  apprehended.  Law  and  gov¬ 
ernment  in  such  a  case  must  in  the  main  express  the  character,  on  the 
whole  forward  the  collective  purpose  of  at  least  the  majority  of  the 
individuals  constituting  the  community.  And  here  arises  an  impor¬ 
tant  corollary  to  what  has  been  said  above  of  the  ethical  basis  of  state 
functions.  So  far  as  self-government  is  genuinely  realized,  state  ac¬ 
tion  expresses ^ the  combined  will  of  individuals.  The  desires  of  the 
individual  citizen  may  effectuate  themselves  most  fully  through  state 
machinery,  and  in  so  far  as  the  law  and  the  administration  are  carry¬ 
ing  out  the  moral  will  of  the  majority,  so  far  their  action  has  just  as 
much  moral  value  as  though  it  were  performed  by  the  individuals 
themselves  through  the  agency  of  a  voluntary  association.  Hence 
when  we  trace  the  growing  confidence  in  state  action  to  the  advance 
of  democratic  institutions  we  touch  a  deeper  principle  than  that  of 
the  mere  political  control  of  the  legislative  and  administrative  ma¬ 
chine.  As  long  as  law  could  be  fairly  regarded  as  a  rule  imposed  by 
a  superior  there  was  a  serious  meaning  in  the  antithesis  between  that 
which  the  law  did  for  people  and  that  which  people  did  for  themselves. 
There  was  point  in  the  demand  for  self  help  and  the  voluntary  organi¬ 
zation  of  mutual  aid  as  something  intrinsically  superior  to  the  parental 
interference  of  a  superior  authority.  There  was  a  ground  for  saying 
that  the  former  method  fostered  a  manly  independence  and  a  "living” 
sense  of  social  responsibility,  while  the  latter  was  a  species  of  charity 
which  might  sap  these  qualities.  But  when  the  reform  of  the  law 
depends  on  the  deliberate  resolve  of  the  people  themselves,  when  it 
is  won  at  the  cost  of  a  hard-fought  political  struggle,  by  the  appeal  to 
reason,  by  a  contest  involving  widespread  earnestness,  some  self- 
sacrifice,  much  serious  attention  to  some  social  problem  and  the  means 
of  solving  it,  then  the  law  is  no  magician’s  wand  helping  people  out 


n6 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


of  trouble  with  no  effort  of  their  own.  It  is  the  reward  of  effort.  It  is 
the  expression  of  a  general  resolve.  It  embodies  a  collective  sense 
of  responsibility.  It  is,  in  a  word,  something  that  a  mass  of  people 
have  achieved  by  their  combined  efforts  for  their  common  ends,  just 
as  a  well-organized  trade-union  or  a  friendly  society  is  an  achieve¬ 
ment  won  by  combined  effort  for  common  ends.  Now  this,  it  may  be 
objected,  is  an  idealized  picture  of  the  working  of  democracy,  and  I 
am  far  from  ignoring  the  seamier  side.  Nevertheless  in  so  far  as  popu¬ 
lar  government  succeeds,  it  does  realize  some  elements  of  this  ideal, 
and  just  so  far  the  older  objection  to  the  extension  of  the  sphere 
of  the  law  which  rests  on  the  danger  of  weakening  the  moral  fiber 
loses  its  strength. 

But  we  can  carry  the  argument  a  step  further.  If  liberty  is  among 
other  things  the  right  of  self-expression,  this  is  a  right  which  masses 
of  men  may  claim  when  they  want  the  same  thing.  Majorities  will 
claim  it  as  well  as  minorities,  and  they  will  seek  to  use  the  means  that 
lie  to  hand  for  effectuating  their  claim.  Now  it  may  be  that  legal 
machinery  is  the  only  efficient  means  for  the  purpose,  and  if  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  a  majority  are  debarred  from  the  use  of  such  machinery,  their 
will  is  to  that  extent  frustrated  and  their  right  so  far  denied.  Now 
there  may  be  good  grounds  for  this  denial.  It  may  be  better  that  a 
majority  should  be  prevented  in  any  given  instance  from  exercising 
its  will.  The  objections  to  the  use  of  coercion  in  some  directions  may 
be,  and  for  my  part  I  should  agree  that  they  are,  so  great  that  it  is 
better  that  the  majority  should  fail  to  get  its  way.  But  do  not  let  us 
shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  to  insist  on  this  in  any  case,  whether 
for  good  and  sufficient  or  for  bad  and  insufficient  reasons,  is  alike  to 
put  a  restraint  on  self-expression,  and  to  that  extent  upon  liberty. 
The  liberty  of  the  minority  in  such  a  case  is  (as  always)  a  restraint 
upon  the  majority. 

Two  questions,  it  will  be  seen,  arise  from  this  discussion.  The  first 
is,  what  are  those  matters  in  which  the  majority  can  only  find  self- 
expression  through  the  machinery  of  law?  The  second  is,  what  are 
those  considerations  which  may  legitimately  restrain  the  majority 
from  exercising  their  power  even  when  as  a  result  their  prima  facie 
right  of  self-expression  is  defeated. 

The  reply  to  the  first  question  is  in  principle  simple  enough.  Expe¬ 
rience  shows  us  that  there  are  many  things  that  can  be  done  by  in- 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


117 

dividual  initiative  and  by  voluntary  association,  but  that  there  are 
also  many  things  in  which  these  two  agencies  fail.  A  man  may  worship 
God  as  his  own  feelings  dictate  without  compelling  others  to  worship 
with  him.  He  may  associate  himself  with  those  who  are  like-minded. 
He  may  form  a  church  where  all  may  worship  together  after  the 
fashion  upon  which  they  are  agreed;  and  their  worship,  if  it  is  a 
worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  is  none  the  less  hearty,  none  the  less 
spiritually  effective  because  of  the  existence  of  others  who  frequent 
different  churches  or  who  frequent  no  church  at  all.  The  effective 
formation  of  religious  organization  then  does  not  depend  upon  uni¬ 
versal  adhesion,  and  in  carrying  out  their  common  will,  the  members 
of  a  church  have  not  to  depend  on  securing  the  cooperation  of  those 
who  differ  from  them.  Hence,  for  this  reason  if  for  no  other,  the 
religious  life  of  a  community  may  be  pursued  with  vigor  without 
calling  on  the  state  for  support. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  many  cases  in  which  cooperation,  if 
not  universal,  is  altogether  ineffective.  Take,  as  an  instance,  the 
question  of  the  early  closing  of  shops.  The  great  majority  of  em¬ 
ployers  in  a  given  district  may  desire  to  close  early,  both  for  their 
own  sake  and  for  the  good  of  those  in  their  employment ;  but,  as 
every  one  knows,  in  the  world  of  competition  the  refusal  of  a  handful 
of  men,  and  perhaps  even  of  a  single  tradesman,  to  agree  to  the 
common  desire  may  wreck  the  whole  intention.  Unless  the  minority 
can  be  compelled  to  come  in,  the  majority  cannot  get  their  way.  In 
such  case  it  woul4  seem  that  an  end,  which  the  community  holds 
valuable  and  which  the  majority  of  those  affected  by  it  desire,  is  a  fair 
subject  for  enforcement  by  the  common  law  with  its  compulsory 
powers. 

Again,  paradoxical  as  it  seems  at  first  sight,  it  is  nevertheless  pro¬ 
foundly  true  that  there  are  cases  in  which  the  interest  not  of  one  man 
only  or  of  some  men,  but  of  all  considered  individually  and  tempora¬ 
rily,  is  opposed  to  the  interest  of  all  considered  collectively  and  per¬ 
manently.  Thus  it  is  the  interest  of  any  individual  at  any  moment 
to  buy  what  he  wants  as  cheaply  as  he  can.  But  it  is  quite  possible 
that  a  system  of  free  competition  catering  for  the  temporary  needs 
of  each  individual  purchaser  should  have  the  effect  of  gradually  and 
imperceptibly  lowering  the  standard  of  production  by  substituting 
cheapness  for  quality.  If  so,  the  process  set  up  by  each  man  following 


n8 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


his  immediate  interest  may  result  in  a  general  deterioration  of  stand¬ 
ard  whereby  in  the  end  the  interest  of  each  is  less  effectively  served. 
Nor  can  the  individual  stand  alone  against  this  process  by  exercising 
a  more  far-sighted  view.  He  cannot  resist  the  tendency  set  in  motion 
and  constantly  propelled  by  the  pressure  of  immediate  interests.  It  is 
only  concerted  action  that  is  effective  against  the  pressure  of  the  mass, 
and  if  by  such  action  a  higher  standard  of  quality  can  be  permanently 
maintained,  all  are  in  the  end  the  gainers.  To  take  a  slightly  different 
illustration :  any  man  driving  a  motor-car  wants  to  get  on  as  quickly 
as  he  can.  The  same  man  when  walking  may  be  annoyed  or  en¬ 
dangered  by  the  speed  of  other  peoples’  cars,  but  by  driving  carefully 
himself  he  cannot  force  others  to  do  the  same.  He  can  secure  his 
safety  only  by  supporting  legislative  and  general  control.  Once  again : 
it  may  be  the  interest  of  any  particular  employer  to  buy  labor  as 
cheaply  as  possible.  He  cannot,  unless  he  has  exceptional  organizing 
capacity,  pay  more  than  others.  But  it  is  not  to  the  interest  of  em¬ 
ployers  as  a  whole  that  the  classes  from  whom  their  work-people  are 
drawn  should  deteriorate  in  efficiency  and  lose  in  purchasing  power 
through  low  wages  and  bad  industrial  conditions.  Hence  collectively 
they  may  be  ready  to  accept  regulations  which  individually  they 
would  be  powerless  to  put  in  force. 

The  principal  sphere  of  the  state  then  appears  to  be  in  securing 
those  common  ends  in  which  uniformity  or,  more  generally,  concerted 
action,  is  necessary.  On  the  other  hand,  purposes  which  can  be  secured 
without  compelling  the  adhesion  of  those  who  do  not  accept  them  fall 
naturally  within  the  sphere  of  individual  enterprise  and  voluntary 
cooperation.  The  function  of  the  state  then  is  to  secure  the  common 
ends  which  recommend  themselves  to  the  general  will  and  which  can¬ 
not  be  secured  without  compulsion.  But  at  this  point  our  second 
question  emerges :  Is  the  general  will,  supposing  that  its  ends  cannot 
be  secured  without  compulsion,  to  be  entirely  unfettered,  or  are  there 
some  general  considerations  which  might  still  exercise  a  restraint  in 
favor  of  the  liberty  of  the  individual  ? 

This  brings  us  to  the  question  on  what  that  liberty  is  based.  We 
have  seen  that  each  man’s  liberty  involves  a  restraint  upon  others, 
and  we  are  asked  to  conceive  it  now  as  a  restraint  upon  society  as  a 
whole.  On  what  grounds  is  this  restraint  to  be  justified?  In  ordi¬ 
nary  phraseology,  it  would  depend  upon  the  rights  of  the  individual, 


*  THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


1 19 

and  we  have  here  to  ask  what  is  meant  by  a  right.  A  right  is  generally 
said  to  be  the  correlative  of  a  duty.  If  I  have  a  right  against  you,  you 
have  some  duty  towards  me.  The  duty  may  be  quite  general  and 
purely  negative  in  its  character.  For  instance,  I  have  a  right  to  walk 
along  the  street  without  being  pushed  off  the  pavement  into  the  mud, 
and  your  duty  is  merely  to  give  me  reasonable  room.  But,  whether 
general  or  special,  we  may  agree  that  the  rights  and  duties  of  citizens 
form  together  a  system  making  up  as  a  whole  the  moral  order  recog¬ 
nized  by  society.  In  this  order  each  duty  is,  broadly  speaking,  that 
which  is  expected  of  the  individual ;  and  each  right  is  that  which  the  in¬ 
dividual  expects  of  some  other  person  or  of  society  at  large.  Generi- 
cally,  therefore,  a  right  is  a  kind  of  expectation ;  but  it  is  not  only  an 
expectation,  but  an  expectation  held  to  be  justified ;  and  the  important 
question  is,  on  what  grounds  this  justification  is  based.  In  the  first 
place,  it  may  be  a  legal  right,  and  the  justification  then  lies  in  an 
appeal  to  law.  But,  in  addition,  there  are,  or  there  may  be,  rights 
which  the  law  does  not  recognize  and  which  the  moral  consciousness 
holds  ought  to  be.  recognized.  These  are  the  moral  or  ethical  rights 
of  men.  The  older  thinkers  spoke  of  them  as  "natural  rights,”  but 
to  this  phrase,  if  uncritically  used,  there  is  the  grave  objection  that 
it  suggests  that  such  rights  are  independent  of  society,  whereas,  if 
our  arguments  hold,  there  is  no  moral  order  independent  of  society 
and  therefore  no  rights  which,  apart  from  the  social  consciousness, 
would  be  recognized  at  all.  Our  analysis  of  the  term  "right”  goes  to 
show  that  a  right  is  nothing  but  an  expectation  which  will  appeal  to  an 
impartial  person.  A  may  make  a  claim  on  B,  and  B  may  refuse  the 
claim.  The  claim  only  becomes  recognized  as  a  right  if  some  impartial 
third  person  (C)  upholds  A  in  making  it,  and  on  what  ground  can  C 
as  an  impartial  being  base  his  judgment  ?  As  impartial,  he  is  looking 
at  A  and  B  just  as  two  persons  equally  members  of  the  community 
with  himself.  If  there  exists  a  rule  recognized  by  the  community 
which  covers  the  case,  no  question  arises.  But  we  are  looking  at  the 
case  in  which  no  rule  exists,  and  C  has  to  frame  his  decision  on  first 
principles.  To  what  in  such  a  case  can  he  look  except  the  common 
good?  If  he  maintains  as  a  right  a  general  principle  of  action  incom¬ 
patible  with  the  good  of  the  community,  he  must  hold  that  what  is 
right  is  one  thing  and  what  is  good  another,  and  that  not  merely  by 
the  accidental  circumstances  of  a  peculiar  case  but  as  a  matter  of 


120 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


principle.  Unless  then  we  are  to  suppose  such  deep-seated  conflict 
in  the  ethical  order  we  must  regard  the  common  good  as  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  all  personal  rights.  If  that  is  so,  the  rights  of  man  are  those 
expectations  which  the  common  good  justifies  him  in  entertaining,  and 
we  may  even  admit  that  there  are  natural  rights  of  man  if  we  conceive 
the  common  good  as  resting  upon  certain  elementary  conditions  affect¬ 
ing  the  life  of  society,  which  hold  good  whether  people  recognize 
them  or  not.  Natural  rights,  in  that  case,  are  those  expectations 
which  it  would  be  well  for  a  society  to  guarantee  to  its  members, 
whether  it  does  or  does  not  actually  guarantee  them.  If  this  view  is 
accorded,  the  more  developed  the  conception  of  the  common  good  the 
more  completely  will  a  society  guarantee  the  natural  rights  of  its 
individual  members.  To  extend  the  conception  of  the  rights  of  the 
individual  will  be  one  of  the  objects  of  statesmanship ;  to  define  and 
maintain  the  rights  of  its  members  will  be  the  ever  extending  func¬ 
tion  of  government. 

Any  genuine  right  then  is  one  of  the  conditions  of  social  welfare, 
and  the  conception  of  harmonious  development  suggests  that  there 
will  be  many  such  conditions  governing  the  various  sides  of  social 
life.  If  so  the  general  conception  of  harmony  implies  that  these 
conditions,  properly  understood,  must  mutually  define  and  limit  one 
another ;  not  only  so,  it  implies  that  in  proportion  as  they  are  properly 
.  understood  they  will  be  found  not  to  conflict  with  one  another  but  to 
support  and  in  the  end  even  necessitate  one  another.  Now  it  is  con¬ 
ceivable  that  all  individual  rights,  e.g.  of  person  and  property,  might 
be  brought  under  the  general  conception  of  liberty.  But  we  need  not 
press  this  point.  We  may  assume  that  there  will  be  various  rights  of 
the  individual,  of  the  family,  and  so  forth,  which  owe  their  validity  to 
the  functions  they  perform  in  the  harmonious  development  of  society. 
It  is  clear  too  that  the  effective  exercise  of  the  common  will  is  also 
for  some  purposes — though  for  what  purpose  in  particular  may  be  a 
matter  on  which  opinion  differs — a  condition  of  the  same  object. 
Now  in  general  the  problem  of  social  philosophy  is  to  define  in  prin¬ 
ciple,  and  of  statesmanship  to  adjust  in  practice  the  bearing  of  these 
several  conditions.  This  bearing  is  to  be  understood  by  considering 
their  social  value,  and  thus  it  remains  to  state  in  quite  general  terms 
the  basis  of  the  value  of  personal  liberty  on  the  one  hand  and  of 
social  control  on  the  other.  As  to  liberty  in  general,  since  society  is 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


12  I 


made  up  of  persons,  we  prove  its  necessity  sufficiently  if  we  show  that 
a  measure  of  liberty  is  essential  to  the  development  of  personality. 
And  since  personality  consists  in  rational  determination  by  clear¬ 
sighted  purpose  as  against  the  rule  of  impulse  on  the  one  side  or 
external  compulsion  on  the  other,  it  follows  that  liberty  of  choice  is 
the  condition  of  its  development.  The  central  condition  of  such 
development  is  self-guidance.  We  should  not  oppose  self-guidance 
to  guidance  by  others  for  the  contact  with  other  minds  is  an  integral 
part  of  the  growth,  intellectual  or  moral,  of  each  mind.  But  we  must 
oppose  it  to  coercion  by  external  sanctions,  which  ousts  all  genuinely 
ethical  considerations  and  closes  the  door  on  rational  choice.  Liberty 
then  is  the  condition  of  mental  and  moral  expansion,  and  of  all  forms 
of  associated  as  well  as  personal  life  that  rest  for  their  value  on  spon¬ 
taneous  feeling  and  the  sincere  response  of  the  intellect  and  of  the 
will.  It  is  therefore  the  foundation  not  only  of  all  that  part  of  life 
which  rests  on  personal  affection,  but  also  of  science  and  philosophy, 
of  religion,  art,  and  morals. 

To  recognize  liberty  on  this  side  is  the  duty  of  the  state,  but  to 
recognize  liberty  is  by  no  means  to  abolish  restraint.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  it  is  only  by  an  organized  system  of  restraints  that  such  liberty 
is  made  available  for  all  members  of  society,  for  the  unpopular  opin¬ 
ions  as  well  as  the  popular  ones,  for  those  whose  views  of  life  are 
eccentric  as  well  as  for  the  normal  and  the  commonplace.  Even  in 
regard  to  matters  of  conscience  it  is  only  opinion  and  persuasion  that 
can  be  absolutely  free,  and  even  here  it  must  be  admitted  that  there 
are  forms  of  persuasion  that  are  in  fact  coercive,  and  it  is  fair  for 
the  state  to  consider  how  far  the  liberty  of  the  younger  or  weaker 
must  be  protected  against  forms  of  temptation  which  overcome  the 
will.  Apart  from  this  when  opinion  leads,  however  conscientiously, 
to  action,  such  action  may  coerce  others,  and  this  would  bring  the 
state  into  play  in  the  name  of  liberty  itself.  It  may,  more  generally, 
infringe  any  right  and  it  is  the  business  of  social  control  to  adjust 
one  right  to  another. 

This  adjustment  is  simply  one  part,  though  one  of  the  most  im¬ 
portant  parts,  of  the  general  function  of  social  control.  This  function 
may  now  be  defined  in  general  terms  as  that  of  securing  the  best 
conditions  for  the  common  life  (i)  so  far  as  these  are  best  obtained 
by  the  use  of  public  resources  and  governmental  machinery,  (2)  so 


122 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


far  as  such  conditions  are  only  obtainable  by  the  use  of  compulsion ; 
that  is  to  say,  where  action  is  frustrated  if  it  is  not  universal,  and 
again  where  in  the  absence  of  regulation  one  man  can  directly  or 
indirectly  constrain  another,  infringe  his  rights,  obstruct  his  rational 
choice,  or  take  advantage  of  his  weakness  or  ignorance.  The  first 
object  includes  the  organization  of  public  services  by  the  state1  and 
the  provision  for  all  its  members  of  the  external  conditions  of  a 
healthy  and  efficient  civic  life.  To  build  on  this  foundation  is  the 
work  of  the  individual,  and  the  scope  of  personality  is  increased  in 
proportion  as  the  conditions  of  its  effective  development  are  made 
universal.  The  extension  of  the  functions  of  the  state  in  this  direc¬ 
tion,  accordingly,  is  due  not  to  a  diminished  sense  of  personal  respon¬ 
sibility  but  to  a  heightened  sense  of  collective  responsibility.  The 
second  case  includes  the  laying  down  of  certain  rules,  as  in  the  adop¬ 
tion  of  general  holidays,  where  in  the  absence  of  legal  control  a  general 
desire  might  be  thwarted  by  individual  and  perhaps  quite  selfish 
objections.  It  covers,  again,  the  regulation  of  contract  where  experi¬ 
ence  has  shown  that  the  weaker  party  to  a  bargain  may  be  forced  to 
consent  to  that  which,  if  he  stood  on  equal  terms,  he  would  never 
accept.  In  both  cases  as  has  been  shown  but  particularly  in  the  latter 
the  purpose  of  control  is  rather  to  define  and  enlarge  the  sphere  of 
liberty  than  to  restrict  it.  There  remains  the  question  of  those  who 
are  incapable  of  rational  choice, — the  feeble-minded  or  the  habitual 
drunkard, — for  whom  the  value  of  liberty  does  not  exist.  To  them 
society  owes  the  duties  of  a  guardian,  and  in  their  case  the  policy  of 
constraining  a  man  for  his  own  good  is  no  self-contradiction,  for  the 
"good”  of  which  they  are  capable  is  not  that  of  personal  development 
through  the  spontaneous  action  of  thought  and  feeling  and  will,  but 
the  negative  one  of  immunity  from  the  dangers  into  which  their  help¬ 
lessness  might  lead  them.  This  is  the  exception  proving  the  rule  that 
a  normal  human  being  is  not  to  be  coerced  for  his  own  good,  because 
as  a  rational  being  his  good  depends  on  self-determination,  and  is 
impaired  or  destroyed  by  coercion. 

Thus  liberty  and  control  are  not  as  such  opposed.  There  are 
borderland  cases  where  honest  thinkers  must  allow  conflict  to  be  pos- 

1This,  as  remarked  above,  does  not  necessarily  involve  compulsion,  and  so  far 
does  not  affect  the  question  of  the  limits  of  liberty.  It  does,  however,  intimately 
concern  the  cognate  question  of  the  limits  of  personal  and  collective  responsibility. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


I23 


sible,  e.g.  the  conscientious  refusal  of  a  Friend  to  render  military 
service  judged  to  be  necessary  for  the  safety  of  the  community.  But 
the  value  of  liberty  is  to  build  up  the  life  of  the  mind,  while  the  value 
of  state  control  lies  in  securing  the  external  conditions,  including  the 
mutual  restraint,  whereby  the  life  of  the  mind  is  rendered  secure.  In 
the  former  sphere  compulsion  only  defeats  itself.  In  the  latter  liberty 
defeats  itself.  Hence  in  the  main  the  extension  of  control  does  not 
impair  liberty,  but  on  the  contrary  is  itself  the  means  of  extending 
liberty  and  may  and  should  be  conceived  with  that  very  object  in 
view.  Thus  it  is  that  upon  the  whole  we  see  a  tendency  to  the  removal 
of  restraints  in  the  sphere  in  which  whatever  there  is  of  value  to  man¬ 
kind  depends  on  spontaneity  of  impulse,  free  interchange  of  ideas, 
and  voluntary  cooperation  going  along  with  the  tendency  to  draw 
tighter  the  bonds  which  restrain  men  from  acting  directly  or  indirectly 
to  the  injury  of  their  fellows  and  to  enlarge  the  borders  of  the  action 
of  the  state  in  response  to  a  developing  sense  of  collective  respon¬ 
sibility.  We  are  dealing  with  two  conditions  of  harmonious  develop¬ 
ment  apparently  opposed  and  requiring  themselves  to  be  rendered 
harmonious  by  careful  appreciation  of  their  respective  functions,  and 
the  general  direction  in  which  harmony  is  to  be  sought  may  be  ex¬ 
pressed  by  saying  that  the  further  development  of  the  state  lies  in 
such  an  extension  of  public  control  as  makes  for  the  fuller  liberty  of 
the  life  of  the  mind. 

The  problem  of  liberty  is  not  the  only  one  raised  by  the  movement 
of  opinion  which  has  been  traced.  There  are  far-reaching  questions 
of  economics  involved,  to  discuss  which  would  take  us  to  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  the  right  of  property.  Having,  for  reasons  of  time,  to  confine 
myself  to  one  aspect  of  the  question,  I  choose  that  of  the  relation  of 
liberty  to  collective  control  because  it  lies  at  the  root  of  the  harmonic 
conception  of  society.  If  we  are  right  in  thinking  that  social  evolution 
has  brought  us  to  a  point  at  which  the  future  movement  of  society  may 
be  subjected  to  rational  control,  it  becomes  at  once  vital  to  determine 
how  far  that  control  is  to  be  reconciled  with  the  old  ideal  of  freedom. 

If  the  above  argument  is  just,  we  may  conclude  that  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  common  life,  the  collective  effort,  which  has  already  been 
in  progress  in  my  country  for  a  generation  or  more,  is  not  adverse  to 
the  freedom,  the  responsibility,  or  the  dignity  of  the  individual.  On 
the  contrary  it  has  in  the  past  assisted  and  may  in  the  future  be 


124  SOCIAL  PURPOSE 

• 

expected  to  further  the  development  of  these  essential  features  of  a 
good  social  order.  A  more  real  freedom,  a  more  general  and  more 
complete  personal  independence,  a  more  stable  because  a  more  free 
family  life  are  among  the  prime  objects  of  the  extension  of  social  con¬ 
trol.  It  is  here  that  we  realize  the  concrete  meaning  of  the  ideal  of 
harmony  as  the  touchstone  of  social  development.  All  one-sided 
progress  cramps  as  much  in  one  direction  as  it  liberates  in  another. 
True  development  is  not  in  metaphor  but  in  essentials  comparable  to 
organic  growth — the  opening  out  of  each  element  furthering  instead 
of  retarding  that  of  others.  Such  a  development,  lastly,  it  has  been 
my  endeavor  to  show  is  not  in  conflict  with  immovable  laws  of  evolu¬ 
tion  but  is  continuous  with  the  line  of  advance  which  educed  the 
higher  from  the  lower  animal  forms,  which  evolved  the  human  out  of 
the  animal  species  and  civilized  from  barbaric  society.  The  essential 
condition  of  this  change  was  not  the  struggle  for  existence  but  the 
rise  and  growth  of  a  principle  of  organic  harmony  or  cooperation 
which  from  the  first  rise  of  parental  care  begins  to  mitigate  and  finally 
to  restrict  the  field  of  struggle.  Merely  to  point  to  the  existence  of 
this  tendency  was  not,  we  admitted,  sufficient  to  justify  it,  but  we 
urged  that  its  existence  and  success  suffice  to  prove  the  feasibility  of 
the  conscious  effort  to  carry  through  the  harmonic  principle  in  social 
life,  and  that  this  is  in  fact  the  guiding  principle  of  a  rational  social 
philosophy.  To  apply  such  a  principle,  we  admitted,  is  a  matter  of 
infinite  practical  difficulty,  but  it  nowhere  founders  on  any  theoretic 
objections,  for  no  essential  element  of  social  value  has  to  be  purchased 
at  the  expense  of  the  fundamental  and  irrevocable  loss  of  any  other 
element  of  essential  value.  Its  emergence  constitutes  a  turning-point 
to  which  all  previous  progress  leads  up,  and  from  which  further  prog¬ 
ress  will  proceed  with  a  new  directness  of  aim  and  steadiness  of  tread. 
The  keenest  critics  of  the  feasibility  of  social  progress  we  saw  rest 
their  case  on  the  tendency  of  the  higher  social  ethics  to  preserve  in¬ 
ferior  types  and  so  lead  to  racial  deterioration.  But  on  this  point  we 
saw  that  if  it  is  true,  which  is  not  yet  proved,  that  selection  remains 
essential  to  social  progress,  the  solution  of  the  difficulty  is  to  be  found 
in  the  replacement  of  natural  by  social  selection.  At  many  points  in 
the  argument  limitations  of  time  have  forced  me  to  confine  myself  to 
mere  illustrations  of  method  in  place  of  the  full  and  lengthy  state¬ 
ment  of  evidence  which  is  requisite  for  proof.  Those  methods  I  would 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


125 


hope  that  some  of  you  would  follow  out  for  yourselves,  so  as  to  verify 
or  correct  the  conclusion  to  which  I  have  sought  to  lead  you.  That 
conclusion  I  may  be  allowed  to  state  provisionally  and  it  is  simply 
this:  that  the  conception  of  social  progress  as  a  deliberate  movement 
towards  the  reorganization  of  society  in  accordance  with  ethical  ideas 
is  not  vitiated  by  any  contradiction.  It  is  free  from  any  internal  dis¬ 
harmony.  Its  possibility  rests  on  the  facts  of  evolution,  of  the  higher 
tendencies  of  which  it  is  indeed  the  outcome.  It  embodies  a  rational 
philosophy,  it  gives  scope  and  meaning  to  the  best  impulses  of  human 
nature,  and  a  new  hope  to  the  suffering  among  mankind. 

16.  Political  Rights  and  Obligations1 

No  hard  and  fast  line  can  be  drawn  between  civil  society  and  the 
State.  By  the  State,  however,  we  denote  those  conditions  of  social 
organization  and  regulation  which  are  most  fundamental  and  most 
general :  conditions  which  are  summed  up  in  and  expressed  through 
the  general  will  as  manifested  in  legislation  and  its  execution.  As  a 
civil  right  is  technically  focused  in  the  right  to  use  the  courts,  "to  sue 
and  be  sued,”  that  is  in  the  right  to  have  other  claims  adjudicated  and 
enforced  by  a  public,  impartial  authority,  so  a  political  right  is  tech¬ 
nically  summed  up  in  the  power  to  vote — either  to  vote  directly  upon 
laws  or  to  vote  for  those  who  make  and  carry  out  laws.  To  have  the 
right  in  a  legislative  assembly  to  speak  for  or  against  a  certain  meas¬ 
ure;  to  be  able  to  say  "yea”  or  "nay”  upon  a  roll-call;  to  be  able 
to  put  into  a  ballot-box  a  piece  of  paper  with  a  number  of  names 
written  thereon,  are  not  acts  which  of  themselves  possess  the  inherent 
value  of  many  of  the  most  ordinary  transactions  of  daily  life.  But  the 
representative  and  potential  significance  of  political  rights  exceeds 

that  of  any  other  class  of  rights.  Suffrage  stands  for  direct  and  active 

% 

participation  in  the  regulation  of  the  terms  upon  which  associated 
life  shall  be  sustained,  and  the  pursuit  of  the  good  carried  on.  Politi¬ 
cal  freedom  and  responsibility  express  an  individual’s  power  and 
obligation  to  make  effective  all  his  other  capacities  by  fixing  the  social 
conditions  of  their  exercise. 

Growth  of  democracy.  The  evolution  of  democratically  regu¬ 
lated  States,  as  distinct  from  those  ordered  in  the  interests  of  a  small 

1  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics ,  pp.  473-482. 


126 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


group,  or  of  a  special  class,  is  the  social  counterpart  of  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  a  comprehensive  and  common  good.  Externally  viewed,  de¬ 
mocracy  is  a  piece  of  machinery,  to  be  maintained  or  thrown  away, 
like  any  other  piece  of  machinery,  on  the  basis  of  its  economy  and 
efficiency  of  working.  Morally,  it  is  the  effective  embodiment  of  the 
moral  ideal  of  a  good  which  consists  in  the  development  of  all  the 
social  capacities  of  every  individual  member  of  society. 

Present  Problems 

i.  Distrust  of  government.  Present  moral  problems  connected 
with  political  affairs  have  to  do  with  safeguarding  the  democratic 
ideal  against  the  influences  which  are  always  at  work  to  undermine 
it,  and  with  building  up  for  it  a  more  complete  and  extensive  embodi¬ 
ment.  The  historic  antecedent  of  our  own  governmental  system  was 
the  exercise  of  a  monopoly  by  a  privileged  class.1  It  became  a  demo¬ 
cratic  institution  partly  because  the  King,  in  order  to  secure  the 
monopoly,  had  to  concede  and  guarantee  to  the  masses  of  the  people 
certain  rights  as  against  the  oligarchical  interests  which  might  rival 
his  powers ;  and  partly  because  the  centralization  of  power,  with  the 
arbitrary  despotism  it  created,  called  out  protests  which  finally 
achieved  the  main  popular  liberties :  safety  of  life  and  property  from 
arbitrary  forfeiture,  arrest,  or  seizure  by  the  sovereign ;  the  rights  of 
free  assembly,  petition,  a  free  press,  and  of  representation  in  the 
law-making  body. 

Upon  its  face,  the  struggle  for  individual  liberty  was  a  struggle 
against  the  overbearing  menace  of  despotic  rulers.  This  fact  has  sur¬ 
vived  in  an  attitude  towards  government  which  cripples  its  usefulness 
as  an  agency  of  the  general  will.  Government,  even  in  the  most 
democratic  countries,  is  still  thought  of  as  an  external  "ruler,”  operat¬ 
ing  from  above,  rather 'than  as  an  organ  by  which  people  associated 
in  pursuit  of  common  ends  can  most  effectively  cooperate  for  the 
realization  of  their  own  aims.  Distrust  of  government  was  one  of  the 
chief  traits  of  the  situation  in  which  the  American  nation  was  born. 

1The  term  "the  King’s  Peace,”  as  the  equivalent  in  England  for  the  peace  and 
order  of  the  commonwealth,  goes  back  to  a  time  when  literally  it  meant  a  private 
possession.  Pollock  says  that  the  desire  to  collect  larger  revenues  was  the  chief 
motive  for  pushing  the  royal  jurisdiction  against  lesser  local  authorities. —  Essay 
on  the  King’s  Peace  in  Oxford  Essays 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


127 


It  is  embodied  not  only  in  popular  tradition,  and  party  creeds,  but  in 
our  organic  laws,  which  contain  many  provisions  expressly  calculated 
to  prevent  the  corporate  social  body  from  effecting  its  ends  freely  and 
easily  through  governmental  agencies.1 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  movement  to  restrict  the  functions 
of  government,  the  laissez-faire  movement,  was  in  its  time  an  impor¬ 
tant  step  in  human  freedom,  because  so  much  of  governmental  action 
was  despotic  in  intention  and  stupid  in  execution.  But  it  is  also  a 
mistake  to  continue  to  think  of  a  government  which  is  only  the  people 
associated  for  the  assuring  of  their  own  ends  as  if  it  were  the  same 
sort  of  thing  as  a  government  which  represented  the  will  of  an  irre¬ 
sponsible  class.  The  advance  of  means  of  publicity,  and  of  natural 
and  social  science,  provides  not  only  protection  against  ignorant  and 
unwise  public  action,  but  also  constructive  instrumentalities  of  in¬ 
telligent  administrative  activities.  One  of  the  chief  moral  problems 
of  the  present  day  is,  then,  that  of  making  governmental  machinery 
such  a  prompt  and  flexible  organ  for  expressing  the  common  interest 
and  purpose  as  will  do  away  with  that  distrust  of  government  which 
properly  must  endure  so  long  as  "government”  is  something  imposed 
from  above  and  exercised  from  without. 

2.  Indifference  to  public  concerns.  The  multiplication  of  private 
interests  is  a  measure  of  social  progress:  it  marks  the  multiplica¬ 
tion  of  the  sources  and  ingredients  of  happiness.  But  it  also  invites 
neglect  of  the  fundamental  general  concerns  which,  seeming  very 
remote,  get  pushed  out  of  sight  by  the  pressure  of  the  nearer  and 
more  vivid  personal  interests.  The  great  majority  of  men  have  their 
thoughts  and  feelings  well  occupied  with  their  family  and  business 
affairs ;  with  their  clubs  for  recreation,  their  church  associations,  and 
so  on.  "Politics”  becomes  the  trade  of  a  class  which  is  especially 
expert  in  the  manipulation  of  their  fellows  and  skilled  in  the  "accelera- 

^■Says  President  Hadley:  "The  fundamental  division  of  powers  in  the  Consti-* 
tution  of  the  United  States  is  between  voters  on  the  one  hand,  and  property- 
owners  on  the  other.  The  forces  of  democracy  on  one  side,  divided  between  the 
executive  and  the  legislature,  are  set  over  against  the  forces  of  property  on  the 
other  side,  with  the  judiciary  as  arbiter  between  them.  .  .  .  The  voter  could  elect 
what  officers  he  pleased,  so  long  as  these  officers  did  not  try  to  do  certain  duties 
confided  by  the  Constitution  to  the  property-holders.  Democracy  was  complete 
as  far  as  it  went,  but  constitutionally  it  was  bound  to  stop  short  of  social 
democracy.” 


128 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


tion”  of  public  opinion.  "Politics”  then  gets  a  bad  name,  and  the 
aloofness  from  public  matters  of  those-  best  fitted,  theoretically,  to 
participate  in  them  is  further  promoted.  The  saying  of  Plato,  twenty- 
five  hundred  years  ago,  that  the  penalty  good  men  pay  for  not  being 
interested  in  government  is  that  they  are  then  ruled  by  men  worse 
than  themselves,  is  verified  in  most  of  our  American  cities. 

3.  Corruption.  This  indifference  of  the  many,  which  throws  the 
management  of  political  affairs  into  the  hands  of  a  few,  leads  in¬ 
evitably  to  corruption.  At  the  best,  government  is  administered  by 
human  beings  possessed  of  ordinary  human  frailties  and  partialities ; 
and,  at  the  best,  therefore,  its  ideal  function  of  serving  impartially  the 
common  good  must  be  compromised  in  its  execution.  But  the  control 
of  the  inner  machinery  of  governmental  power  by  a  few  who  can  work 
in  irresponsible  secrecy  because  of  the  indifference  and  even  contempt 
of  the  many,  incites  to  deliberate  perversion  of  public  functions  into 
private  advantages.  As  embezzlement  is  appropriation  of  trust  funds 
to  private  ends,  so  corruption,  "graft,”  is  prostitution  of  public  re¬ 
sources,  whether  of  power  or  of  money,  to  personal  or  class  interests. 
That  a  "public  office  is  a  public  trust”  is  at  once  an  axiom  of  political 
ethics  and  a  principle  most  difficult  to  realize. 

In  our  own  day,  a  special  field  has  been  opened  within  which  cor¬ 
ruption  may  flourish,  in  the  development  of  public  utility  companies. 
Railways,  city  transportation  systems,  telegraph  and  telephone  sys¬ 
tems,  the  distribution  of  water  and  light,  require  public  franchises, 
for  they  either  employ  public  highways  or  they  call  upon  the  State 
to  exercise  its  power  of  eminent  domain.  These  enterprises  can  be 
carried  on  efficiently  and  economically  only  as  they  are  either  monopo¬ 
lies,  or  quasi-monopolies.  All  modern  life,  however,  is  completely 
bound  up  with  and  dependent  upon  facilities  of  communication,  in¬ 
tercourse,  and  distribution.  Power  to  control  the  various  public- 
service  corporations  carries  with  it,  therefore,  power  to  control  and  to 
tax  all  industries,  power  to  build  up  and  cast  down  communities,  com¬ 
panies,  and  individuals,  to  an  extent  which  might  well  have  been 
envied  by  royal  houses  of  the  past.  It  becomes  then  a  very  special 
object  for  great  corporations  to  control  the  agencies  of  legislation  and 
administration ;  and  it  becomes  a  very  special  object  for  party  leaders 
and  bosses  to  get  control  of  party  machinery  in  order  to  act  as  brokers 
in  franchises  and  in  special  favors — sometimes  directly  for  money, 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


129 


sometimes  for  the  perpetuation  and  extension  of  their  own  power  and 
influence,  sometimes  for  the  success,  through  influential  support  and 
contribution  to  party  funds,  of  the  national  party  with  which  they 
are  identified. 

4.  Reforms  in  party  machinery.  The  last  decade  or  so  of  our 
history  has  been  rife  with  schemes  to  improve  political  conditions.  It 
has  become  clear,  among  other  things,  that  our  national  growth  has 
carried  with  it  the  development  of  secondary  political  agencies,  not 
contemplated  by  the  framers  of  our  constitutions,  agencies  which 
have  become  primary  in  practical  matters.  These  agencies  are  the 
" machines”  of  political  parties,  with  their  hierarchical  gradation  of 
bosses  from  national  to  ward  rulers,  bosses  who  are  in  close  touch 
with  great  business  interests  at  one  extreme,  and  with  those  who 
pander  to  the  vices  of  the  community  (gambling,  drink,  and  prostitu¬ 
tion)  at  the  other ;  parties  with  their  committees,  conventions,  prima¬ 
ries,  caucuses,  party-funds,  societies,  meetings,  and  all  sorts  of  devices 
for  holding  together  and  exciting  masses  of  men  to  more  or  less 
blind  acquiescence. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  the  advantages  which  parties  have 
subserved  in  concentrating  and  defining  public  opinion  and  responsi¬ 
bility  in  large  issues ;  nor  to  dwell  upon  their  value  in  counteracting 
tendencies  which  break  up  and  divide  men  into  a  multitude  of  small 
groups  having  little  in  common  with  one  another.  But  behind  these 
advantages  a  vast  number  of  abuses  have  sheltered  themselves. 
Recent  legislation  and  recent  discussion  have  shown  a  marked  tend¬ 
ency  formally  to  recognize  the  part  actually  played  by  party  ma¬ 
chinery  in  the  conduct  of  the  State,  and  to  take  measures  to  make 
this  factor  more  responsible  in  its  exercise.  Since  these  measures 
directly  affect  the  conditions  under  which  the  government  as  the  organ 
of  the  general  will  does  its  work  of  securing  the  fundamental  condi¬ 
tions  of  equal  opportunity  for  all,  they  have  a  direct  moral  import. 
Such  questions  as  the  Australian  ballot,  the  recognition  of  party 
emblems  and  party  groupings  of  names ;  laws  for  direct  primary 
nominations ;  the  registering  of  voters  for  primary  as  wrell  as  for  final 
elections ;  legal  control  of  party  committees  and  party  conventions ; 
publicity  of  accounts  as  to  the  reception  and  use  of  party  funds ;  for¬ 
bidding  of  contributions  by  corporations,  are  thus  as  distinctly  moral 
questions  as  are  bribery  and  ballot-box  stuffing. 


130 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


5.  Reforms  in  governmental  machinery.  Questions  that  concern 
the  respective  advantages  of  written  versus  unwritten  constitutions 
are  in  their  present  state  problems  of  technical  political  science  rather 
than  of  morals.  But  there  are  problems,  growing  out  of  the  fact  that 
for  the  most  part  American  constitutions  were  written  and  adopted 
under  conditions  radically  unlike  those  of  the  present,  which  have  a 
direct  ethical  import.  As  already  noted,  our  constitutions  are  full 
of  evidences  of  distrust  of  popular  cooperative  action.  They  did  not 
and  could  not  foresee  the  direction  of  industrial  development,  the  in¬ 
creased  complexity  of  social  life,  nor  the  expansion  of  national  terri¬ 
tory.  Many  measures  which  have  proved  indispensable  have  had 
therefore  to  be  as  it  were  smuggled'  in ;  they  have  been  justified  by 
"legal  fictions”  and  by  interpretations  which  have  stretched  the 
original  text  to  uses  undreamed  of.  At  the  same  time,  the  courts, 
which  are  the  most  technical  and  legal  of  our  political  organs,  are 
supreme  masters  over  the  legislative  branch,  the  most  popular  and 
general.  The  distribution  of  functions  between  the  states  and  the 
nation  is  curiously  ill-adapted  to  present  conditions  (as  the  discussions 
regarding  railway  regulation  indicate)  ;  and  the  distribution  of  powers 
between  the  state  and  its  municipalities  is  hardly  less  so,  resting  in 
theory  upon  the  idea  of  local  self-government,  and  in  practice  doing 
almost  everything  possible  to  discourage  responsible  initiative  for  the 
conduct  of  their  own  affairs  on  the  part  of  municipalities. 

These  conditions  have  naturally  brought  forth  a  large  crop  of  sug¬ 
gestions  for  reforms.  It  is  not  intended  to  discuss  them  here,  but  the 
more  important  of  them,  so  far  as  involving  moral  questions,  may  be 
briefly  noted.  The  proposals  termed  the  initiative  and  the  referendum 
and  the  "recall”  (this  last  intended  to  enable  the  people  to  withdraw 
from  office  any  one  with  whose  conduct  of  affairs  they  are  dissatisfied) 
are  clearly  intended  to  make  the  ideal  of  democratic  control  more 
effective  in  practice.  Proposals  for  limited  or  complete  woman's  suf¬ 
frage  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  one-half  of  the  citizenship  does 
the  political  thinking  for  the  other  half,  and  emphasizes  the  difficulty 
under  such  conditions  of  getting  a  comprehensive  social  standpoint 
(which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  the  sympathetic  and  reasonable 
standpoint)  from  which  to  judge  social  issues.  Many  sporadic  propo¬ 
sitions  from  this  and  that  quarter  indicate  a  desire  to  revise  constitu¬ 
tions  so  as  to  temper  their  cast-iron  quality  and  increase  their  flexible 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


I3i 

adaptation  to  the  present  popular  will,  and  so  as  to  emancipate  local 
communities  from  subjection  to  State  legislatures  in  such  a  way  as  to 
give  them  greater  autonomy  and  hence  greater  responsibility,  in  the 
management  of  their  own  corporate  affairs.  It  is  not  the  arguments 
pro  and  con  that  we  are  here  concerned  with ;  but  we  are  interested 
to  point  out  that  moral  issues  are  involved  in  the  settlement  of  these 
questions.  It  may,  moreover,  be  noted  that  dividing  lines  in  the  dis¬ 
cussion  are  generally  drawn,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  on  the  basis 

of  the  degree  of  faith  which  exists  in  the  democratic  principle  and 

. 

ideal,  as  against  the  class  idea  in  some  of  its  many  forms. 

6.  Constructive  social  legislation.  The  rapid  change  of  economic 
methods,  the  accumulation  and  concentration  of  wealth,  the  aggrega¬ 
tion  of  capital  and  labor  into  distinct  bodies  of  corporations  and 
trusts,  on  one  side,  and  federated  labor  unions,  on  the  other;  the 
development  of  collective  agencies  of  production  and  distribution, 
have  brought  to  the  focus  of  public  attention  a  large  number,  of  pro¬ 
posals  for  new  legislation,  almost  all  of  which  have  a  direct  moral 
import.  These  matters  are  passed  over  here  with  the  reminder  that, 
while  on  one  side  they  are  questions  of  the  ethics  of  industry,  they 
are  also  questions  of  the  right  and  wrong  use  of  political  power  and 
authority.1  We  may  also  note  that  the  theoretical  principle  at  issue, 
the  extension  versus  the  restriction  of  governmental  agencies,  so  far 
as  it  is  not  simply  a  question  of  what  is  expedient  under  the  given 
circumstances,  is  essentially  a  question  of  a  generalized  versus  a 
partial  individualism.  The  democratic  movement  of  emancipation  of 
personal  capacities,  of  securing  to  each  individual  an  effective  right 
to  count  in  the  order  and  movement  of  society  as  a  whole  (that  is, 
in  the  common  good),  has  gone  far  enough  to  secure  to  many,  more 
favored  than  others,  peculiar  powers  and  possessions.  It  is  part  of 
the  irony  of  the  situation  that  such  now  oppose  efforts  to  secure 
equality  of  opportunity  to  all  on  the  ground  that  these  efforts  would 
effect  an  invasion  of  individual  liberties  and  rights:  i.e.,  of  privileges 
based  on  inequality.  It  requires  perhaps  a  peculiarly  sympathetic 
imagination  to  see  that  the  question  really  involved  is  not  one  of 
magnifying  the  powers  of  the  State  against  individuals,  but  is  one  of 
making  individual  liberty  a  more  extensive  and  equitable  matter. 

1  Further  treatment  of  this  subject  will  be  found  in  chaps,  xxii  and  xxv  of 
Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics. —  Ed. 


132 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


7.  The  international  problem.  The  development  of  national  States 
marks  a  tremendous  step  forward  in  the  realization  of  the  principle 
of  a  truly  inclusive  common  good.  But  it  cannot  be  the  final  step. 
Just  as  clans,  sects,  gangs,  etc.,  are  intensely  sympathetic  within 
and  intensely  exclusive  and  jealous  without,  so  States  are  still  ar¬ 
rayed  against  States,  with  patriotism,  loyalty,  as  an  internal  virtue, 
and  the  distrust  and  hatred  of  divisive  hostility  as  the  counterpart 
vice.  The  idea  of  humanity  in  the  abstract  has  been  attained  as  a 
moral  ideal.  But  the  political  organization  of  this  conception,  its 
embodiment  in  law  and  administrative  agencies,  has  not  been  achieved. 
International  law,  arbitration  treaties,  and  even  a  court  like  the  Hague 
tribunal,  whose  power  is  sentimental  rather  than  political,  mark  steps 
forward.  Nothing  could  be  more  absurd,  from  the  historic  point  of 
view,  than  to  regard  the  conception  of  an  international  State  of 
federated  humanity,  with  its  own  laws  and  its  own  courts  and  its  own 
rules  for  adjudicating  disputes,  as  a  mere  dream,  an  illusion  of  senti¬ 
mental  hope.  It  is  a  very  slight  step  to  take  forward  compared  with 
that  which  has  substituted  the  authority  of  national  States  for  the 
conflict  of  isolated  clans  and  local  communities ;  or  with  that  which 
has  substituted  a  publicly  administered  justice  for  the  regime  of 
private  war  and  retaliation.  The  argument  for  the  necessity  (short 
of  the  attainment  of  a  federated  international  State  with  universal 
authority  and  policing  of  the  seas)  of  preparing  in  peace  by  enlarged 
armies  and  navies  for  the  possibility  of  war,  must  be  offset  at  least  by 
recognition  that  the  possession  of  irresponsible  power  is  always  a 
direct  temptation  to  its  irresponsible  use.  The  argument  that  war  is 
necessary  to  prevent  moral  degeneration  of  individuals  may,  under 
present  conditions,  where  every  day  brings  its  fresh  challenge  to  civic 
initiative,  courage,  and  vigor,  be  dismissed  as  unmitigated  nonsense. 

17.  The  Moral  Criterion  of  Political  Activity1 

The  moral  criterion  by  which  to  try  social  institutions  and  political 
measures  may  be  summed  up  as  follows :  The  test  is  whether  a  given 
custom  or  law  sets  free  individual  capacities  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
them  available  for  the  development  of  the  general  happiness  or  the 
common  good.  This  formula  states  the  test  with  the  emphasis  falling 

1  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics ,  pp.  482-485. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  STATE 


133 


upon  the  side  of  the  individual.  It  may  be  stated  from  the  side  of 
associated  life  as  follows :  The  test  is  whether  the  general,  the  public, 
organization  and  order  are  promoted  in  such  a  way  as  to  equalize 
opportunity  for  all. 

Comparison  with  the  individualistic  formula.  The  formula  of  the 
individualistic  school  (in  the  narrow  sense  of  that  term — the  laissez- 
faire  school)  reads:  The  moral  end  of  political  institutions  and 
measures  is  the  maximum  possible  freedom  of  the  individual  con¬ 
sistent  with  his  not  interfering  with  like  freedom  on  the  part  of  other 
individuals.  It  is  quite  possible  to  interpret  this  formula  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  it  equivalent  to  that  just  given.  But  it  is  not  em¬ 
ployed  in  that  sense  by  those  who  advance  it.  An  illustration  will 
bring  out  the  difference.  Imagine  one  hundred  workingmen  banded 
together  in  a  desire  to  improve  their  standard  of  living  by  securing 
higher  wages,  shorter  hours,  and  more  sanitary  conditions  of  work. 
Imagine  one  hundred  other  men  who,  because  they  have  no  families 
to  support,  no  children  to  educate,  or  because  they  do  not  care  about 
their  standard  of  life,  are  desirous  of  replacing  the  first  hundred  at 
lower  wages,  and  upon  conditions  generally  more  favorable  to  the 
employer  of  labor.  It  is  quite  clear  that  in  offering  themselves  and 
crowding  out  the  others,  they  are  not  interfering  with  the  like  free¬ 
dom  on  the  part  of  others.  The  men  already  engaged  are  "free” 
to  work  for  lower  wages  and  longer  time,  if  they  want  to.  But  it  is 
equally  certain  that  they  are  interfering  with  the  real  freedom  of 
the  others :  that  is,  with  the  effective  expression  of  their  whole  body 
of  activities. 

The  formula  of  "like  freedom”  artificially  isolates  some  one  power, 
takes  that  in  the  abstract,  and  then  inquires  whether  it  is  interfered 
with.  The  one  truly  moral  question  is  what  relation  this  particular 
power,  say  the  power  to  do  a  certain  work  for  a  certain  reward,  sus¬ 
tains  to  all  the  other  desires,  purposes,  and  interests  of  the  individual. 
How  are  they  affected  by  the  way  in  which  some  one  activity  is 
exercised  ?  It  is  in  them  that  the  concrete  freedom  of  the  man  resides. 
We  do  not  know  whether  the  freedom  of  a  man  is  interfered  with  or  is 
assisted  until  we  have  taken  into  account  his  whole  system  of  capaci¬ 
ties  and  activities.  The  maximum  freedom  of  one  individual  consist¬ 
ent  with  equal  concrete  or  total  freedom  of  others,  would  indeed 
represent  a  high  moral  ideal.  But  the  individualistic  formula  is  con- 


134 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


demned  by  the  fact  that  it  has  in  mind  only  an  abstract,  mechanical, 
external,  and  hence  formal  freedom. 

Comparison  with  the  collectivistic  formula.  There  is  a  rival  for¬ 
mula  which  may  be  summed  up  as  the  subordination  of  private  or 
individual  good  to  the  public  or  general  good:  the  subordination  of 
the  good  of  the  part  to  the  good  of  the  whole.  This  notion  also  may 
be  interpreted  in  a  way  which  renders  it  identical  with  our  own 
criterion.  But  it  is  usually  not  so  intended.  It  tends  to  emphasize 
quantitative  and  mechanical  considerations.  The  individualistic  for¬ 
mula  tends  in  practice  to  emphasize  the  freedom  of  the  man  who  has 
power  at  the  expense  of  his  neighbor  weaker  in  health,  in  intellectual 
ability,  in  worldly  goods,  and  in  social  influence.  The  collectivistic 
formula  tends  to  set  up  a  static  social  whole  and  to  prevent  the 
variations  of  individual  initiative  which  are  necessary  to  progress. 
An  individual  variation  may  involve  opposition,  not  conformity  or 
subordination,  to  the  existing  social  good  taken  statically;  and  yet 
may  be  the  sole  means  by  which  the  existing  State  is  to  progress. 
Minorities  are  not  always  right ;  but  every  advance  in  right  begins  in 
a  minority  of  one,  when  some  individual  conceives  a  project  which  is 
at  variance  with  the  social  good  as  it  has  been  established. 

A  true  public  or  social  good  will  accordingly  not  subordinate  in¬ 
dividual  variations,  but  will  encourage  individual  experimentation  in 
new  ideas  and  new  projects,  endeavoring  only  to  see  that  they  are  put 
into  execution  under  conditions  which  make  for  securing  responsibility 
for  their  consequences.  A  just  social  order  promotes  in  all  its  mem¬ 
bers  habits  of  criticizing  its  attained  goods  and  habits  of  projecting 
schemes  of  new  goods.  It  does  not  aim  at  intellectual  and  moral 
subordination.  Every  form  of  social  life  contains  survivals  of  the 
past  which  need  to  be  reorganized.  The  struggle  of  some  individuals 
against  the  existing  subordination  of  their  good  to  the  good  of  the 
whole  is  the  method  of  the  reorganization  of  the  whole  in  the  direction 
of  a  more  generally  distributed  good.  Not  order,  but  orderly  progress, 
represents  the  social  ideal. 


CHAPTER  V 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

18.  The  Meaning  of  Progress1 

Like  every  age  and  every  state  of  human  society  the  period  in 
which  we  live  has  its  merits  and  defects,  its  elements  of  success  and 
failure.  Contemporary  critics  assuming  the  part  of  candid  friends 
are  perhaps  more  concerned  with  the  failures,  and  the  note  of  pessi¬ 
mism  sounds  clearly  enough  in  much  of  the  literature  of  the  day. 
But  depreciation  of  the  present,  gloomy  views  of  the  future,  and 
idealization  of  the  past  are  common  characteristics  of  literary  criti¬ 
cism.  If  literature  is  evidence,  we  could  construct  a  chain  of  testi¬ 
mony  proving  the  continuous  deterioration  of  humanity  from  the  time 
of  Hesiod  to  the  present  day.  The  past,  when  it  is  seen  at  all,  appears 
always  in  a  halo  of  romance.  Just  as  in  our  own  personal  memory 
many  things  which  we  should  be  exceedingly  loath  to  experience 
anew  become  positively  enjoyable  in  the  mellowness  of  restrospect, 
as  the  contrast  of  some  great  hardship  forms  a  pleasing  background 
for  present  comfort,  so  in  the  memory  of  the  race  much  that  we 
should  be  sorry  to  live  through  again  in  real  earnest  acquires  the 
tinge  of  romance  when  viewed  at  a  safe  distance.  Whereas  the  dis¬ 
comforts,  the  ugliness,  and  the  squalor  of  the  present  afflict  us  with 
all  the  insistence  of  grim  reality,  the  corresponding  elements  in  the 
past  are  either  forgotten  or  are  softened  and  transfigured  by  the  haze 
of  time.  Hence  it  is  that  our  view  of  historical  change  tends  to  be 
distorted  in  the  direction  of  pessimism,  and  in  any  attempt  at  a 
scientific  measure  of  social  progress  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against 
this  bias  of  social  memory.  Those  who  are  most  zealous  for  social 
improvement  will  indeed  be  the  last  to  minimize  the  evils  that  exist. 
But  without  yielding  to  any  such  temptation  there  is,  I  would  suggest, 

1From  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory  (pp.  1-12),  by  Leonard  T.  Hob- 
house,  D.  Litt Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  London.  Copyright, 
1911,  by  the  Columbia  University  Press,  New  York. 

x35 


136 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


one  compensatory  element  of  which  the  prevalence  of  a  somewhat 
pessimistic  criticism  is  itself  the  proof.  There  was  probably  never  a 
time  at  which  among  civilized  peoples  there  was  so  much  diffused 
sensitiveness  to  any  form  of  social  ailment.  If  we  were  briefed  to 
defend  our  own  time,  the  line  to  take  would  surely  be,  not  that  its 
evils  are  few  or  small,  but  rather  that  every  evil  calls  forth  a  strong 
and  persistent  effort  to  cure  it.  Such  effort  is  not  indeed  new,  but  it 
may  be  fairly  maintained  that  it  persists  and  grows  in  volume  and 
seriousness,  that  it  enlists  an  increasing  proportion  of  human  effort 
and  ability,  and  that  as  it  gathers  strength  and  substance  it  is  less 
content  to  deal  with  symptoms  and  effects,  and  becomes  more  intent 
on  the  discovery  and  eradication  of  causes.  In  every  civilized  country 
there  is  an  army  of  men  and  women  at  work,  some  trusting  to  volun¬ 
tary  effort  and  mutual  aid,  others  pinning  their  faith  to  governments 
and  agitating  for  legislative  reforms,  and  yet  others  content  for  the 
time  to  investigate  facts,  examine  into  causes,  and  pave  the  way  for  a 
more  assured  progress  in  the  future.  The  pessimistic  writer  will  not 
deny  the  existence  or  the  sincerity  of  these  manifold  forms  of  social 
effort,  but  it  is  open  to  him  to  question  their  efficiency.  On  this  point 
a  good  deal  might  be  said.  I  think  it  would  be  possible,  so  far  at  least 
as  my  own  country  is  concerned,  to  show  by  a  series  of  comparisons  of 
the  condition  of  the  people  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  industrial  revo¬ 
lution  with  their  condition  at  the  present  day  that  the  efforts  of  the 
reformers  have  not  been  wasted.  I  shall  not,  however,  attempt  this 
task  at  present,  for  I  am  going  instead  to  make  an  admission.  If  my 
supposed  critic  were  to  scrutinize  the  terms  in  which  I  described  the 
efforts  of  reformers,  there  is  one  word  on  which  he  might  fasten  with 
some  effect.  I  spoke  of  "an  army  of  men  and  women.”  "What 
army?”  he  might  reply.  "I  see  clearly  enough,  great  numbers  of 
men  and  women  who  interest  themselves  in  public  questions.  But  an 
army  means  a  drilled  and  organized  force,  moving  towards  a  clear 
objective.  This,”  he  might  say,  "is  precisely  what  I  do  not  find 
among  the  enthusiasts  for  social  reform.  What  I  find  is  something 
much  more  like  a  mob,  or,  if  we  are  to  keep  to  military  metaphors, 
something  like  a  miscellaneous  assortment  of  guerilla  bands,  acting 
without  concert,  often  at  cross  purposes,  sometimes  coming  into  violent 
conflict,  and  at  best  with  no  clear  sense  of  any  common  cause.  There 
are  individuals  and  organized  bodies,  if  you  will,  who  concentrate 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


137 


their  energies  on  temperance,  but  who  concentrate  so  completely  that 
they  care  for  nothing  else.  There  are  those  who  combat  pauperism 
and  preach  thrift.  There  are  enthusiasts  who  find  land  questions  at 
the  root  of  all  good  and  all  evil.  There  are  the  apostles  of  housing 
and  sanitary  reform.  There  are  Tariff  Reformers — an  expression 
which  has,  so  to  say,  opposite  signs  in  England  and  the  United  States. 
There  are  Trade  Unionists,  Cooperators,  Socialists,  and  again  there 
•  is  the  insistent  school  of  Eugenists,  who  treat  all  social  reforms  as 
mere  subsidiary  changes  of  the  environment  and  insist  that  the  modi¬ 
fication  of  the  race  by  selection  is  the  only  matter  of  vital  moment. 
In  a  word  there  are  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  vaguely  inter¬ 
ested  in  social  progress,  and  keenly  interested  in  some  particular 
question  which  has  come  within  the  field  of  their  special  experience 
or  to  which  they  have  been  led  to  give  personal  attention.  Here  and 
there  is  to  be  found  a  broader-minded  person  who  recognizes  the 
wholeness  of  things,  but  his  influence  is  small.  The  driving  force  is 
all  with  the  sectional  spirit,  and  that  is  why  you  get  little  or  no 
general  progress.” 

With  one  part  of  this  indictment  I  should  agree.  Notwithstanding 
all  narrowness  and  short-sightedness  I  think  that  something  has  been 
done,  but  it  has  been  done  at  the  expense  of  a  vast  and  disproportion¬ 
ate  waste  of  effort.  If  this  waste  is  to  be  avoided  and  the  aggregate 
of  social  effort  is  now  to  have  the  measure  of  success  which  it  deserves, 
it  must  be  through  the  growth  of  a  common  understanding,  through 
the  emergence  of  clearer  ideas  of  social  progress  as  a  whole,  and  by 
consequence  of  the  mutual  relations  of  its  constituent  parts.  People 
are  apt  to  turn  from  such  questions  as  abstract  and  academic,  but 
there  are  seemingly  academic  questions  which  are  charged  with  very 
real  meaning,  and  the  unity  of  social  organisms  and  the  interrelation 
for  good  and  for  evil  of  social  changes  is  no  mere  form  of  words,  but  a 
way  of  expressing  a  deep-seated  truth  which  those  who  ignore  it  will 
in  practice  strike  on  sooner  or  later.  You  may  remember  a  certain 
simile  employed  by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  Study  on  Sociology . 
Give  a  man  a  sheet  of  metal  with  a  dint  in  it,  he  says,  and  ask  him 
to  flatten  it  out.  What  does  he  do?  If  he  knows  nothing  of  metal 
work,  he  takes  a  hammer  and  knocks  the  dint  flat,  only  to  find  that 
it  has  reappeared  elsewhere.  He  applies  the  hammer  again  at  the 
new  point  with  the  same  result,  and  so  he  goes  on  till  he  convinces 


138 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


himself  that  dints  are  not  to  be  levelled  out  by  this  direct  and  easy 
method.  So  it  is,  urges  Mr.  Spencer,  with  society.  We  find  some 
evil  or  evils  which  we  seek  to  prevent  by  direct  and  forcible  means, 
only  to  find,  says  this  critic  of  social  effort,  that  a  corresponding  evil 
appears  somewhere  else.  We  put  down  overt  crime  only  to  find  that 
some  form  of  secret  vice  is  increasing.  A  temperance  crusade  sup¬ 
presses  drunkenness,  and  it  is  discovered  that  those  who  used  to  drink 
now  find  an  outlet  for  excitement  in  gambling.  Compensation  for  * 
accidents  is  secured  by  law  to  workmen,  and  in  consequence  it  is 
alleged  that  elderly  workmen  are  refused  situations.  Workmen  form 
trade  unions  to  maintain  and  improve  the  conditions  of  their  work, 
and  no  sooner  do  they  succeed  than  their  employers  imitate  them  and 
form  federations  by  which  the  unions  are  overpowered.  Strikes  are 
replaced  by  mutual  agreements  which  are  to  initiate  an  era  of  indus¬ 
trial  peace,  and  it  is  found  that  the  wider  the  agreement  the  less  it 
meets  the  local  difficulties  of  mine  and  workshop,  and  we  see  workmen 
striking  substantially  against  their  own  leaders.  I  need  not  here  in¬ 
quire  whether  in  all  these  instances  the  allegation  is  correct,  nor 
whether  even  if  that  be  so  there  may  not  be  some  net  gain.  I  am 
concerned  only  with  the  simple  and  preliminary  point,  to  which 
Mr.  Spencer  did  well  to  call  attention,  that  every  change,  however  good 
in  itself,  provokes  unforeseen  reactions,  and  that  if  we  are  to  achieve 
permanent  and  assured  good  we  must  as  far  as  possible  keep  in  view 
the  life  of  society  as  a  whole  and  seek  not  jealously  to  magnify  our 
own  little  sectional  interest  at  the  expense  of  the  others,  but  rather  to 
correlate  it  with  the  work  that  others  are  doing  and  endeavor  to  in¬ 
duce  in  them  the  same  spirit.  In  sociology  as  in  all  sciences  specialism 
is  a  necessity  and  it  is  also  a  danger.  It  is  a  necessity  for  the  simple 
reason  that  human  capacity  is  limited  and  it  is  not  given  to  man  to 
acquire  sound  knowledge  and  adequate  skill  in  many  departments  at 
once.  It  is  a  danger  because  social  life  is  no  more  divisible  into 
independent  sections  than  the  human  body  is  divisible  into  independ¬ 
ent  organisms.  Now  the  belief  that  "there  is  nothing  like  leather” 
is  mutato  nomine  universal.  To  exaggerate  the  importance  of  what 
one  is  doing  oneself  is  the  necessary  human  illusion.  It  is  the  stimu¬ 
lant  which  sustains.  Unfortunately  it  is  also  the  stimulant  which 
intoxicates,  and  in  sober  mood  we  may  well  engage  ourselves  in  the 
effort  to  find  some  prophylactic.  In  the  present  case  the  prophylactic 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


139 


that  we  need,  if  I  am  right,  is  an  articulate  social  philosophy.  We 
ought  to  inquire  whether  underlying  the  diffused  mass  of  social  effort 
there  is  discoverable  any  coherent  scheme  of  social  betterment  or 
progress  as  a  whole.  If  again  we  can  find  any  such  general  conception, 
we  have  to  ask  whether  it  will  hold  water,  and  this  will  divide  itself 
into  two  main  questions.  Before  we  can  decide  whether  any  purpose 
which  men  may  propound  to  themselves  is  valid  and  reasonable  we 
must  determine,  first,  whether  it  is  self-consistent,  or  whether  if 
thought  out  it  would  evolve  any  contradictions  which  would  reduce  it 
to  meaningless  confusion;  and  secondly,  whether  it  lies  within  the 
limits  of  practical  possibility.  The  first  of  these  questions  is  the 
subject-matter  of  social  philosophy,  the  second  belongs  to  the  theory 
of  social  evolution.  I  shall  not  be  able  within  the  compass  of  these 
lectures  to  deal  with  either  question  with  the  fullness  which  it  de¬ 
serves,  but  for  reasons  which  will  appear  as  we  proceed  I  cannot  limit 
myself  to  one  alone.  I  shall  therefore  (1)  attempt  a  summary  defini¬ 
tion  of  the  nature  and  conditions  of  progress,  and  shall  proceed  (2)  to 
consider  how  far  progress  as  defined  has  actually  been  realized  in 
history,  and  how  far  it  is  capable  of  further  and  future  realization.  In 
place  of  an  attempt  to  cover  the  whole  ground  in  a  summary  which 
would  necessarily  be  vague  and  thin,  I  shall,  both  in  dealing  with  past 
and  present,  confine  myself  in  the  main  to  one  side  of  social  life, 
merely  glancing  at  others  when  the  progress  of  the  argument  makes 
it  necessary  to  do  so. 

There  are,  however,  certain  difficulties  which  the  conception  of  prog¬ 
ress  meets  at  the  outset,  and  it  will  be  better  to  deal  with  these  before 
proceeding  to  our  constructive  argument. 

For  this  purpose  I  will  ask  you  to  be  content  with  a  rough  pre¬ 
liminary  definition  of  progress,  and  let  me  do  what  I  can  within  my 
limits  to  make  it  a  little  more  precise  at  a  later  stage.  Now  you  will 
have  noticed  that  I  have  used  the  term  " evolution”  in  regard  to 
human  society  and  also  the  term  "  progress.”  This  should  imply  that 
there  is  some  difference  between  them,  and  in  point  of  fact,  to  grasp 
this  difference  is  in  my  view  the  beginning  of  understanding  in  these 
matters.  By  evolution  I  mean  any  sort  of  growth  ;  by  social  progress, 
the  growth  of  social  life  in  respect  of  those  qualities  to  which  human 
beings  attach  or  can  rationally  attach  value.  Social  progress,  then, 
is  only  one  among  many  possibilities  of  social  evolution.  At  least  it 


140 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


is  not  to  be  assumed  that  any  and  every  form  of  social  evolution  is 
also  a  form  or  a  stage  in  social  progress.  For  example,  a  caste  system 
is  a  product  of  social  evolution,  and  the  more  rigid  and  narrow  the 
caste,  the  more  complex  the  hierarchy,  the  more  completely  has  the 
caste  system  evolved.  In  proportion,  that  is,  as  a  loose  and  incipi¬ 
ent  caste  system  hardens  into  an  extreme  and  rigid  caste  system,  there 
is  a  distinct  process  of  social  evolution  going  forward ;  but  most  of  us 
would  question  very  strongly  whether  it  could  be  considered  in  any 
sense  as  a  phase  of  social  progress.  Judged  from  the  standpoint  of 
human  values,  it  looks  more  like  retrogression,  or  perhaps  still  more 
like  divergence  into  a  side  track,  from  which  there  is  no  exit  save  by 
going  back  over  a  good  deal  of  the  ground  travelled.  So  again  there 
is  at  the  present  day  a  vigorous  evolution  of  cartels,  monopolies,  rings, 
and  trusts;  there  is  an  evolution  of  imperialism,  of  socialism,  of  na¬ 
tionalism,  of  militarism,  in  a  word,  of  a  hundred  tendencies  as  to  the 
good  or  evil  of  which  people  differ.  The  fact  that  a  thing  is  evolving 
is  no  proof  that  it  is  good,  the  fact  that  society  has  evolved  is  no  proof 
that  it  has  progressed.  The  point  is  important  because  under  the 
influence  of  biological  conceptions  the  two  ideas  are  often  confused, 
and  the  fact  that  human  beings  have  evolved  under  certain  conditions 
is  treated  as  evidence  of  the  value  of  those  conditions,  or  perhaps  as 
proving  the  futility  of  ethical  ideas  which  run  counter  to  evolutionary 
processes.  Thus  in  an  article  by  a  clever  exponent  of  eugenic  prin¬ 
ciples  I  find  a  contemptuous  reference  to  "the  childlike  desire  to  make 
things  'fair,’  which  is  so  clearly  contrary  to  the  order  of  a  universe 
which  progresses  by  natural  selection.”1  In  this  brief  remark  you 
will  observe  two  immense  assumptions,  and  one  stark  contradiction. 
The  first  assumption  is  that  the  universe  progresses — not  humanity, 
observe,  nor  the  mass  of  organic  beings,  nor  even  the  earth,  but  the 
universe.  The  second  assumption  is  that  it  progresses  by  natural 
selection,  a  hypothesis  which  has  not  yet  adequately  explained  the 
bare  fact  of  the  variation  of  organic  forms  on  the  surface  of  this 
earth.  The  contradiction  is  that  progress  is  incompatible  with  fair¬ 
ness,  the  basic  element  in  all  judgments  of  value,  so  that  we  are  called 
upon  to  recognize  as  valuable  that  by  which  our  fundamental  notions 
of  value  are  set  at  naught.  It  may  be  replied  that  the  process  of 
things  has  nothing  to  do  with  human  ideas  of  value.  That  of  course 
1Mr.  W.  C.  D.  Whetham,  in  the  Eugenic  Review ,  November,  1910. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


141 

is  perfectly  possible,  and  is  the  point  we  shall  have  to  examine.  But 
in  that  case  no  one  has  a  right  to  speak  of  progress,  a  term  which 
connotes  value,  in  relation  to  the  process  of  things.  If  there  exist 
laws  of  mechanical  necessity  which  involve  the  defeat  of  human  effort 
based  on  human  judgments  of  value,  then  it  is  true  that  human  effort 
must  be  forever  frustrate,  but  it  is  untrue  that  human  effort  must  seek 
to  ally  itself  with  its  enemy.  If  the  process  of  the  universe  is  in¬ 
herently  opposed  to  the  ethical  order,  it  follows  that  the  ethical  order 
is  inherently  opposed  to  the  process  of  the  universe.  In  this  state  of 
things  the  position  of  humanity  would  be  very  unfortunate.  It  could 
not  hope  to  achieve  any  permanent  good.  But  it  would  still  be  the 
height  of  unreason  for  humanity  to  throw  its  efforts  for  whatever  they 
may  be  worth  on  the  side  of  those  forces  which  by  hypothesis  are 
working  against  the  best  elements  in  its  life.  The  only  rational  course 
in  so  bad  a  situation  would  be  first  to  see  what  could  be  saved  from 
the  wreck,  or,  if  nothing  could  be  done,  then  to  remain  passive  and 
endure  with  what  patience  we  could  command.  Why  we  should  take 
active  pains  to  forward  a  process  which  conflicts  with  our  fundamental 
conceptions  of  what  is  valuable  is  a  question  which  answers  itself. 

Of  course  this  is  not  the  way  in  which  the  question  ordinarily  pre¬ 
sents  itself.  By  studying  certain  sides  of  organic  evolution  people 
arrive  at  a  particular  hypothesis  of  the  nature  of  the  process.  They 
erect  this  hypothesis  into  an  universal  and  necessary  law,  and  straight¬ 
way  call  upon  every  one  else  to  acknowledge  the  law  and  conform  to 
it  in  action.  Unaccustomed  to  philosophical  analysis,  and  contemp¬ 
tuous  of  that  to  which  they  are  unaccustomed,  they  do  not  see  that 
they  have  passed  from  one  sense  of  law  to  another,  that  they  have  con¬ 
fused  a  generalization  with  a  command,  and  a  statement  of  facts  with 
a  principle  of  action.  They  accordingly  miss  the  starting-point  from 
which  a  distinct  conception  of  progress  and  its  relation  to  human 
effort  becomes  possible.  But  for  any  useful  theory  of  the  bearing  of 
evolution  on  social  effort  this  conception  is  vital.  We  can  get  no  light 
upon  the  subject  unless  we  begin  with  the  clear  perception  that  the 
object  of  social  effort  is  the  realization  of  ends  to  which  human  beings 
can  reasonably  attach  value,  that  is  to  say,  the  realization  of  ethical 
ends ;  and  this  being  understood,  we  may  suitably  use  the  term  "prog¬ 
ress”  of  any  steps  leading  towards  such  realization.  Now  it  may  be 
said  that  human  valuations  are  themselves  often  obscure,  confused, 


142 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


and  contradictory.  That  is,  in  fact,  the  reason  why  we  need  a  social 
philosophy  to  reduce  them  to  a  rational  order.  But  we  are  not  asking 
for  the  moment  what  the  rational  judgment  of  man  would  approve. 
We  are  contending  for  the  preliminary  point,  that  without  its  approval 
there  can  be  no  talk  of  progress,  that  to  hold  up  a  process  to  admira¬ 
tion,  to  praise  it  as  good,  to  accept  and  forward  it,  is,  in  fact,  to  pass 
on  it  a  judgment  of  approval,  and  that  to  do  these  things  and  in  the 
same  breath  to  scorn  the  principle  which  is  the  pivot  of  any  ethical 
approval  is  a  contradiction.  If  this  and  allied  principles  are  false  and 
meaningless,  that  requires  independent  proof.  If  justice,  fairness, 
mutual  aid,  benevolence,  pity,  are  inherently  confused  and  contradic¬ 
tory  ideas,  they  cannot  serve  as  bases  of  rational  approval  or  dis¬ 
approval.  But  this  has  to  be  demonstrated,  and  there  is  no  beginning 
of  demonstration  in  the  mere  fact  that  such  qualities  as  these  are 
opposed  to  the  naked  struggle  for  existence. 

Our  conclusion  so  far  is  that  the  nature  of  social  progress  cannot 
be  determined  by  barely  examining  the  actual  conditions  of  social 
evolution.  Evolution  and  progress  are  not  the  same  thing.  They  may 
be  opposed.  They  might  even  be  so  fundamentally  opposed  that 
progress  would  be  impossible,  and  whether  this  is  so  is  one  of  the  two 
questions  which  we  distinguished  above,  and  which  I  shall  proceed  to 
discuss.  I  take  occasion  only  to  remind  you  that  the  other  question 
was — In  what  does  progress  consist?  and  to  this  we  have  given  the 
preliminary  answer  that  it  means  the  realization  of  an  ethical  order ; 
and  we  have  now  further  seen  that  the  nature  of  this  order  is  not  to 
be  determined  by  asking  whether  it  conforms  to  natural  processes, 
but  by  asking  whether  it  yields  rational  and  coherent  guidance  to 
human  effort. 

19.  Progress  in  Evolution1 
What  is  Meant  by  Progress? 

When  we  ask  if  the  gardener  is  making  progress  with  his  work,  if 
the  patient  is  making  progress  towards  health,  if  the  investigation  is 
making  progress  towards  a  solution  of  the  problem,  every  one  knows 
what  we  mean  by  progress.  We  mean  getting  nearer  a  desired  result, 

1  By  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  Regius  Professor  of  Natural  History  in 
Aberdeen  University.  Adapted  from  The  Control  of  Life ,  chap.  ix.  Copyright, 
1921,  by  Henry  Holt  and  Company,  New  York. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


143 


which  is  clearly  defined.  But  what  do  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  the 
progress  of  the  human  race  or  of  a  nationality  ?  We  cannot  say  that 
we  mean  evolution  or  improvement  or  betterment,  for  that  is  merely 
using  another  word.  It  is  not  satisfactory  to  say  that  progress  is 
movement  to  a  desired  result,  for  what  is  the  criterion  of  the  value 
of  the  desired  result?  It  is  a  common  argument  in  favour  of  some 
scheme  that  it  makes  for  progress.  But  what  is  this  mysterious  prog¬ 
ress,  this  racial,  or  national,  or  civic  progress  ? 

Cosmic  development.  Long,  long  ago  our  solar  system  was  estab¬ 
lished  around  a  central  sun.  It  seems  likely  that  the  earth  was  heaved 
off  from  the  central  mass  as  a  spiral  nebula,  and  that  the  other  planets 
had  a  similar  origin.  During  a  prolonged  period,  the  earth  consoli¬ 
dated  and  became  fit  to  be  a  home  of  life.  Is  increase  of  intricacy  and 
definiteness  necessarily  progressive,  or  is  the  note  of  progress  in  the 
possibility  of  something  new?  The  integration  of  the  earth  and  all 
that  in  it  was,  opened  up  the  possibility  of  living  creatures.  If  it  was 
not  progress,  it  was  surely  in  that  direction. 

Organic  evolution.  Many  millions  of  years  ago,  in  some  unknown 
way,  living  creatures  began  to  be  upon  the  earth ;  and  as  age  followed 
age,  they  were  succeeded  by  forms  on  the  whole  more  complicated, 
controlled,  emancipated,  and  intelligent.  Now,  if  the  advent  of  more 
masterful,  controlled,  free,  intelligent  forms  of  life  means  progress, 
then  organic  evolution  shows  progress.  There  has  been  frequent 
retrogression  and  degeneracy,  there  are  many  parasites,  there  are  blind 
alleys  of  great  complexity  which  are  puzzling  to  the  hasty-minded ; 
but  the  larger  fact  is  an  onward  sweep. 

On  the  whole,  common  sense  regards  it  as  certain  that  there  has 
been  in  Organic  Evolution  something  like  what  Lotze  thought  he  dis¬ 
cerned — "an  onward  advancing  melody.’7  There  was  a  time  when 
there  were  no  backboned  animals  except  Fishes;  ages  passed  and 
there  were  Fishes,  Amphibians,  and  Reptiles ;  ages  passed  and  there 
were  also  Birds  and  Mammals.  Was  not  this  progress?  And  yet, 
why  do  we  feel  sure  that  Birds  and  Mammals  mark  an  advance  on 
Reptiles  ?  It  cannot  be  mere  complexity.  It  is  because  they  are  more 
controlled  or  integrated,  more  masters. of  their  fate,  with  more  men¬ 
tality.  So  progress  means  movement  towards  certain  ideals  which  we 
cherish.  It  is  a  verdict  based  on  our  sense  of  values.  There  is  a  clue 
here  that  we  must  hold  to.  Evolution  on  the  whole  is  integrative ;  it 


144 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


makes  against  disintegration  and  disorder,  against  instability,  against 
the  entropy  or  degradation  of  energy  which  marks  the  inorganic. 

It  has  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  with  the  evolution  of  the  type 
there  was  correlated  an  evolution  of  interrelations  binding  lives  to¬ 
gether  in  a  sy sterna  naturae ,  a  web  of  life  whose  pattern  becomes  more 
and  more  significant.  This  external  registration  acted  along  with 
the  organismal  or  hereditary  registration  in  conserving  evolutionary 
gains  once  made;  it  was  at  once  a  condition  and  an  organon  of 
progress.  The  higher  animal  was  able  to  see  more  meaning  in  the 
world,  but  there  was  also  more  meaning  to  discover. 

In  any  case,  it  is  plain  that  there  has  been  an  increasing  solidarity 
in  Animate  Nature,  and  much  that  seemed  at  first  insignificant  is 
now  known  to  contribute  fundamentally  to  the  stability  of  the  super¬ 
structure  in  which  we  discern  progressiveness  most  clearly.  The 
Kingdom  of  Man  depends  on  a  peculiar  quality  of  a  green  pigment ; 
the  vigorous  life  of  higher  animals  depends  on  another  pigment ; 
flowers  depend  on  insects ;  fishes  depend  on  water-fleas,  infusorians, 
and  sea-dust.  Even  when  a  race  becomes  extinct,  it  would  be  rash  to 
say  that  it  has  lived  in  vain. 

The  critic  may  intervene,  however,  and  say:  "No  doubt  Mammals, 
for  instance,  have  more  control,  more  freedom,  more  mind  than 
Reptiles  have ;  but  are  you  not  forgetting  that  they  began  to  run  new 
risks,  to  make  new  kinds  of  mistakes,  to  suffer  pain,  to  fear?”  To 
which  the  answer  may  be  made :  "Granting  the  taxes  on  progress  and 
the  pains  of  progress,  it  was  worth  while  that  Mammals  should  have 
evolved.”  Yet  if  pressed  to  say  why  we  feel  sure  that  it  was  worth 
while,  must  we  not  answer  (i)  that  the  evolutionary  process  which 
led  to  Mammals  was  making  in  the  direction  of  Man  and  of  Man’s 
kingdom,  and  (2)  that  it  was  making  towards  a  fuller  realisation  of 
what  we  value  most — control,  freedom,  understanding,  and  love? 
Progress  is,  of  course,  a  modern  and  sociological  concept,  meaning 
increase  in  the  realisation  of  what  the  racial  consciousness  has  most 
persistently  held  to  be  of  the  highest  value,  but  our  point  is  that  there 
is  something  analogous  to  this  in  the  great  trends  of  integrative 
evolution. 

The  ascent  of  Man.  The  evolution  of  organisms  has  its  climax 
in  the  ascent  of  Man,  the  establishment  of  societary  forms,  the  process 
of  civilisation,  the  march  of  human  history.  Now,  no  one  will  say 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


MS 


that  the  march  of  human  history  is  in  itself  progress,  in  the  sense  of 
necessarily  leading  to  the  enrichment  of  life.  Many  of  the  changes — 
perhaps  inevitable — have  been  very  miserable  at  the  time  and  of 
dubious  benefit  when  effected.  Many  aspects  of  the  so-called  Indus¬ 
trial  Revolution  in  Great  Britain  were  full  of  misery  and  it  is  open 
to  question  whether  we  are  the  better  for  Industrialism.  And  what 
does  "the  better”  mean? 

When  we  contrast  the  Bird  and  Mammal  world  with  the  world  be¬ 
fore  they  emerged,  we  say  "progress,”  meaning  movement  towards 
the  actualisation  of  what  we  regard  as  of  the  highest  value.  We  have 
a  gamut -of  millions  of  years  and  we  get  a  good  contrast.  But  can  the 
same  be  said  of  the  much  shorter  span  covered  by  human  history? 
Is  not  humanity  like  Sisyphus,  ever  rolling  the  stone  up  the  hill,  only 
to  have  it  tumble  down  again?  And  yet,  whoever  doubts  human 
progress  should  think  of  our  ancestors — as  iEschylus  pictured  them 
— living  in  caves,  without  fire,  without  wood-work,  without  system, 
without  seasons,  without  foresight.  A  fairly  accurate  picture  to  be 
contrasted  with  Man’s  conditions  to-day.  Can  any  one  doubt  human 
progress  on  a  long  view  ? 


Progress  a  Fact 

The  facts  of  organic  evolution,  considered  broadly,  compel  us  to 
believe  in  progress,  and  the  same  is  probably  true  in  regard  to  human 
history.  But  reasoned  scepticism  as  to  the  reality  of  progress  (as  in 
the  recent  studies  by  Professor  Bury  and  Dean  Inge)  is  very  useful. 
For  we  have  no  right  to  assume  that  mere  carrying  on,  or  even  strug¬ 
gling  on,  is  progress,  i.e.  movement  in  the  direction  of  realising  what 
the  racial  consciousness  holds  to  be  of  most  value.  We  cannot  trust 
to  ratiocination,  for  we  invent  political  and  economic  theories,  which 
are  conscious  or  unconscious  attempts  to  justify  our  practice  before 
the  tribunal  of  reason. 

Scepticism  as  to  progress.  Is  progress  at  present  demonstrable 
or  may  this  be  a  period  of  retrogression  in  the  species  or  in  part  of 
the  species?  Is  progress  so  clear  in  our  midst?  The  answer,  "In 
some  things  Yes,  in  others  No ;  in  some  circles  Yes,  in  others  No,”  is 
true ;  but  it  suggests  that  our  definition  is  still  incomplete.  When  we 
think  of  the  seamy  side  of  modern  life  (e.g.  our  present-day  panevi 


146 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


et  cir censes :  subsidised  bread  and  cinemas)  ;  when  we  remember 
that  the  glory  that  was  Greece  was  largely  based  on  slavery,  and  was 
contemporary  with  an  intolerable  view  of  womankind,  and  eventually 
with  little  in  the  way  of  home  life — one  of  man’s  surest  gains  in  well¬ 
being,  we  see  that  we  must  add  to  our  definition, — progress  is  a 
balanced  or  harmonious  movement  towards  a  fuller  embodiment  of 
the  highest  values.  We  are  tired  of  cackle  about  progress  when  it  is 
cheek  by  jowl  with  the  misery  of  multitudes.  A  social  body  cannot 
be  making  progress  as  a  whole  if  it  has  a  long  tail — of  those  who  do 
not  have  their  chance.  Equalitarianism  is  biologically  a  fantastic 
fallacy,  but  we  must  work  towards  a  reasonable  equality  of  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  allow  those  who  believe  that  they  are  more  than  equals  of 
their  superiors  to  prove  their  claim.  We  see,  then,  that  the  idea  of 
progress  is  in  process  of  evolution,  for  we  have  added  to  it  the  idea 
of  social  integration.  A  social  body  cannot  be  making  more  than 
particulate  progress,  if  it  contains  a  large  proportion  of  members  who 
do  not  get  a  fair  chance. 

The  higher  values.  Man’s  ideals  are  the  reaching  forward  of  his 
desires  when  he  is  at  his  best,  and  progress  is  an  integrated  move¬ 
ment  towards  their  fuller  embodiment.  So  in  our  definition  of  prog¬ 
ress  we  must  give  first  place  to  those  values  that  we  are  surest  about 
— the  truth  and  the  seeking  of  it,  the  beautiful  and  the  making  of  it, 
the  good  and  the  doing  of  it.  These  values  we  call  absolute,  because 
they  are  desirable  as  ends  in  themselves,  because  we  cannot  have  too 
much  of  them,  because  they  never  bring  satiety,  because  they  are 
their  own  reward,  and  because  as  civilisation  deepens  they  have  an 
increasing  survival  value. 

Idealist  and  realist.  Here  we  meet  a  familiar  difficulty.  We  are 
surest  about  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  When  we  are  at 
our  best  the  best  part  of  us  declares  that  these  are  best.  A  certain 
type  of  mind,  idealistic  we  may  say,  keeps  close  to  these  highest 
values,  and  conquers  the  world  by  other-worldliness.  Another  type 
of  mind,  realistic  we  may  say,  is  more  matter-of-fact,  finding  the 
supreme  values  too  aerial.  The  realists  wish  to  see  the  goodness  of 
God  in  the  land  of  the  living — that  is  to  say,  to  see  progress  in  the 
here  and  now,  not  so  much  in  the  cosmos  as  in  their  own  region. 
There  is  no  contradiction,  of  course,  but  there  is  a  difficulty.  We  are 
facing  one  of  the  deepest  dichotomies  of  human  temperament,  that 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


147 

between  idealists  and  realists,  that  between  the  philosophical  and 
the  scientific. 

One  way  of  meeting  the  difficulty  may  be  briefly  stated.  The  true, 
the  beautiful,  the  good  are  supreme  values — intellectual,  emotional, 
moral — the  ideals  of  head,  heart,  and  hand — but  below  them  there 
are  fundamental  values,  especially  two,  (1)  the  economical  use  of 
energy  and  the  increase  of  material  resources,  and  (2)  health  (in¬ 
cluding  adaptation  to  bracing  surroundings).  Without  these  there 
cannot  be  stability  or  persistence.  Would  it  be  progress  to  have  a 
race  of  very  wise  men  and  women,  all  invalids?  A  vigorous  fool 
would  be  a  great  relief.  Would  it  be  progress  to  have  a  beautiful 
race,  relatively  sterile?  Would  it  be  progress  to  have  a  very  good 
race,  without  joy?  So  must  we  not  say  that  there  are  physical  and 
biological  pre-conditions  of  social  progress,  the  physical  pre-condition 
of  mastering  the  powers  of  Nature,  the  biological  pre-condition  of 
good  breed,  good  work,  and  good  place — eugenics,  eutechnics,  and 
eutopias  ? 

Definition  of  progress.  So  our  definition  now  runs:  Progress  is 
a  balanced  movement  of  a  social  whole  towards  the  fuller  embodi¬ 
ment  of  the  supreme  values,  but  at  the  same  time  towards  a  fuller 
realisation  of  the  physical  and  biological  pre-conditions  which  secure 
persistence. 

There  is  probably  more  than  verbal  value  here.  On  the  one  hand, 
insistence  on  the  biological  and  physical  pre-conditions  may  help  to 
make  idealism  more  practical.  Is  a  vote  of  much  moment  if  we 
cannot  have  a  bath?  Is  even  beauty  of  great  price  if  we  have  not 
time  to  look  at  it?  "A  poor  life  this,  if,  full  of  care,  we  have  no  time 
to  stand  and  stare.”  The  fundamental  is  as  necessary  as  the  supreme. 
Little  use  in  a  fine  torso,  if  the  feet  are  of  clay. 

But  a  recognition  of  the  pre-conditions  of  social  progress  has  an¬ 
other  aspect.  It  is  all  very  well  to  say  to  your  horse,  "Come  on,  then, 
like  a  good  fellow,” — that  is  the  psychological  stimulus ;  but  it  is  not 
very  well  if  we  forget  to  give  him  his  oats  in  the  morning, — that  is 
the  biological  pre-condition.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  treat  our  horse 
simply  as  a  thermodynamic  engine,  we  will  not  get  either  the  most  or 
the  best  out  of  him ;  if  we  treat  him  simply  as  a  mammal,  we  shall 
also  fail,  though  not  so  egregiously ;  we  must  treat  him  as  a  brother 
mind-body — "Brer  Horse.”  We  should  beware,  then,  of  thinking 


148 


SOCIAL  PURPOSE 


that  eugenics  (good  breeding)  will  necessarily  engender  a  good  heart; 
we  should  not  be  too  sure  that  eupsychics  (good  education)  may  not 
be  the  shortest  way  to  eutopia  (good  environment).  Progress  is 
manifold,  but  the  organism  is  one. 

A  Contribution  to  the  Critique  of  Progress 

We  are  here  in  sight  of  a  principle,  a  contribution  to  the  critique 
of  progress.  Civilisation  has  been  handicapped  in  the  past  by  insuf- 
ficient  use  of  Science  as  a  torch  to  well-being.  This  handicap  con¬ 
tinues,  but  is  lessening.  The  more  we  use  Science  for  life  the  better, 
but  there  is  the  risk  of  being  guided  too  much  by  one  science. 

Our  kindly  social  sentiment  and  sense  of  solidarity  is  a  sign  of 
progress;  every  right-minded  person  hopes  for  more.  And  yet,  we 
help  the  sickly,  the  diseased,  the  thriftless,  the  feckless,  and  we  must 
go  on  helping  them,  for  we  have  thrown  off  forever  the  old  rat- 
against-rat  theory.  We  have  thrown  off  the  yoke  of  Natural  Selection. 
And  yet,  if  we  persist  in  sheltering  inferiority  from  the  penalties  of 
inferiority,  if  we  persist  in  not  allowing  superiority  to  reap  anything 
like  the  full  rewards  of  superiority,  we  are  assuredly  making  for 
trouble.  So  some  brave  men  would  return  to  Lycurgan  methods,  to 
Plato’s  purgation  of  the  State.  But  we  cannot  do  this  wisely,  we  have 
not  knowledge  enough ;  and  we  would  not  if  we  could.  We  must  think 
out  subtler  ways,  conservative  of  such  higher  values  as  good-will,  and 
yet  safeguarding  us  from  being  kind  to  the  present  and  cruel  to  the 
future.  If  we  generalise  this  we  get  a  glimpse  of  a  critique  of  progress, 
— we  must  judge  any  social  change  by  the  criteria  of  successively 
higher  ideals.  Is  it  sound  physically,  biologically,  psychologically, 
socially  ? 

The  principal  of  guidance  is  this — judge  the  physical  in  the  light 
of  the  biological,  and  the  biological  in  the  light  of  the  psychological, 
and  the  psychological  in  the  light  of  the  social.  More  simply,  our 
proposals  for  progress  must  in  the  long  run  be  submitted  to  the  august 
tribunal  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good. 

But  there  is  another  way  of  looking  at  our  question, — a  new  light 
on  the  old  maxim:  Follow  Nature.  What  does  Animate  Nature  make 
for?  What  is  sanctioned  with  prolonged  survival  without  degen¬ 
eracy?  We  must  answer  on  the  whole,  the  healthy  and  the  knowing 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


149 

in  the  widest  sense,  the  beautiful,  and  those  that  care  for  others  as 
well  as  themselves,  such  as  Birds  and  Mammals. 

What  if  lucidity,  beauty,  health  are  all  congruous — implying  unified 
and  harmonious  life  such  as  Nature  sanctions?  Thus  concrete  and 
abstract  harmonise.  Thus  Man’s  progress,  which  Huxley  said  must 
be  against  the  cosmic  process,  is  really  in  a  line  with  it. 

We  have  seen  that  the  application  of  sound  biology  might  do  much 
to  raise  the  standard  of  individual  healthfulness  and  that  it  can  help 
towards  'the  improvement  of  the  human  breed,’  to  use  Sir  Francis 
Galton’s  phrase  which  points  to  racial  evolution  as  well  as  to  in¬ 
dividual  development.  Increased  healthfulness  of  the  human  organ¬ 
ism  as  a  whole,  body-mind  and  mind-body,  is  one  of  the  pre-conditions 
of  progress. 

We  have  also  seen  that  the  application  of  sound  biology  can  do 
much  to  remove  shackles  which  inhibit  the  higher  adventures  of  the 
human  spirit.  It  may  seem  to  some  like  a  bathos  to  refer  to  the 
handicapping  of  human  life  by  hookworm  disease ;  if  they  knew  more 
about  it  they  would  count  the  conquest  of  that  disease  (and  many 
another)  as  a  climax.  The  facts  warrant  the  belief  that  many  of  the 
shadows  and  disharmonies  of  human  life  can  be  got  rid  of  when  good¬ 
will  joins  hands  with  Science.  But  there  is  more.  Our  studies  indi¬ 
cate  for  mankind  a  mundane  future  which  is  irradiated  with  hope. 
This  hope  is  grounded  on  the  fact  that  evolution  in  the  past  has  been 
on  the  whole  progressive,  towards  integration,  towards  increasing 
fullness,  freedom,  and  fitness  of  life.  There  has  been  "a  constant  if 
chequered  advance.”  Will  it  stop? 

We  see  in  evolution  the  possibility  of  turning  even  mistakes  and 
failures  to  some  advantage ;  we  have  the  same  hope  for  ourselves  and 
for  our  race. 


' '  • 


■'  jjff  Sr 


AWeM 


. 

t 

. 


■ 


PART  II.  SOCIAL  METHOD 


CHAPTER  VI 

CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 

20.  What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other1 

.1 

On  the  Case  of  a  Certain  Man  who  is  Never  Thought  Of 

The  type  and  formula  of  most  schemes  of  philanthropy  or  humani- 
tarianism  is  this :  A  and  B  put  their  heads  together  to  decide  what  C 
shall  be  made  to  do  for  D.  The  radical  vice  of  all  these  schemes,  from 
a  sociological  point  of  view,  is  that  C  is  not  allowed  a  voice  in  the 
matter,  and  his  position,  character,  and  interests,  as  well  as  the  ulti¬ 
mate  effects  on  society  through  C’s  interests,  are  entirely  overlooked. 
I  call  C  the  Forgotten  Man.  For  once  let  us  look  him  up  and  con¬ 
sider  his  case,  for  the  characteristic  of  all  social  doctors  is,  that  they 
fix  their  minds  on  some  man  or  group  of  men  whose  case  appeals  to 
the  sympathies  and  the  imagination,  and  they  plan  remedies  addressed 
to  the  particular  trouble ;  they  do  not  understand  that  all  the  parts 
of  society  hold  together,  and  that  forces  which  are  set  in  action  act 
and  react  throughout  the  whole  organism,  until  an  equilibrium  is 
produced  by  a  re-adjustment  of  all  interests  and  rights.  They  there¬ 
fore  ignore  entirely  the  source  from  which  they  must  draw  all  the 
energy  which  they  employ  in  their  remedies,  and  they  ignore  all  the 
effects  on  other  members  of  society  than  the  ones  they  have  in  view. 
They  are  always  under  the  dominion  of  the  superstition  of  govern¬ 
ment,  and,  forgetting  that  a  government  produces  nothing  at  all,  they 
leave  out  of  sight  the  first  fact  to  be  remembered  in  all  social  discus¬ 
sion — that  the  State  cannot  get  a  cent  for  any  man  without  taking  it 
from  some  other  man,  and  this  latter  must  be  a  man  who  has  pro¬ 
duced  and  saved  it.  This  latter  is  the  Forgotten  Man. 

1  By  William  Graham  Sumner,  formerly  Professor  of  Social  Science  in  Yale 
University.  Adapted  from  What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other ,  pp.  123-126, 
131-139,  153-169.  Copyright  by  Harper  &  Brothers,  1883,  1920. 


I52 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


The  friends  of  humanity  start  out  with  certain  benevolent  feelings 
toward  "the  poor/7  "the  weak/7  "the  laborers/7  and  others  of  whom 
they  make  pets.  They  generalize  these  classes,  and  render  them  im¬ 
personal,  and  so  constitute  the  classes  into  social  pets.  They  turn 
to  other  classes  and  appeal  to  sympathy  and  generosity,  and  to  all 
the  other  noble  sentiments  of  the  human  heart.  Action  in  the  line 
proposed  consists  in  a  transfer  of  capital  from  the  better  off  to  the 
worse  off.  Capital,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  force  by  which 
civilization  is  maintained  and  carried  on.  The  same  piece  of  capital 
cannot  be  used  in  two  ways.  Every  bit  of  capital,  therefore,  which  is 
given  to  a  shiftless  and  inefficient  member  of  society,  who  makes  no 
return  for  it,  is  diverted  from  a  reproductive  use ;  but  if  it  was  put  to 
reproductive  use,  it  would  have  to  be  granted  in  wages  to  an  efficient 
and  productive  laborer.  Hence  the  real  sufferer  by  that  kind  of  be¬ 
nevolence  which  consists  in  an  expenditure  of  capital  to  protect  the 
good-for-nothing  is  the  industrious  laborer.  The  latter,  however,  is 
never  thought  of  in  this  connection.  It  is  assumed  that  he  is  provided 
for  and  out  of  the  account.  Such  a  notion  only  shows  how  little  true 
notions  of  political  economy  have  as  yet  become  popularized.  There 
is  an  almost  invincible  prejudice  that  a  man  who  gives  a  dollar  to  a 
beggar  is  generous  and  kind-hearted,  but  that  a  man  who  refuses  the 
beggar  and  puts  the  dollar  in  a  savings-bank  is  stingy  and  mean.  The 
former  is  putting  capital  where  it  is  very  sure  to  be  wasted,  and  where 
it  will  be  a  kind  of  seed  for  a  long  succession  of  future  dollars,  which 
must  be  wasted  to  ward  off  a  greater  strain  on  the  sympathies  than 
would  have  been  occasioned  by  a  refusal  in  the  first  place.  Inasmuch 
as  the  dollar  might  have  been  turned  into  capital  and  given  to  a  laborer 
who,  while  earning  it,  would  have  reproduced  it,  it  must  be  regarded 
as  taken  from  the  latter.  When  a  millionaire  gives  a  dollar  to  a 
beggar  the  gain  of  utility  to  the  beggar  is  enormous,  and  the  loss  of 
utility  to  the  millionnaire  is  insignificant.  Generally  the  discussion  is 
allowed  to  rest  there.  But  if  the  millionnaire  makes  capital  of  the 
dollar,  it  must  go  upon  the  labor  market,  as  a  demand  for  productive 
services.  Hence  there  is  another  party  in  interest — the  person  who 
supplies  productive  services.  There  always  are  two  parties.  The 
second  one  is  always  the  Forgotten  Man,  and  any  one  who  wants  to 
truly  understand  the  matter  in  question  must  go  and  search  for  the 
Forgotten  Man.  He  will  be  found  to  be  worthy,  industrious,  independ- 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 


153 


ent,  and  self-supporting.  He  is  not,  technically,  "poor”  or  "weak”; 
he  minds  his  own  business,  and  makes  no  complaint.  Consequently 
the  philanthropists  never  think  of  him,  and  trample  on  him. 

Now,  we  never  can  annihilate  a  penalty.  We  can  only  divert  it 
from  the  head  of  the  man  who  has  incurred  it  to  the  heads  of  others 
who  have  not  incurred  it.  A  vast  amount  of  "social  reform”  consists 
in  just  this  operation.  The  consequence  is  that  those  who  have  gone 
astray,  being  relieved  from  Nature’s  fierce  discipline,  go  on  to  worse, 
and  that  there  is  a  constantly  heavier  burden  for  the  others  to  bear. 
Who  are  the  others  ?  When  we  see  a  drunkard  in  the  gutter  we  pity 
him.  If  a  policeman  picks  him  up,  we  say  that  society  has  interfered 
to  save  him  from  perishing.  "Society”  is  a  fine  word,  and  it  saves  us 
the  trouble  of  thinking.  The  industrious  and  sober  workman,  who 
is  mulcted  of  a  percentage  of  his  day’s  wages  to  pay  the  policeman,  is 
the  one  who  bears  the  penalty.  But  he  is  the  Forgotten  Man.  He 
passes  by  and  is  never  noticed,  because  he  has  behaved  himself,  ful¬ 
filled  his  contracts,  and  asked  for  nothing. 

The  fallacy  of  all  prohibitory,  sumptuary,  and  moral  legislation  is 
the  same.  A  and  B  determine  to  be  teetotalers,  which  is  often  a  wise 
determination,  and  sometimes  a  necessary  one.  If  A  and  B  are  moved 
by  considerations  which  seem  to  them  good,  that  is  enough.  But 
A  and  B  put  their  heads  together  to  get  a  law  passed  which  shall  force 
C  to  be  a  teetotaler  for  the  sake  of  D,  who  is  in  danger  of  drinking 
too  much.  There  is  no  pressure  on  A  and  B.  They  are  having  their 
own  way,  and  they  like  it.  There  is  rarely  any  pressure  on  D.  He 
does  not  like  it,  and  evades  it.  The  pressure  all  comes  on  C.  The 
question  then  arises,  Who  is  C  ?  He  is  the  man  who  wants  alcoholic 
liquors  for  any  honest  purpose  whatsoever,  who  would  use  his  liberty 
without  abusing  it,  who  would  occasion  no  public  question,  and 
trouble  nobody  at  all.  He  is  the  Forgotten  Man  again,  and  as  soon  as 
he  is  drawn  from  his  obscurity  we  see  that  he  is  just  what  each  one 
of  us  ought  to  be. 

There  is  a  beautiful  notion  afloat  in  our  literature  and  in  the  minds 
of  our  people  that  men  are  born  to  certain  "natural  rights.”  If  that 
were  true,  there  would  be  something  on  earth  which  was  got  for 
nothing,  and  this  world  would  not  be  the  place  it  is  at  all.  The  fact 
is,  that  there  is  no  right  whatever  inherited  by  man  which  has  not  an 
equivalent  and  corresponding  duty  by  the  side  of  it,  as  the  price  of  it. 


i54 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


The  rights,  advantages,  capital,  knowledge,  and  all  other  goods  which 
we  inherit  from  past  generations  have  been  won  by  the  struggles  and 
sufferings  of  past  generations ;  and  the  fact  that  the  race  lives,  though 
men  die,  and  that  the  race  can  by  heredity  accumulate  within  some 
cycle  its  victories  over  Nature,  is  one  of  the  facts  which  make  civiliza¬ 
tion  possible.  The  struggles  of  the  race  as  a  whole  produce  the  pos¬ 
sessions  of  the  race  as  a  whole.  Something  for  nothing  is  not  to  be 
found  on  earth. 

If  there  were  such  things  as  natural  rights,  the  question  would  arise, 
Against  whom  are  they  good  ?  Who  has  the  corresponding  obligation 
to  satisfy  these  rights  ?  There  can  be  no  rights  against  Nature,  except 
to  get  out  of  her  whatever  we  can,  which  is  only  the  fact  of  the  strug¬ 
gle  for  existence  stated  over  again.  The  common  assertion  is,  that 
the  rights  are  good  against  society ;  that  is,  that  society  is  bound  to 
obtain  and  secure  them  for  the  persons  interested.  Society,  however, 
is  only  the  persons  interested  plus  some  other  persons;  and  as  the 
persons  interested  have  by  the  hypothesis  failed  to  win  the  rights,  we 
come  to  this,  that  natural  rights  are  the  claims  which  certain  persons 
have  by  prerogative  against  some  other  persons.  Such  is  the  actual 
interpretation  in  practice  of  natural  rights — claims  which  some  people 
have  by  prerogative  on  other  people. 

This  theory  is  a  very  far-reaching  one,  and  of  course  it  is  adequate 
to  furnish  a  foundation  for  a  whole  social  philosophy.  In  its  widest 
extension  it  comes  to  mean  that  if  any  man  finds  himself  uncomfort¬ 
able  in  this  world,  it  must  be  somebody  else’s  fault,  and  that  some¬ 
body  is  bound  to  come  and  make  him  comfortable.  Now,  the  people 
who  are  most  uncomfortable  in  this  world  (for  if  we  should  tell  all  our 
troubles  it  would  not  be  found  to  be  a  very  comfortable  world  for 
anybody)  are  those  who  have  neglected  their  duties,  and  consequently 
have  failed  to  get  their  rights.  The  people  who  can  be  called  upon 
to  serve  the  uncomfortable  must  be  those  who  have  done  their  duty, 
as  the  world  goes,  tolerably  well.  Consequently  the  doctrine  which 
we  are  discussing  turns  out  to  be  in  practice  only  a  scheme  for  making 
injustice  prevail  in  human  society  by  reversing  the  distribution  of 
rewards  and  punishments  between  those  who  have  done  their  duty 
and  those  who  have  not. 

We  are  constantly  preached  at  by  our  public  teachers,  as  if  re¬ 
spectable  people  were  to  blame  because  some  people  are  not  respect- 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 


155 


able — as  if  the  man  who  has  clone  his  duty  in  his  own  sphere  was 
responsible  in  some  way  for  another  man  who  has  not  done  his  duty 
in  his  sphere.  There  are  relations  of  employer  and  employe  which 
need  to  be  regulated  by  compromise  and  treaty.  There  are  sanitary 
precautions  which  need  to  be  taken  in  factories  and  houses.  There 
are  precautions  against  fire  which  are  necessary.  There  is  care  needed 
that  children  be  not  employed  too  young,  and  that  they  have  an  educa¬ 
tion.  There  is  care  needed  that  banks,  insurance  companies,  and  rail¬ 
roads  be  well  managed,  and  that  officers  do  not  abuse  their  trusts. 
There  is  a  duty  in  each  case  on  the  interested  parties  to  defend  their 
own  interest.  The  penalty  of  neglect  is  suffering.  The  system  of 
providing  for  these  things  by  boards  and  inspectors  throws  the.  cost 
of  it,  not  on  the  interested  parties,  but  on  the  tax-payers.  Some  of 
them,  no  doubt,  are  the  interested  parties,  and  they  may  consider  that 
they  are  exercising  the  proper  care  by  paying  taxes  to  support  an 
inspector.  If  so,  they  only  get  their  fair  deserts  when  the  railroad 
inspector  finds  out  that  a  bridge  is  not  safe  after  it  is  broken  down,  or 
when  the  bank  examiner  comes  in  to  find  out  why  a  bank  failed  after 
the  cashier  has  stolen  ail  the  funds.  The  real  victim  is  the  Forgotten 
Man  again — the  man  who  has  watched  his  own  investments,  made  his 
own  machinery  safe,  attended  to  his  own  plumbing,  and  educated 
his  own  children,  and  who,  just  when  he  wants  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
his  care,  is  told  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  and  take  care  of  some  of  his 
negligent  neighbors,  or,  if  he  does  not  go,  to  pay  an  inspector  to  go. 
No  doubt  it  is  often  his  interest  to  go  or  to  send,  rather  than  to  have 
the  matter  neglected,  on  account  of  his  own  connection  with  the  thing 
neglected,  and  his  own  secondary  peril ;  but  the  point  now  is,  that  if 
preaching  and  philosophizing  can  do  any  good  in  the  premises,  it  is 
all  wrong  to  preach  to  the  Forgotten  Man  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  and 
remedy  other  people’s  neglect.  It  is  not  his  duty.  It  is  a  harsh  and 
unjust  burden  which  is  laid  upon  him,  and  it  is  only  the  more  unjust 
because  no  one  thinks  of  him  when  laying  the  burden  so  that  it  falls 
on  him.  The  exhortations  ought  to  be  expended  on  the  negligent — 
that  they  take  care  of  themselves. 

It  is  an  especially  vicious  extension  of  the  false  doctrine  above 
mentioned  that  criminals  have  some  sort  of  a  right  against  or  claim 
on  society.  Many  reformatory  plans  are  based  on  a  doctrine  of  this 
kind  when  they  are  urged  upon  the  public  conscience.  A  criminal  is  a 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


156 

man  who,  instead  of  working  with  and  for  the  society,  has  turned 
against  it,  and  become  destructive  and  injurious.  His  punishment 
means  that  society  rules  him  out  of  its  membership,  and  separates 
him  from  its  association,  by  execution  or  imprisonment,  according  to 
the  gravity  of  his  offence.  He  has  no  claims  against  society  at  all. 
What  shall  be  done  with  him  is  a  question  of  expediency  to  be  settled 
in  view  of  the  interests  of  society — that  is,  of  the  non-criminals.  The 
French  writers  of  the  school  of  ’48  used  to  represent  the  badness  of 
the  bad  men  as  the  fault  of  "  society.”  As  the  object  of  this  statement 
was  to  show  that  the  badness  of  the  bad  men  was  not  the  fault  of  the 
bad  men,  and  as  society  contains  only  good  men  and  bad  men,  it  fol¬ 
lowed  that  the  badness  of  the  bad  men  was  the  fault  of  the  good  men. 
On  that  theory,  of  course  the  good  men  owed  a  great  deal  to  the  bad 
men  who  were  in  prison  and  at  the  galleys  on  their  account.  If  we  do 
not  admit  that  theory,  it  behooves  us  to  remember  that  any  claim  which 
we  allow  to  the  criminal  against  the  "State”  is  only  so  much  burden 
laid  upon  those  who  have  never  cost  the  State  anything  for  discipline 
or  correction.  The  punishments  of  society  are  just  like  those  of  God 
and  Nature — they  are  warnings  to  the  wrong-doer  to  reform  himself. 

Wherefore  we  should  love  One  Another 

Suppose  that  a  man,  going  through  a  wood,  should  be  struck  by  a 
falling  tree  and  pinned  down  beneath  it.  Suppose  that  another  man, 
coming  that  way  and  finding  him  there,  should,  instead  of  hastening 
to  give  or  to  bring  aid,  begin  to  lecture  on  the  law  of  gravitation, 
taking  the  tree  as  an  illustration. 

Suppose,  again,  that  a  person  lecturing  on  the  law  of  gravitation 
should  state  the  law  of  falling  bodies,  and  suppose  that  an  objector 
should  say :  You  state  your  law  as  a  cold,  mathematical  fact,  and  you 
declare  that  all  bodies  will  fall  comformably  to  it.  How  heartless! 
You  do  not  reflect  that  it  may  be  a  beautiful  little  child  falling  from 
a  window. 

These  two  suppositions  may  be  of  some  use  to  us  as  illustrations. 

Let  us  take  the  second  first.  It  is  the  objection  of  the  sentimen¬ 
talist  ;  and,  ridiculous  as  the  mode  of  discussion  appears  when  applied 
to  the  laws  of  natural  philosophy,  the  sociologist  is  constantly  met  by 
objections  of  just  that  character.  Especially  when  the  subject  under 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 


I57 


discussion  is  charity  in  any  of  its  public  forms,  the  attempt  to  bring 
method  and  clearness  into  the  discussion  is  sure  to  be  crossed  by  sug¬ 
gestions  which  are  as  far  from  the  point  and  as  foreign  to  any  really 
intelligent  point  of  view  as  the  supposed  speech  in  the  illustration. 
In  the  first  place,  a  child  would  fall  just  as  a  stone  would  fall. 
Nature’s  forces  know  no  pity.  Just  so  in  sociology.  The  forces  know 
no  pity.  In  the  second  place,  if  a  natural  philosopher  should  discuss 
all  the  bodies  which  may  fall,  he  would  go  entirely  astray,  and  would 
certainly  do  no  good.  The  same  is  true  of  the  sociologist.  He  must 
concentrate,  not  scatter,  and  study  laws,  not  all  conceivable  combina¬ 
tions  of  force  which  may  occur  in  practice.  In  the  third  place,  no¬ 
body  ever  saw  a  body  fall  as  the  philosophers  say  it  will  fall,  because 
they  can  accomplish  nothing  unless  they  study  forces  separately,  and 
allow  for  their  combined  action  in  all  concrete  and  actual  phenomena. 
The  same  is  true  in  sociology,  with  the  additional  fact  that  the  forces 
and  their  combinations  in  sociology  are  far  the  most  complex  which 
we  have  to  deal  with.  In  the  fourth  place,  any  natural  philosopher 
who  should  stop,  after  stating  the  law  of  falling  bodies,  to  warn 
mothers  not  to  let  their  children  fall  out  of  the  window,  would  make 
himself  ridiculous.  Just  so  a  sociologist  who  should  attach  moral  ap¬ 
plications  and  practical  maxims  to  his  investigations  would  entirely 
miss  his  proper  business.  There  is  the  force  of  gravity  as  a  fact  in  the 
world.  If  we  understand  this,  the  necessity  of  care  to  conform  to  the 
action  of  gravity  meets  us  at  every  step  in  our  private  life  and  personal 
experience.  The  fact  in  sociology  is  in  no  wise  different. 

If,  for  instance,  we  take  political  economy,  that  science  does  not 
teach  an  individual  how  to  get  rich.  It  is  a  social  science.  It  treats 
of  the  laws  of  the  material  welfare  of  human  societies.  It  is,  there¬ 
fore,  only  one  science  among  all  the  sciences  which  inform  us  about 
the  laws  and  conditions  of  our  life  on  earth.  Education  has  for  its 
object  to  give  a  man  knowledge  of  the  conditions  and  laws  of  living, 
so  that,  in  any  case  in  which  the  individual  stands  face  to  face  with 
the  necessity  of  deciding  what  to  do,  if  he  is  an  educated  man,  he 
may  know  how  to  make  a  wise  and  intelligent  decision.  If  he  knows 
chemistry,  physics,  geology,  and  other  sciences,  he  will  know  what  he 
must  encounter  of  obstacle  or  help  in  Nature  in  what  he  proposes  to 
do.  If  he  knows  physiology  and  hygiene,  he  will  know  what  effects 
on  health  he  must  expect  in  one  course  or  another.  Tf  he  knows 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


158 

political*  economy,  he  will  know  what  effect  on  wealth  and  on  the 
welfare  of  society  one  course  or  another  will  produce.  There  is  no 
injunction,  no  "ought”  in  political  economy  at  all.  It  does  not  assume 
to  tell  man  what  he  ought  to  do,  any  more  than  chemistry  tells  us 
that  we  ought  to  mix  things,  or  mathematics  that  we  ought  to  solve 
equations.  It  only  gives  one  element  necessary  to  an  intelligent  de¬ 
cision,  and  in  every  practical  and  concrete  case  the  responsibility  of 
deciding  what  to  do  rests  on  the  man  who  has  to  act.  The  economist, 
therefore,  does  not  say  to  any  one,  You  ought  never  to  give  money 
to  charity.  He  contradicts  anybody  who  says,  You  ought  to  give 
money  to  charity;  and,  in  opposition  to  any  such  person,  he  says, 
Let  me  show  you  what  difference  it  makes  to  you,  to  others,  to  society, 
whether  you  give  money  to  charity  or  not,  so  that  you  can  make  a 
wise  and  intelligent  decision.  Certainly  there  is  no  harder  thing  to 
do  than  to  employ  capital  charitably.  It  would  be  extreme  folly  to 
say  that  nothing  of  that  sort  ought  to  be  done,  but  I  fully  believe  that 
to-day  the  next  most  pernicious  thing  to  vice  is  charity  in  its  broad 
and  popular  sense. 

In  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  discussed  the  public  and  social 
relations  of  classes,  and  those  social  topics  in  which  groups  of  persons 
are  considered  as  groups  or  classes,  without  re'gard  to  personal  merits 
or  demerits.  I  have  relegated  all  charitable  work  to  the  domain  of 
private  relations,  where  personal  acquaintance  and  personal  estimates 
may  furnish  the  proper  limitations  and  guarantees.  A  man  who  had 
no  sympathies  and  no  sentiments  would  be  a  very  poor  creature ;  but 
the  public  charities,  more  especially  the  legislative  charities,  nourish 
no  man’s  sympathies  and  sentiments.  Furthermore,  it  ought  to  be 
distinctly  perceived  that  any  charitable  and  benevolent  effort  which 
any  man  desires  to  make  voluntarily,  to  see  if  he  can  do  any  good, 
lies  entirely  beyond  the  field  of  discussion.  It  would  be  as  impertinent 
to  prevent  his  effort  as  it  is  to  force  cooperation  in  an  effort  on  some 
one  who  does  not  want  to  participate  in  it.  What  I  choose  to  do  by 
way  of  exercising  my  own  sympathies  under  my  own  reason  and 
conscience  is  one  thing;  what  another  man  forces  me  to  do  of  a 
sympathetic  character,  because  his  reason  and  conscience  approve  of 
it,  is  quite  another  thing. 

What,  now,  is  the  reason  why  we  should  help  each  other?  This 
carries  us  back  to  the  other  illustration  with  which  we  started.  We 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 


T59 


may  philosophize  as  coolly*  and  correctly  as  we  choose  about  our 
duties  and  about  the  laws  of  right  living ;  no  one  of  us  lives  up  to 
what  he  knows.  The  man  struck  by  the  falling  tree  has,  perhaps, 
been  careless.  We  are  all  careless.  Environed  as  we  are  by  risks  and 
perils,  which  befall  us  as  misfortunes,  no  man  of  us  is  in  a  position  to 
say,  "I  know  all  the  laws,  and  am  sure  to  obey  them  all ;  therefore  I 
shall  never  need  aid  and  sympathy.”  At  the  very  best,  one  of  us 
fails  in  one  way  and  another  in  another,  if  we  do  not  fail  altogether. 
Therefore  the  man  under  the  tree  is  the  one  of  us  who  for  the  moment 
is  smitten.  It  may  be  you  to-morrow,  and  I  next  day.  It  is  the  com¬ 
mon  frailty  in  the  midst  of  a  common  peril  which  gives  us  a  kind  of 
solidarity  of  interest  to  rescue  the  one  for  whom  the  chances  of  life 
have  turned  out  badly  just  now.  Probably  the  victim  is  to  blame. 
He  almost  always  is  so.  A  lecture  to  that  effect  in  the  crisis  of  his 
peril  would  be  out  of  place,  because  it  would  not  fit  the  need  of  the 
moment ;  but  it  would  be  very  much  in  place  at  another  time,  when 
the  need  was  to  avert  the  repetition  of  such  an  accident  to  somebody 
else.  Men,  therefore,  owe  to  men,  in  the  chances  and  perils  of  this 
life,  aid  and  sympathy,  on  account  of  the  common  participation  in 
human  frailty  and  folly.  This  observation,  however,  puts  aid  and 
sympathy  in  the  field  of  private  and  personal  relations,  under  the 
regulation  of  reason  and  conscience,  and  gives  no  ground  for  mechani¬ 
cal  and  impersonal  schemes. 

We  may,  then,  distinguish  four  things : 

1.  The  function  of  science  is  to  investigate  truth.  Science  is  color¬ 
less  and  impersonal.  It  investigates  the  force  of  gravity,  and  finds 
out  the  laws  of  that  force,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  weal  or  woe 
of  men  under  the  operation  of  the  law. 

2.  The  moral  deductions  as  to  what  one  ought  to  do  are  to  be 
drawn  by  the  reason  and  conscience  of  the  individual  man  who  is 
instructed  by  science.  Let  him  take  note  of  the  force  of  gravity,  and 
see  to  it  that  he  does  not  walk  off  a  precipice  or  get  in  the  way  of 
a  falling  body. 

3.  On  account  of  the  number  and  variety  of  perils  of  all  kinds  by 
which  our  lives  are  environed,  and  on  account  of  ignorance,  careless¬ 
ness,  and  folly,  we  all  neglect  to  obey  the  moral  deductions  which  we 
have  learned,  so  that,  in  fact,  the  wisest  and  the  best  of  us  act 
foolishly  and  suffer. 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


160 

4.  The  law  of  sympathy,  by  which  we* share  each  others’  burdens, 
is  to  do  as  we  would  be  done  by.  It  is  not  a  scientific  principle,  and 
does  not  admit  of  such  generalization  or  interpretation  that  A  can 
tell  B  what  this  law  enjoins  on  B  to  do.  Hence  the  relations  of  sym¬ 
pathy  and  sentiment  are  essentially  limited  to  two  persons  only,  and 
they  cannot  be  made  a  basis  for  the  relations  of  groups  of  persons,  or 
for  discussion  by  any  third  party. 

Social  improvement  is  not  to  be  won  by  direct  effort.  It  is  second¬ 
ary,  and  results  from  physical  or  economic  improvements.  That  is  the 
reason  why  schemes  of  direct  social  amelioration  always  have  an 
arbitrary,  sentimental,  and  artificial  character,  while  true  social  ad¬ 
vance  must  be  a  product  and  a  growth.  The  efforts  which  are  being 
put  forth  for  every  kind  of  progress  in  the  arts  and  sciences  are,  there¬ 
fore,  contributing  to  true  social  progress.  Let  any  one  learn  what 
hardship  was  involved,  even  for  a  wealthy  person,  a  century  ago,  in 
crossing  the  Atlantic,  and  then  let  him  compare  that  hardship  even 
with  a  steerage  passage  at  the  present  time,  considering  time  and 
money  cost.  This  improvement  in  transportation  by  which  "the  poor 
and  weak  ”  can  be  carried  from  the  crowded  centres  of  population  to 
the  new  land  is  worth  more  to  them  than  all  the  schemes  of  all  the 
social  reformers.  An  improvement  in  surgical  -instruments  or  in  an¬ 
aesthetics  really  does  more  for  those  who  are  not  well  off  than  all  the 
declamations  of  the  orators  and  pious  wishes  of  the  reformers.  Civil 
service  reform  would  be  a  greater  gain  to  the  laborers  than  in¬ 
numerable  factory  acts  and  eight-hour  laws.  Free  trade  would  be  a 
greater  blessing  to  "the  poor  man”  than  all  the  devices  of  all  the 
friends  of  humanity  if  they  could  be  realized.  If  the  economists  could 
satisfactorily  solve  the  problem  of  the  regulation  of  paper  currency, 
they  would  do  more  for  the  wages  class  than  could  be  accomplished 
by  all  the  artificial  doctrines  about  wages  which  they  seem  to  feel 
bound  to  encourage.  If  we  could  get  firm  and  good  laws  passed  for 
the  management  of  savings-banks,  and  then  refrain  from  the  amend¬ 
ments  by  which  those  laws  are  gradually  broken  down,  we  should  do 
more  for  the  non-capitalist  class  than  by  volumes  of  laws  against 
"corporations”  and  the  "excessive  power  of  capital.” 

We  each  owe  to  the  other  mutual  redress  of  grievances.  .  .  .  Every 
honest  citizen  of  a  free  state  owes  it  to  himself,  to  the  community, 
and  especially  to  those  who  are  at  once  weak  and  wronged,  to  go  to 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 


161 


their  assistance  and  to  help  redress  their  wrongs.  Whenever  a  law  or 
social  arrangement  acts  so  as  to  injure  any  one,  and  that  one  the 
humblest,  then  there  is  a  duty  on  those  who  are  stronger,  or  who  know 
better,  to  demand  and  fight  for  redress  and  correction.  When  gen¬ 
eralized  this  means  that  it  is  the  duty  of  All-of-us  (that  is,  the  State) 
to  establish  justice  for  all,  from  the  least  to  the  greatest,  and  in  all 
matters.  This,  however,  is  no  new  doctrine.  It  is  only  the  old,  true, 
and  indisputable  function  of  the  State ;  and  in  working  for  a  redress 
of  wrongs  and  a  correction  of  legislative  abuses,  we  are  only  struggling 
to  a  fuller  realization  of  it — that  is,  working  to  improve  civil 
government. 

We  each  owe  it  to  the  other  to  guarantee  rights.  Rights  do  not 
pertain  to  results,  but  only  to  chances.  They  pertain  to  the  conditions 
of  the  struggle  for  existence,  not  to  any  of  the  results  of  it ;  to  the 
pursuit  of  happiness,  not  to  the  possession  of  happiness.  It  cannot 
be  said  that  each  one  has  a  right  to  have  some  property,  because  if 
one  man  had  such  a  right  some  other  man  or  men  would  be  under  a 
corresponding  obligation  to  provide  him  with  some  property.  Each 
has  a  right  to  acquire  and  possess  property  if  he  can.  It  is  plain  what 
fallacies  are  developed  when  we  overlook  this  distinction.  Those  fal¬ 
lacies  run  through  all  socialistic  schemes  and  theories.  If  we  take 
rights  to  pertain  to  results,  and  then  say  that  rights  must  be  equal, 
we  come  to  say  that  men  have  a  right  to  be  equally  happy,  and  so  on 
in  all  the  details.  Rights  should  be  equal,  because  they  pertain  to 
chances,  and  all  ought  to  have  equal  chances  so  far  as  chances  are 
provided  or  limited  by  the  action  of  society.  This,  however,  will  not 
produce  equal  results,  but  it  is  right  just  because  it  will  produce 
unequal  results — that  is,  results  which  shall  be  proportioned  to  the 
merits  of  individuals.  We  each  owe  it  to  the  other  to  guarantee 
mutually  the  chance  to  earn,  to  possess,  to  learn,  to  marry,  etc.,  etc., 
against  any  interference  which  would  prevent  the  exercise  of  those 
rights  by  a  person  who  wishes  to  prosecute  and  enjoy  them  in  peace 
for  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  If  we  generalize  this,  it  means  that 
All-of-us  ought  to  guarantee  rights  to  each  of  us.  But  our  modern 
free,  constitutional  States  are  constructed  entirely  on  the  notion  of 
rights,  and  we  regard  them  as  performing  their  functions  more  and 
more  perfectly  according  as  they  guarantee  rights  in  consonance  with 
the  constantly  corrected  and  expanded  notions  of  rights  from  one 


162 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


generation  to  another.  Therefore,  when  we  say  that  we  owe  it  to 
each  other  to  guarantee  rights  we  only  say  that  we  ought  to  prosecute 
and  improve  our  political  science. 

If  we  have  in  mind  the  value  of  chances  to  earn,  learn,  possess,  etc., 
for  a  man  of  independent  energy,  we  can  go  on  one  step  farther  in 
our  deductions  about  help.  The  only  help ‘which  is  generally  ex¬ 
pedient,  even  within  the  limits  of  the  private  and  personal  relations  of 
two  persons  to  each  other,  is  that  which  consists  in  helping  a  man  to 
help  himself.  This  always  consists  in  opening  the  chances.  A  man  of 
assured  position  can,  by  an  effort  which  is  of  no  appreciable  impor¬ 
tance  to  him,  give  aid  which  is  of  incalculable  value  to  a  man  who  is 
all  ready  to  make  his  own  career  if  he  can  only  get  a  chance.  The 
truest  and  deepest  pathos  in  this  world  is  not  that  of  suffering  but 
that  of  brave  struggling.  The  truest  sympathy  is  not  compassion, 
but  a  fellow-feeling  with  courage  and  fortitude  in  the  midst  of 
noble  effort. 

Now,  the  aid  which  helps  a  man  to  help  himself  is  not  in  the  least 
akin  to  the  aid  which  is  given  in  charity.  If  alms  are  given,  or  if  we 
"make  work”  for  a  man,  or  "give  him  employment,”  or  "protect” 
him,  we  simply  take  a  product  from  one  and  give  it  to  another.  If  we 
help  a  man  to  help  himself,  by  opening  the  chances  around  him,  we 
put  him  in  a  position  to  add  to  the  wealth  of  the  community  by  put¬ 
ting  new  powers  in  operation  to  produce.  It  would  seem  that  the 
difference  between  getting  something  already  in  existence  from  the 
one  who  has  it,  and  producing  a  new  thing  by  applying  new  labor  to 
natural  materials,  would  be  so  plain  as  never  to  be  forgotten ;  but  the 
fallacy  of  confusing  the  two  is  one  of  the  commonest  in  all  social 
discussions. 

We  have  now  seen  that  the  current  discussions  about  the  claims  and 
rights  of  social  classes  on  each  other  are  radically  erroneous  and 
fallacious,  and  we  have  seen  that  an  analysis  of  the  general  obligations 
which  we  all  have  to  each  other  leads  us  to  nothing  but  an  emphatic 
repetition  of  old  but  well-acknowledged  obligations  to  perfect  our 
political  institutions.  We  have  been  led  to  restriction,  not  extension, 
of  the  functions  of  the  State,  but  we  have  also  been  led  to  see  the 
necessity  of  purifying  and  perfecting  the  operation  of  the  State  in  the 
functions  which  properly  belong  to  it.  If  we  refuse  to  recognize  any 
classes  as  existing  in  society  when,  perhaps,  a  claim  might  be  set  up 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD  163 


that  the  wealthy,  educated,  and  virtuous  have  acquired  special  rights 
and  precedence,  we  certainly  cannot  recognize  any  classes  when  it 
is  attempted  to  establish  such  distinctions  for  the  sake  of  imposing 
burdens  and  duties  on  one  group  for  the  benefit  of  others.  The  men 
who  have  not  done  their  duty  in  this  world  never  can  be  equal  to 
those  who  have  done  their  duty  more  or  less  well.  If  words  like  wise 
and  foolish,  thrifty  and  extravagant,  prudent  and  negligent,  have  any 
meaning  in  language,  then  it  must  make  some  difference  how  people 
behave  in  this  world,  and  the  difference  will  appear  in  the  position 
they  acquire  in  the  body  of  society,  and  in  relation  to  the  chances  of 
life.  They  may,  then,  be  classified  in  reference  to  these  facts.  Such 
classes  always  will  exist ;  no  other  social  distinctions  can  endure. 
If,  then,  we  look  to  the  origin  and  definition  of  these  classes,  we  shall 
find  it  impossible  to  deduce  any  obligations  which  one  of  them  bears 
to  the  other.  The  class  distinctions  simply  result  from  the  different 
degrees  of  success  with  which  men  have  availed  themselves  of  the 
chances  which  were  presented  to  them.  Instead  of  endeavoring  to 
redistribute  the  acquisitions  which  have  been  made  between  the  exist¬ 
ing  classes,  our  aim  should  be  to  increase,  multiply,  and  extend  the 
chances.  Such  is  the  work  of  civilization.  Every  old  error  or  abuse 
which  is  removed  opens  new  chances  of  development  to  all  the  new 
energy  of  society.  Every  improvement  in  education,  science,  art,  or 
government  expands  the  chances  of  man  on  earth.  Such  expansion 
is  no  guarantee  of  equality.  On  the  contrary,  if  there  be  liberty,  some 
will  profit  by  the  chances  eagerly  and  some  will  neglect  them  alto¬ 
gether.  Therefore,  the  greater  the  chances  the  more  unequal  will  be 
the  fortune  of  these  two  sets  of  men.  So  it  ought  to  be,  in  all  justice 
and  right  reason.  The  yearning  after  equality  is  the  offspring  of  envy 
and  covetousness,  and  there  is  no  possible  plan  for  satisfying  that 
yearning  which  can  do  aught  else  than  rob  A  to  give  to  B ;  conse¬ 
quently  all  such  plans  nourish  some  of  the  meanest  vices  of  human 
nature,  waste  capital,  and  overthrow  civilization.  But  if  we  can  ex¬ 
pand  the  chances  we  can  count  on  a  general  and  steady  growth  of 
civilization  and  advancement  of  society  by  and  through  its  best 
members.  In  the  prosecution  of  these  chances  we  all  owe  to  'each 
other  good-will,  mutual  respect,  and  mutual  guarantees  of  liberty  and 
security.  Beyond  this  nothing  can  be  affirmed  as  a  duty  of  one  group 
to  another  in  a  free  state. 


164 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


21.  Disappointed  Methods  of  Reform1 

If  some  magical  transformation  could  be  produced  in  men’s  ways 
of  looking  at  themselves  and  their  fellows,  no  inconsiderable  part  of 
the  evils  which  now  afflict  society  would  vanish  away  or  remedy 
themselves  automatically.  If  the  majority  of  influential  persons  held 
the  opinions  and  occupied  the  point  of  view  that  a  few  rather  unin- 
fluential  people  now  do,  there  would,  for  instance,  be  no  likelihood  of 
another  great  war;  the  whole  problem  of  " labor  and  capital”  would 
be  transformed  and  attenuated;  national  arrogance,  race  animosity, 
political  corruption,  and  inefficiency  would  all  be  reduced  below  the 
danger  point.  As  an  old  Stoic  proverb  has  it,  men  are  tormented  by 
the  opinions  they  have  of  things,  rather  than  by  the  things  them¬ 
selves.  This  is  eminently  true  of  many  of  our  worst  problems  to-day. 
We  have  available  knowledge  and  ingenuity  and  material  resources  to 
make  a  far  fairer  world  than  that  in  which  we  find  ourselves,  but 
various  obstacles  prevent  our  intelligently  availing  ourselves  of  them. 
The  object  of  this  book  is  to  substantiate  this  proposition,  to  exhibit 
with  entire  frankness  the  tremendous  difficulties  that  stand  in  the 
way  of  such  a  beneficent  change  of  mind,  and  to  point  out  as  clearly 
as  may  be  some  of  the  measures  to  be  taken  in  order  to  overcome  them. 

When  we  contemplate  the  shocking  derangement  of  human  affairs 
which  now  prevails  in  most  civilized  countries,  including  our  own, 
even  the  best  minds  are  puzzled  and  uncertain  in  their  attempts  to 
grasp  the  situation.  The  world  seems  to  demand  a  moral  and  eco¬ 
nomic  regeneration  which  it  is  dangerous  to  postpone,  but  as  yet 
impossible  to  imagine,  let  alone  direct.  The  preliminary  intellectual 
regeneration  which  would  put  our  leaders  in  a  position  to  determine 
and  control  the  course  of  affairs  has  not  taken  place.  We  have  un¬ 
precedented  conditions  to  deal  with  and  novel  adjustments  to  make — 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  that.  We  also  have  a  great  stock  of  scientific 
knowledge  unknown  to  our  grandfathers  with  which  to  operate.  So 
novel  are  the  conditions,  so  copious  the  knowledge,  that  we  must 
undertake  the  arduous  task  of  reconsidering  a  great  part  of  the  opin¬ 
ions  about  man  and  his  relations  to  his  fellow-men  which  have  been 

1From  The  Mind  in  the  Making  (pp.  3-9,  12-23),  by  James  Harvey  Robinson, 
Ph.D.,  Lecturer  in  the  New  School  for  Social  Research,  formerly  Professor  of  His¬ 
tory  in  Columbia  University.  Copyright,  1921,  by  Harper  &  Brothers.  Printed 
in  the  United  States  of  America. 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD  165 


handed  down  to  us  by  previous  generations  who  lived  in  far  other 
conditions  and  possessed  far  less  information  about  the  world  and 
themselves.  We  have,  however,  first  to  create  an  unprecedented  atti¬ 
tude  of  mind  to  cope  with  unprecedented  conditions,  and  to  utilize 
unprecedented  knowledge.  This  is  the  preliminary,  and  most  difficult, 
step  to  be  taken — far  more  difficult  than  one  would  suspect  who  fails 
to  realize  that  in  order  to  take  it  we  must  overcome  inveterate  natural 
tendencies  and  artificial  habits  of  long  standing.  How  are  we  to  put 
ourselves  in  a  position  to  come  to  think  of  things  that  we  not  only 
never  thought  of  before,  but  are  most  reluctant  to  question?  In 
short,  how  are  we  to  rid  ourselves  of  our  fond  prejudices  and  open 
our  minds? 

As  a  historical  student  who  for  a  good  many  years  has  been  espe¬ 
cially  engaged  in  inquiring  how  man  happens  to  have  the  ideas  and 
convictions  about  himself  and  human  relations  which  now  prevail, 
the  writer  has  reached  the  conclusion  that  history  can  at  least  shed  a 
great  deal  of  light  on  our  present  predicaments  and  confusion.  I  do 
not  mean  by  history  that  conventional  chronicle  of  remote  and  irrele¬ 
vant  events  which  embittered  the  youthful  years  of  many  of  us,  but 
rather  a  study  of  how  man  has  come  to  be  as  he  is  and  to  believe 
as  he  does. 

No  historian  has  so  far  been  able  to  make  the  whole  story  very 
plain  or  popular,  but  a  number  of  considerations  are  obvious  enough, 
and  it  ought  not  to  be  impossible  some  day  to  popularize  them.  I 
venture  to  think  that  if  certain  seemingly  indisputable  historical 
facts  were  generally  known  and  accepted  and  permitted  to  play  a 
daily  part  in  our  thought,  the  world  would  forthwith  become  a  very 
different  place  from  what  it  now  is.  We  could  then  neither  delude 
ourselves  in  the  simple-minded  way  we  now  do,  nor  could  we  take 
advantage  of  the  primitive  ignorance  of  others.  All  our  discussions 
of  social,  industrial,  and  political  reform  would  be  raised  to  a  higher 
plane  of  insight  and  fruitfulness. 

In  one  of  those  brilliant  divagations  with  which  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  is 
wont  to  enrich  his  novels  he  says : 

When  the  intellectual  history  of  this  time  comes  to  be  written,  nothing, 
1  think,  will  stand  out  more  strikingly  than  the  empty  gulf  in  quality  be¬ 
tween  the  superb  and  richly  fruitful  scientific  investigations  that  are  going 
on,  and  the  general  thought  of  other  educated  sections  of  the  community. 


i66 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


I  do  not  mean  that  scientific  men  are,  as  a  whole,  a  class  of  supermen,  deal¬ 
ing  with  and  thinking  about  everything  in  a  way  altogether  better  than  the 
common  run  of  humanity,  but  in  their  field  they  think  and  work  with  an 
intensity,  an  integrity,  a  breadth,  boldness,  patience,  thoroughness,  and  faith¬ 
fulness — excepting  only  a  few  artists — which  puts  their  work  out  of  all 
comparison  with  any  other  human  activity.  ...  In  these  particular  directions 
the  human  mind  has  achieved  a  pew  and  higher  quality  of  attitude  and  gesture, 
a  veracity,  a  self -detachment,  and  self -abnegating  vigor  of  criticism  that  tend 
to  spread  out  and  must  ultimately  spread  out  to  every  other  human  affair. 

No  one  who  is  even  most  superficially  acquainted  with  the  achieve¬ 
ments  of  students  of  nature  during  the  past  few  centuries  can  fail  to 
see  that  their  thought  has  been  astoundingly  effective  in  constantly 
adding  to  our  knowledge  of  the  universe,  from  the  hugest  nebula  to 
the  tiniest  atom ;  moreover,  this  knowledge  has  been  so  applied  as  to 
well-nigh  revolutionize  human  affairs,  and  both  the  knowledge  and 
its  applications  appear  to  be  no  more  than  hopeful  beginnings,  with 
indefinite  revelations  ahead,  if  only  the  same  kind  of  thought  be 
continued  in  the  same  patient  and  scrupulous  manner. 

But  the  knowledge  of  man,  of  the  springs  of  his  conduct,  of  his 
relation  to  his  fellow-men  singly  or  in  groups,  and  the  felicitous 
regulation  of  human  intercourse  in  the  interest  of  harmony  and  fair¬ 
ness,  have  made  no  such  advance.  Aristotle’s  treatises  on  astronomy 
and  physics,  and  his  notions  of  "generation  and  decay”  and  of 
chemical  processes,  have  long  gone  by  the  board,  but  his  politics  and 
ethics  are  still  revered.  Does  this  mean  that  his  penetration  in  the 
sciences  of  man  exceeded  so  greatly  his  grasp  of  natural  science,  or 
does  it  mean  that  the  progress  of  mankind  in  the  scientific  knowledge 
and  regulation  of  human  affairs  has  remained  almost  stationary  for 
over  two  thousand  years?  I  think  that  we  may  safely  conclude  that 
the  latter  is  the  case.  It  has  required  three  centuries  of  scientific 
thought  and  of  subtle  inventions  for  its  promotion  to  enable  a  modern 
chemist  or  physicist  to  center  his  attention  on  electrons  and  their 
relation  to  the  mysterious  nucleus  of  the  atom,  or  to  permit  an  em¬ 
bryologist  to  study  the  early  stirrings  of  the  fertilized  egg.  As  yet 
relatively  little  of  the  same  kind  of  thought  has  been  brought  to  bear 
on  human  affairs. 

When  we  compare  the  discussions  in  the  United  States  Senate  in 
regard  to  the  League  of  Nations  with  the  consideration  of  a  broken- 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD  167 


down  car  in  a  roadside  garage  the  contrast  is  shocking.  The  rural 
mechanic  thinks  scientifically;  his  only  aim  is  to  avail  himself  of 
his  knowledge  of  the  nature  and  workings  of  the  car,  with  a  view  to 
making  it  run  once  more.  The  Senator,  on  the  other  hand,  appears 
too  often  to  have  little  idea  of  the  nature  and  workings  of  nations, 
and  he  relies  on  rhetoric  and  appeals  to  vague  fears  and  hopes  or 
mere  partisan  animosity.  The  scientists  have  been  busy  for  a  century 
in  revolutionizing  the  practical  relation  of  nations.  The  ocean  is  no 
longer  a  barrier,  as  it  was  in  Washington’s  day,  but  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  a  smooth  avenue  closely  connecting,  rather  than  safely 
separating,  the  eastern  and  western  continents.  The  Senator  will 
nevertheless  unblushingly  appeal  to  policies  of  a  century  back,  suit¬ 
able,  mayhap,  in  their  day,  but  now  become  a  warning  rather  than  a 
guide.  The  garage  man,  on  the  contrary,  takes  his  mechanism  as  he 
finds  it,  and  does  not  allow  any  mystic  respect  for  the  earlier  forms 
of  the  gas  engine  to  interfere  with  the  needed  adjustments.  .  .  . 

I  do  not  for  a  moment  suggest  that  we  can  use  precisely  the  same 
kind  of  thinking  in  dealing  with  the  quandaries  of  mankind  that  we 
use  in  problems  of  chemical  reaction  and  mechanical  adjustment. 
Exact  scientific  results,  such  as  might  be  formulated  in  mechanics, 
are,  of  course,  out  of  the  question.  It  would  be  unscientific  to  expect 
to  apply  them.  I  am  not  advocating  any  particular  method  of  treating 
human  affairs,  but  rather  such  a  general  frame  of  mind,  such  a  critical 
open-minded  attitude,  as  has  hitherto  been  but  sparsely  developed 
among  those  who  aspire  to  be  men’s  guides,  whether  religious,  politi¬ 
cal,  economic,  or  academic.  Most  human  progress  has  been,  as  Wells 
expresses  it,  a  mere  "muddling  through.”  It  has  been  man’s  wont  to 
explain  and  sanctify  his  ways,  with  little  regard  to  their  fundamental 
and  permanent  expediency.  An  arresting  example  of  what  this  mud¬ 
dling  may  mean  we  have  seen  during  these  recent  years  in  the  slaying 
or  maiming  of  fifteen  million  of  our  young  men,  resulting  in  incal¬ 
culable  loss,  continued  disorder,  and  bewilderment.  Yet  men  seem 
blindly  driven  to  defend  and  perpetuate  the  conditions  which  produced 
the  last  disaster. 

Unless  we  wish  to  see  a  recurrence  of  this  or  some  similar  calamity, 
we  must,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  create  a  new  and  unprecedented 
attitude  of  mind  to  meet  the  new  and  unprecedented  conditions  which 
confront  us.  We  should  proceed  to  the  thorough  reconstruction  of 


i68 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


our  mind,  with  a  view  to  understanding  actual  human  conduct  and 
organization.  We  must  examine  the  facts  freshly,  critically,  and  dis¬ 
passionately,  and  then  allow  our  philosophy  to  formulate  itself  as  a 
result  of  this  examination,  instead  of  permitting  our  observations  to 
be  distorted  by  archaic  philosophy,  political  economy,  and  ethics. 
As  it  is,  we  are  taught  our  philosophy  first,  and  in  its  light  we  try 
to  justify  the  facts.  We  must  reverse  this  process,  as  did  those  who 
began  the  great  work  in  experimental  science ;  we  must  fir£t  face  the 
facts,  and  patiently  await  the  emergence  of  a  new  philosophy. 

A  willingness  to  examine  the  very  foundations  of  society  does  not 
mean  a  desire  to  encourage  or  engage  in  any  hasty  readjustment,  but 
certainly  no  wise  or  needed  readjustment  can  be  made  unless  such  an 
examination  is  undertaken. 

I  come  back,  then,  to  my  original  point  that  in  this  examination 
of  existing  facts  history,  by  revealing  the  origin  of  many  of  our  cur¬ 
rent  fundamental  beliefs,  will  tend  to  free  our  minds  so  as  to  permit 
honest  thinking.  Also,  that  the  historical  facts  which  I  propose  to 
recall  would,  if  permitted  to  play  a  constant  part  in  our  thinking, 
automatically  eliminate  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the  gross  stupid¬ 
ity  and  blindness  which  characterize  our  present  thought  and  conduct 
in  public  affairs,  and  would  contribute  greatly  to  developing  the 
needed  scientific  attitude  toward  human  concerns — in  other  words,  to 
bringing  the  mind  up  to  date. 

Plans  for  social  betterment  and  the  cure  of  public  ills  have  in  the 
past  taken  three  general  forms :  ( i )  changes  in  the  rules  of  the  game, 
(2)  spiritual  exhortation,  and  (3)  education.  Had  all  these  not 
largely  failed,  the  world  would  not  be  in  the  plight  in  which  it  now 
confessedly  is. 

1.  Many  reformers  concede  that  they  are  suspicious  of  what  they 
call  "ideas.”  They  are  confident  that  our  troubles  result  from  defec¬ 
tive  organization,  which  should  be  remedied  by  more  expedient  legis¬ 
lation  and  wise  ordinances.  Abuses  should  be  abolished  or  checked 
by  forbidding  them,  or  by  some  ingenious  reordering  of  procedure. 
Responsibility  should  be  concentrated  or  dispersed.  The  term  of 
office  of  government  officials  should  be  lengthened  or  shortened ;  the 
number  of  members  in  governing  bodies  should  be  increased  or  de¬ 
creased  ;  there  should  be  direct  primaries,  referendum,  recall,  govern¬ 
ment  by  commission ;  powers  should  be  shifted  here  and  there  with 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD  169 


a  hope  of  meeting  obvious  mischances  all  too  familiar  in  the  past.  In 
industry  and  education  administrative  reform  is  constantly  going  on, 
with  the  hope  of  reducing  friction  and  increasing  efficiency.  The 
House  of  Commons  not  long  ago  came  to  new  terms  with  the  peers. 
The  League  of  Nations  has  already  had  to  adjust  the  functions  and 
influence  of  the  Council  and  the  Assembly,  respectively. 

No  one  will  question  that  organization  is  absolutely  essential  in 
human  affairs,  but  reorganization,  while  it  sometimes  produces  as¬ 
signable  benefit,  often  fails  to  meet  existing  evils,  and  not  uncommonly 
engenders  new  and  unexpected  ones.  Our  confidence  in  restriction  and 
regimentation  is  exaggerated.  What  we  usually  need  is  a  change  of 
attitude,  and  without  this  our  new  regulations  often  leave  the  old 
situation  unaltered.  So  long  as  we  allow  our  government  to  be  run 
by  politicians  and  business  lobbies  it  makes  little  difference  how  many 
aldermen  or  assemblymen  we  have  or  how  long  the  mayor  or  governor 
holds  office.  In  a  university  the  fundamental  drift  of  affairs  cannot 
be  greatly  modified  by  creating  a  new  dean,  or  a  university  council, 
or  by  enhancing  or  decreasing  the  nominal  authority  of  the  presi¬ 
dent  or  faculty.  We  now  turn  to  the  second  sanctified  method  of 
reform,  moral  uplift. 

2.  Those  who  are  impatient  with  mere  administrative  reform,  or 
who  lack  faith  in  it,  declare  that  what  we  need  is  brotherly  love. 
Thousands  of  pulpits  admonish  us  to  remember  that  we  are  all  chil¬ 
dren  of  one  Heavenly  Father  and  that  we  should  bear  one  another’s 
burdens  with  fraternal  patience.  Capital  is  too  selfish ;  Labor  is  bent 
on  its  own  narrow  interests  regardless  of  the  risks  Capital  takes.  We 
are  all  dependent  on  one  another,  and  a  recognition  of  this  should 
beget  mutual  forbearance  and  glad  co-operation.  Let  us  forget  our¬ 
selves  in  others.  "Little  children,  love  one  another.” 

The  fatherhood  of  God  has  been  preached  by  Christians  for  over 
eighteen  centuries,  and  the  brotherhood  of  man  by  the  Stoics  long 
before  them.  The  doctrine  has  proved  compatible  with  slavery  and 
serfdom,  with  wars  blessed,  and  not  infrequently  instigated,  by  re¬ 
ligious  leaders,  and  with  industrial  oppression  which  it  requires  a 
brave  clergyman  or  teacher  to  denounce  to-day.  True,  we  sometimes 
have  moments  of  sympathy  when  our  fellow-creatures  become  objects 
of  tender  solicitude.  Some  rare  souls  may  honestly  flatter  themselves 
that  they  love  mankind  in  general,  but  it  would  surely  be  a  very  rare 


170 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


soul  indeed  who  dared  profess  that  he  loved  his  personal  enemies — 
much  less  the  enemies  of  his  country  or  institutions.  We  still  worship 
a  tribal  god,  and  the  "foe7’  is  not  to  be  reckoned  among  his  children. 
Suspicion  and  hate  are  much  more  congenial  to  our  natures  than  love, 
for  very  obvious  reasons  in  this  world  of  rivalry  and  common  failure. 
There  is,  beyond  doubt,  a  natural  kindliness  in  mankind  which  will 
show  itself  under  favorable  auspices.  But  experience  would  seem  to 
teach  that  it  is  little  promoted  by  moral  exhortation.  This  is  the 
only  point  that  need  be  urged  here.  Whether  there  is  another  way  of 
forwarding  the  brotherhood  of  man  will  .be  considered  in  the  sequel. 

3.  One  disappointed  in  the  effects  of  mere  reorganization,  and 
distrusting  the  power  of  moral  exhortation,  will  urge  that  what  we 
need  above  all  is  education.  It  is  quite  true  that  what  we  need  is 
education,  but  something  so  different  from  what  now  passes  as  such 
that  it  needs  a  new  name. 

Education  has  more  various  aims  than  we  usually  recognize,  and 
should  of  course  be  judged  in  relation  to  the  importance  of  its  several 
intentions,  and  of  its  success  in  gaining  them.  The  arts  of  reading 
and  writing  and  figuring  all  would  concede  are  basal  in  a  world  of 
newspapers  and  business.  Then  there  is  technical  information  and 
the  training  that  prepares  one  to  earn  a  livelihood  in  some  more  or 
less  standardized  guild  or  profession.  Both  these  aims  are  reached 
fairly  well  by  our  present  educational  system,  subject  to  various 
economies  and  improvements  in  detail.  Then  there  are  the  studies 
which  it  is  assumed  contribute  to  general  culture  and  to  "training  the 
mind,”  with  the  hope  of  cultivating  our  tastes,  stimulating  the  imagi¬ 
nation,  and  mayhap  improving  our  reasoning  powers. 

This  branch  of  education  is  regarded  by  the  few  as  very  precious 
and  indispensable;  by  the  many  as  at  best  an  amenity  which  has 
little  relation  to  the  real  purposes  and  success  of  life.  It  is  highly 
traditional  and  retrospective  in  the  main,  concerned  with  ancient 
tongues,  old  and  revered  books,  higher  mathematics,  somewhat  archaic 
philosophy  and  history,  and  the  fruitless  form  of  logic  which  has  until 
recently  been  prized  as  man’s  best  guide  in  the  fastnesses  of  error. 
To  these  has  been  added  in  recent  decades  a  choice  of  the  various 
branches  of  natural  science. 

The  results,  however,  of  our  present  scheme  of  liberal  education 
are  disappointing.  One  who,  like  myself,  firmly  agrees  with  its  ob- 


CRITICISM  OF  CONTEMPORARY  METHOD 


171 

jects  and  is  personally  so  addicted  to  old  books,  so  pleased  with  such 
knowledge  as  he  has  of  the  ancient  and  modern  languages,  so  envious 
of  those  who  can  think  mathematically,  and  so  interested  in  natural 
science — such  a  person  must  resent  the  fact  that  those  who  have  had 
a  liberal  education  rarely  care  for  old  books,  rarely  read  for  pleasure 
any  foreign  language,  think  mathematically,  love  philosophy  or  his¬ 
tory,  or  care  for  the  beasts,  birds,  plants,  and  rocks  with  any  intelli¬ 
gent  insight,  or  even  real  curiosity.  This  arouses  the  suspicion  that 
our  so-called  "liberal  education”  miscarries  and  does  not  attain  its 
ostensible  aims. 

The  three  educational  aims  enumerated  above  have  one  thing  in 
common.  They  are  all  directed  toward  an  enhancement  of  the  chances 
of  personal  worldly  success,  or  to  the  increase  of  our  personal  culture 
and  intellectual  and  literary  enjoyment.  Their  purpose  is  not  pri¬ 
marily  to  fit  us  to  play  a  part  in  social  or  political  betterment.  But 
of  late  a  fourth  element  has  been  added  to  .the  older  ambitions, 
namely  the  hope  of  preparing  boys  and  girls  to  become  intelligent 
voters.  This  need  has  been  forced  upon  us  by  the  coming  of  politi¬ 
cal  democracy,  which  makes  one  person’s  vote  exactly  as  good  as 
another’s. 

Now  education  for  citizenship  would  seem  to  consist  in  gaining  a 
*  knowledge  of  the  actual  workings  of  our  social  organization,  with 
some  illuminating  notions  of  its  origin,  together  with  a  full  realization 
of  its  defects  and  their  apparent  sources.  But  here  we  encounter  an 
obstacle  that  is  unimportant  in  the  older  types  of  education,  but 
which  may  prove  altogether  fatal  to  any  good  results  in  our  efforts  to 
make  better  citizens.  Subjects  of  instruction  like  reading  and  writing, 
mathematics,  Latin  and  Greek,  chemistry  and  physics,  medicine  and 
the  law  are  fairly  well  standardized  and  retrospective.  Doubtless 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  internal  change  in  method  and  content  going 
on,  but  this  takes  place  unobtrusively  and  does  not  attract  the  atten¬ 
tion  of  outside  critics.  Political  and  social  questions,  on  the  other 
hand,  and  matters  relating  to  prevailing  business  methods,  race  ani¬ 
mosities,  public  elections,  and  governmental  policy  are,  if  they  are 
vital,  necessarily  "controversial.”  School  boards  and  superintend¬ 
ents,  trustees  and  presidents  of  colleges  and  universities,  are  sensitive 
to  this  fact.  They  eagerly  deprecate  in  their  public  manifestos  any 
suspicion  that  pupils  and  students  are  being  awakened  in  any  way  to 


172 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  truth  that  our  institutions  can  possibly  be  fundamentally  defec¬ 
tive,  or  that  the  present  generation  of  citizens  has  not  conducted  our 
affairs  with  exemplary  success,  guided  by  the  immutable  principles 
of  justice. 

How  indeed  can  a  teacher  be  expected  to  explain  to  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  business  men,  politicians,  doctors,  lawyers,  and  clergy¬ 
men — all  pledged  to  the  maintenance  of  the  sources  of  their  livelihood 
— the  actual  nature  of  business  enterprise  as  now  practiced,  the 
prevailing  methods  of  legislative  bodies  and  courts,  and  the  conduct 
of  foreign  affairs  ?  Think  of  a  teacher  in  the  public  schools  recounting 
the  more  illuminating  facts  about  the  municipal  government  under 
which  he  lives,  with  due  attention  to  graft  and  jobs !  So,  courses  in 
government,  political  economy,  sociology,  and  ethics  confine  them¬ 
selves  to  inoffensive  generalizations,  harmless  details  of  organization, 
and  the  commonplaces  of  routine  morality,  for  only  in  that  way  can 
they  escape  being  controversial.  Teachers  are  rarely  able  or  inclined 
to  explain  our  social  life  and  its  presuppositions  with  sufficient  insight 
and  honesty  to  produce  any  very  important  results.  Even  if  they  are 
tempted  to  tell  the  essential  facts  they  dare  not  do  so,  for  fear  of 
losing  their  places,  amid  the  applause  of  all  the  righteously  minded. 

However  we  may  feel  on  this  important  matter,  we  must  all  agree 
that  the  aim  of  education  for  citizenship  as  now  conceived  is  a  ' 
preparation  for  the  same  old  citizenship  which  has  so  far  failed  to 
eliminate  the  shocking  hazards  and  crying  injustices  of  our  social  and 
political  life.  For  we  sedulously  inculcate  in  the  coming  generation 
exactly  the  same  illusions  and  the  same  ill-placed  confidence  in  exist¬ 
ing  institutions  and  prevailing  notions  that  have  brought  the  world 
to  the  pass  in  which  we  find  it.  Since  we  do  all  we  can  to  corroborate 
the  beneficence  of  what  we  have,  we  can  hardly  hope  to  raise  up  a 
more  intelligent  generation  bent  on  achieving  what  we  have  not.  We 
all  know  this  to  be  true ;  it  has  been  forcibly  impressed  on  our  minds 
of  late.  Most  of  us  agree  that  it  is  right  and  best  that  it  should  be  so ; 
some  of  us  do  not  like  to  think  about  it  at  all,  but  a  few  will  be  glad 
to  spend  a  little  time  weighing  certain  suggestions  in  this  volume 
which  may  indicate  a  way  out  of  this  impasse. 


CHAPTER  VII 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION 

22.  The  General  Method  of  Statistical 

Investigation1 

At  first  sight  it  will  seem  as  if  there  were  no  method  common  to 
all  statistical  investigations,  and  indeed  the  processes  differ  so  widely 
that  it  is  not  easy  to  outline  a  scheme  which  will  include  them  all ; 
but  the  following  sequence  is  generally  indicated-  as  of  general  ap¬ 
plication,  and  will  serve  at  least  to  thread  an  examination  of  methods 
together:  (i)  the  Collection  of  Material,  (2)  its  Tabulation,  (3)  the 
Summary,  and  (4)  a  Critical  Examination  of  its  results.  .  .  . 

Preliminary  knowledge  necessary  or  expedient.  It  may  be  well  to 
state  what  equipment  is  necessary  for  the  student  who  wishes  to  learn 
statistical  methods.  In  collection  and  tabulation  common-sense  is 
the  chief  requisite,  and  experience  the  chief  teacher ;  no  more  than  a 
knowledge  of  the  simplest  arithmetic  is  necessary  for  the  actual 
processes ;  but  since,  as  we  shall  see  immediately,  all  the  parts  of  an 
investigation  are  interdependent,  it  is  expedient  to  understand  the 
whole  before  attempting  to  carry  out  a  part.  For  summarising,  it  is 
well  to  have  acquaintance  with  the  various  algebraic  averages,  and 
with  enough  geometry  for  the  interpretation  of  simple  curves,  though 
all  the  operations  can  be  performed  without  the  use  of  algebraic 
symbols.  For  criticism  of  estimates  and  interpretation  of  results,  it 
is  necessary  to  use  the  formulae  of  more  advanced  mathematics,  and 
it  is  obviously  expedient  to  understand  the  methods  by  which  these 
formulae  are  obtained  to  ensure  their  intelligent  use.  They  are  spe¬ 
cially  necessary  for  the  comparison  of  complex  groups,  and  for  es¬ 
timating  the  significance  of  a  divergence  from  the  average,  or  the 
deviations  in  a  list  of  periodic  figures. 

1From  Elements  of  Statistics  (pp.  17-20),  by  Arthur  L.  Bowley,  M.A.,  F.S.S., 
Professor  of  Statistics  in  the  University  of  London.  P.S.King&Son, London,  1901. 

2  See,  for  example,  Dr.  Bertillon’s  Cours  elementaire  de  Statistique,  to  which 
the  present  author  is  indebted  for  some  of  the  treatment  in  the  following  pages. 

173 


I 


174  SOCIAL  METHOD 

1.  Collection:  blank  forms  ;  nature  of  the  questions.  Information 
is  generally  collected  by  issuing  blank  circulars,  forms  of  inquiry,  to 
be  filled  in  either  by  a  few  officials  or  by  many  individuals,  and  the 
proper  drawing  up  of  this  form  is  one  of  the  chief  tasks  in  a  good 
investigation.  Before  this  form  is  issued  it  is  necessary  to  formulate 
a  complete  scheme  of  the  whole  undertaking,  and  even  to  have  some 
idea  of  what  the  resulting  figures  will  be,  so  as  to  be  able  to  arrange 
the  details  of  the  organization  on  the  right  scale,  and  adjust  the  tools 
used  to  their  purpose.  As  already  pointed  out,  the  object  whose 
measurement  is  wanted  is  not  in  general  exactly  that  which  can  be 
measured,  and  the  measurable  quantity  nearest  to  it  must  be  found ; 
e.g.,  when  the  average  annual  earnings  of  the  working  class  were  in 
question,  the  quantity  first  measured  was  the  average  weekly  wage. 
Then  some  technical  knowledge  of  the  particular  subject  is  needed ; 
and,  if  not  possessed,  a  preliminary  inquiry  on  a  small  scale  may  be 
necessary  to  show  how  to  fit  means  to  ends.  The  people  who  possess 
the  information  required  must  be  discovered  and  interrogated  at  first 
hand.  The  questions  put  must  be  those  which  will  yield  answers  in  a 
form  ready  for  tabulation,  and  the  scheme  of  tabulation  must  there¬ 
fore  be  thought  out  beforehand.  The  questions  must  be  so  clear  that 
a  misunderstanding  is  impossible,  and  so  framed  that  the  answers  will 
be  perfectly  definite,  a  simple  number,  or  "yes”  or  "no.”  They  must 
be  such  as  cannot  give  offence,  or  appear  inquisitorial,  or  lead  to  parti¬ 
san  answers,  or  suppression  of  part  of  the  facts.  The  mean  must  be 
found  between  asking  more  than  will  be  readily  answered  and  less 
than  is  wanted  for  the  purpose  in  hand.  The  form  must  contain 
necessary  instructions,  making  mistakes  difficult,  but  must  not  be 
too  complex.  The  exact  degree  of  accuracy  required,  whether  the 
answers  are  to  be  correct  to  shillings  or  pence,  to  months  or  days,  must 
be  decided.  Every  word  and  every  square  inch  of  space  must  be 
keenly  criticised.  A  little  trouble  spent  upon  the  form  will  save  much 
inconvenience  afterwards. 

2.  Tabulation.  In  considering  what  method  is  to  be  adopted  for 
tabulation,  we  must  remember  that  the  investigation  is  intended  to 
furnish  the  answers  to  certain  definite  questions — how  many  people, 
what  wage,  what  price — and  each  column  must  present  some  total 
which  is  relevant  to  these  questions.  The  exact  scheme  employed 
will  differ  in  different  inquiries.  In  the  population  census,  the  tabu- 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION 


175 


lation  is  almost  automatic ;  in  the  wage  census,  the  best  and  simplest 
way  to  show  the  grouping  about  the  average  wage  in  each  occupation 
had  to  be  specially  devised  ;  in  trade  statistics  the  number  of  different 
categories  to  be  adopted  and  the  limits  of  each  raise  difficult  questions. 
In  general,  the  scheme  of  investigation  requires  knowledge  of  certain 
groups ;  and  the  totals  resulting  from  tabulation  should  show  the 
numbers  of  items  in  these,  so  that  after  tabulation,  instead  of  the 
chaotic  mass  of  infinitely  varying  items,  we  have  a  definite  general 
outline  of  the  whole  group  in  question. 

3.  Averaging  and  summarisation.  When  the  raw  material  is  worked 
up  to  this  point,  skill  of  a  different  kind  is  wanted.  From  the  num¬ 
bers  obtained,  we  have  to  pick  out  the  significant  figures ;  so  to  present 
the  totals  and  averages  as  to  give  a  true  impression  to  an  inquirer ;  to 
summarise  briefly  the  information  obtained ;  to  concentrate  the  mass 
into  a  few  significant  averages,  and  to  describe  their  exact  meaning  in 
the  fewest  and  clearest  words,  for  it  is  the  result  of  this  concentration 
which  will  generally  be  used  and  quoted.  To  do  this  skilfully  requires 
an  acquaintance  with  the  method  of  averages  and  the  use  of  diagrams. 
It  may  further  be  necessary  to  fill  in  unavoidable  gaps  in  the  figures  in 
order  to  supply  estimates  for  intermediate  years ;  this  needs  a  study  of 
the  dangerous  method  of  interpolation.  Finally,  the  verbal  descrip¬ 
tion  of  the  process,  its  genesis  and  results,  and  an  estimate  of  its 
accuracy  must  be  added,  and  then  the  investigation  is  complete. 

4.  Criticism  of  results.  The  student  who  has  to  make  use  of 
statistics  should  not  be  content  to  take  the  results  of  an  inquiry  on 
authority,  but  ought  to  acquaint  himself  with  all  these  details  of 
method.  Before  the  results  can  be  criticised,  it  is  necessary  to  know 
the  complete  genesis  of  the  figures;  whether  the  whole  field  was 
covered ;  exactly  whence  the  information  tabulated  was  obtained ; 
whether  there  was  a  possibility  of  bias ;  how  nearly  the  individual 
answers  were  correct ;  whether  the  informants  really  knew  the  facts 
they  related,  and  if  they  were  likely  to  state  them  correctly.  The 
published  statement  of  the  results  should  show  clearly  the  whole 
scheme  of  collection  so  as  to  make  this  criticism  possible ;  in  particu¬ 
lar,  specimens  of  the  original  blank  forms  should  be  included,  so  that 
the  reader  can  judge  whether  the  original  answers  correspond  exactly 
to  the  form  of  tabulation  employed.  Internal  evidence  often  leads 
to  much  useful  criticism.  It  can  be  seen  whether  the  number  of 


176 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


returns  for  each  group  is  proportional  to  its  importance,  or  if  a 
specially  important  figure  depends  on  only  slight  evidence.  The  con¬ 
tinuity  of  the  figures  can  be  examined,  and  the  causes  of  sudden  gaps 
investigated.  The  returns  can  be  divided  into  sample  groups,  and  the 
extent  of  the  correspondence  of  these  groups  to  the  general  result  will 
often  indicate  whether  the  returns  are  sufficiently  general.  A  careful 
study  of  the  more  minute  tabulations  may  show  within  what  percent¬ 
age  the  final  numbers  may  be  expected  to  be  correct. 

The  most  important  function  of  statistics  is  to  produce  evidence 
showing  the  relation  of  one  group  of  phenomena  to  another ;  for  the 
information  obtained  is  presumably  intended  as  a  guide  for  action,  the 
guidance  is  generally  needed  to  show  what  actions  are  likely  to  produce 
certain  desired  effects,  and  this  is  best  investigated  by  finding  how 
such  effects  have  been  produced  in  the  past.  We  have  then  to  deter¬ 
mine  whether  changes  in  one  measurable  quantity  (e.g.,  the  duties  on 
corn)  have  produced  changes  in  another  (e.g.,  the  amount  of  pauper¬ 
ism)  ;  a  problem  generally  insoluble,  but  one  on  which  most  light  can 
be  obtained  by  the  study  of  the  relevant  statistics  in  the  light  of 
mathematics,  the  mathematics  of  probability,  and  it  is  in  this  par¬ 
ticular  branch  of  mathematics  that  recent  statistical  progress  has 

been  chiefly  made. 

• 

23.  The  Technique  and  Criteria  of  Social  Surveys1 

The  procedure  of  the  composite  social  survey  varies  with  the 
locality  and  with  the  purpose  of  the  investigation.  An  expert  who 
might  be  a  director  of  the  industrial  section  of  an  urban  survey  would 
probably  be  incapable  of  directing  the  farm  management  section  of  a 
rural  survey.  An  expert  school  man  might  be  out  of  place  in  a  re¬ 
ligious  survey,  and  an  expert  sanitarian  would  not  necessarily  make  a 
good  school  surveyor.  The  point  is  not  that  an  expert  may  be  called 
upon  to  analyze  any  sort  of  a  social  situation  but  that  a  director  in 
whose  hands  the  survey  is  placed  may  employ  those  experts  best  fitted 
to  investigate  the  chosen  elements  of  the  composite. 

1By  Carl  C.  Taylor,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  North  Carolina  State 
College  of  Agriculture  and  Engineering.  Adapted  from  "The  Social  Survey,  Its 
History  and  Methods,”  University  of  Missouri  Bulletin,  Vol.  XX,  No.  28, 
pp.  37-48,  64-65. 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION 


177 


Practically  every  method  used  by  the  social  survey  is  also  used  in 
other  investigations.  Many  of  these  methods  were  used  in  other  in¬ 
vestigations  long  before  the  modern  social  survey  was  developed.  The 
contribution  of  the  social  survey  is  that  it  is  a  composite  of  these 
methods.  The  Pittsburgh  investigation  was  a  survey  because  experts 
were  assembled  from  the  fields  of  charity,  labor  problems,  housing, 
and  health  and  sanitation.  All  the  sources  of  information  within  and 
about  the  city  were  thrown  open,  and  all  the  technique  and  technology 
of  social  investigation  were  utilized  to  analyze  this  industrial  com¬ 
munity.  A  sketch  of  this  or  any  other  comprehensive  survey  should 
suffice  to  illustrate  the  composite  method  of  gathering,  tabulating, 
and  reporting  a  complete  social  situation.  These  studies  usually  have 
four  quite  definite  steps  in  their  development:  (1)  the  getting  of  a 
bird’s-eye  view  of  the  community,  that  is,  seeing  the  field  as  a  whole ; 

( 2 )  the  differentiation  of  the  separate  fields  for  detailed  investigation  ; 

(3)  the  gathering  and  tabulation  of  the  data;  (4)  the  report  of  the 
facts  to  the  community  and  to  the  world  at  large.  The  first  step  is 
accomplished  in  a  number  of  ways,  the  simplest  of  which  is  merely 
getting  a  population  census  of  the  community.  At  Pittsburgh  a  quick 
diagnosis  of  a  score  of  phases  of  life  was  first  made  to  get  a  view  of 
the  field  as  a  whole.  This  was  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  blue  print, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  community.  Out  of  the  knowledge  obtained  from 
this  pathfinder  investigation,  which  lasted  from  six  weeks  to  two 
months,  six  deeper  and  more  extended  special  investigations  grew, 
namely ;  ( 1 )  an  inquiry  into  hours,  wages,  and  labor  organizations ; 
(2)  a  study  of  household  life  and  costs  of  living;  (3)  a  study  of  five 
hundred  cases  of  workmen  killed,  including  an  inquiry  into  hospital 
treatment;  (4)  a  survey  of  women-employing  trades;  (5)  a  study  of 
economic  costs  of  typhoid  fever;  (6)  a  survey  of  child-helping  institu¬ 
tions  and  agencies.1  After  the  data  had  been  gathered,  and  whenever 
possible  while  they  were  being  gathered,  the  mapping,  diagramming, 
and  other  statistical  work  were  carried  on  by  a  special  staff.  The  field 
investigation,  which  had  been  in  operation  all  during  the  survey  and 
even  before  it  started,  was  then  completed,  thus  accomplishing  the 
ultimate  purpose  of  the  investigation.  This  purpose,  as  outlined  by 
Mr.  Kellogg,  director  of  the  survey,  was,  "That  of  making  the  town 

]  P.  U.  Kellogg,  The  Pittsburgh  District ,  p.  498.  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  New 
York,  1909. 


i78 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


real  to  itself,  not  in  a  goody-goody  preachment  of  what  ought  to  be ; 
not  in  a  sensational  discoloration ;  not  merely  in  a  formidable  array 
of  rigid  facts.  There  was  the  census  at  one  pole ;  and  yellow  journal¬ 
ism  at  the  other.”  The  publicity  scheme  was  carried  on  through  the 
media  of  luncheon  meetings,  newspapers,  magazine  articles,  pam¬ 
phlets,  exhibits,  special  issues  of  the  Charities  and  the  Commons,  and 
finally  by  the  publication  of  the  complete  survey  in  book  form  of  six 
volumes.1  Thus  the  Pittsburgh  Survey  brought  together  practically 
all  the  methods  of  investigation  which  had  developed  up  to  that  time. 

Social  description  had  aroused  vague  notions  concerning  many  com¬ 
munity  problems,  census  taking  had  presented  some  cold  statistics, 
case  records  had  furnished  a  wealth  of  social  information  concerning 
the  dependent  portion  of  the  community’s  population,  special  investi¬ 
gation  had  done  somewhat  the  same  thing  for  the  whole  country  and 
had  coupled  with  its  data  a  method  of  publicity.  Not  until  the  Pitts¬ 
burgh  Survey,  however,  had  these  methods  of  analysis  and  description 
ever  been  brought  to  serve  a  common  purpose,  namely ;  the  purpose 
of  making  a  given  community  self-conscious  of  its  every  day  life,  and 
of  revealing  to  all  other  similar  communities  something  of  their  social 
organization.  This  survey  attempted  to  make  an  inventory  of  the 
whole  community  by  discovering  and  revealing  its  many  maladjust¬ 
ments  and  adjustments  as  a  single  social  situation.  The  step  it  took, 
or  the  start  it  made  in  that  direction  has  been  followed  by  the  directors 
of  practically  all  surveys  that  have  been  made  since.  Indeed  the 
beginnings  made  at  Pittsburgh  have  been  so  consistently  followed  and 
improved  upon  that  there  can  now  be  said  to  be  a  well  recognized 
technique  of  social  surveying. 

Surveys  are  of  many  and  various  kinds  and  are  made  for  many  and 
various  purposes.  Very  few  surveys  have  attempted  to  be  as  complete 
as  the  Pittsburgh  Survey,  but  consciously  or  unconsciously,  all  have 
followed  in  a  general  way  its  method  of  obtaining  facts.  But  not  all 
social  surveys  are  composite  or  synthetic  surveys.  A  very  great  per¬ 
centage  of  them  are  what  might  be  called  ''segmental”  surveys;  that 
is,  a  single  set  of  institutions,  facts  or  factors,  is  surveyed.  Such  are 
the  school,  church,  industrial,  housing,  child  welfare,  and  many  other 
single  problem  surveys.  In  such  surveys  the  procedure  is  necessarily 
modified.  The  four  major  steps  in  technique  are  adapted  to  fit  the 
1P.  U.  Kellogg,  The  Pittsburgh  District ,  p.  508. 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION 


179 


situation,  whatever  it  may  be,  but  are  neither  dispensed  with  nor 
violated.  The  bird’s-eye  view  of  the  general  social  situation  is  just 
as  necessary  for  the  "segmental”  survey  as  it  is  for  the  composite 
survey.1  This  does  not  mean  that  a  pathfinder  survey,  such  as  was 
the  first  step,  in  the  Pittsburgh  Survey,  must  be  made.  It  does  mean, 
however,  that  the  social  surveyor  must  be  sufficiently  familiar  with 
the  community  to  be  able  to  map  out  his  plan  of  campaign,  to  make 
a  blue  print  of  the  structure  of  the  community’s  life.  It  may  be  that 
he  has  lived  in  the  community  so  long  that  he  already  has  the  neces¬ 
sary  knowledge.  If  this  is  not  the  case  he  may  be  able  to  get  this 
knowledge  from  local  agencies  and  institutions.  He  may  have  had 
sufficient  experience  in  other  similar  communities  so  that  he  has  a 
pretty  thorough  appreciation  of  this  community  and  its  problems.  In 
any  case  he,  as  an  expert,  must  recognize  the  necessity  of  a  general 
prognosis  before  starting  upon  his  detailed  diagnosis. 

The  second  step  in  the  procedure  of  survey  technique  is  more 
thoroughly  modified  in  the  "segmental”  survey  than  any  of  the  other 
steps.  In  a  single  problem  survey  there  is  likely  to  be  but  one  sur¬ 
veyor,  or  at  least  but  one  set  of  schedules.  It  might,  therefore,  seem 
that  there  could  be  no  differentiation  of  task  other  than  a  division  of 
territory.  Even  so  small  a  point  as  this  would  probably  be  better 
served  in  the  light  of  type  of  territory  in  conjunction  with  this  or 
that  type  of  investigator.  No  single  problem  survey — worthy  of  the 
name — is  so  simple  as  all  this.  It  is  not  the  purpose  of  a  social  sur¬ 
vey  merely  to  cover  territory  but  to  discover  facts.  In  order  to  get 
these  facts  and  be  sure  he  has  them  exact,  it  is  always  necessary 
for  the  investigator  to  verify  them,  or  even  amplify  them,  from  other 
sources.  These  sources  should  be  known  and  consulted  before  the 
survey  is  begun.  A  pathfinder  survey  will  discover  them.  A  proper 
differentiation  of  tasks  in  the  method  of  conducting  the  survey  will 
make  the  maximum  use  of  them.  This  fact  should  become  clearer  as 
we  describe  the  method  of  gathering  and  tabulating  the  facts  sought 
by  the  survey. 

Where  the  survey  is  to  be  a  comprehensive  enough  investigation  to 
involve  any  large  number  of  the  citizens,  it  is  generally  preceded  by  a 
definite  publicity  campaign.  For  example,  in  the  case  of  the  Spring- 
field  Survey  this  publicity  campaign  preceded  the  field  work  by  about 
1  F.  H.  McLean,  et  al,  Survey  of  Charities  of  City  of  Burlington ,  p.  11. 


i8o 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


three  months,  was  continued  during  the  entire  investigation,  and  was 
greatly  elaborated  during  the  survey  exhibit.1  The  purposes  of  the 
publicity  campaign  are  to  enlist  the  workers  and  agencies  of  the  com¬ 
munity,  to  mobilize  and  generate  sentiment  for  carrying  on  the  in¬ 
vestigation,  to  make  it  easier  to  gather  the  facts,  and  to  prepare  the 
community  for  the  findings  of  the  survey.  One  of  the  most  important 
factors  in  a  successful  publicity  campaign  is  to  make  large  use  of  local 
talent.  The  greater  the  number  of  the  community’s  citizens  that  can 
be  enlisted  in  some  phase  of  the  survey,  the  more  ready  will  the  com¬ 
munity  be  to  carry  out  the  ultimate  recommendations  of  the  survey. 
The  trustworthiness  of  the  facts  gathered  by  amateurs  is  not  as  great 
as  if  they  had  been  gathered  solely  by  experts,  but  the  effect  of  these 
facts  in  the  community  is  probably  much  greater,  because  of  the 
community  consciousness  which  has  been  awakened  by  the  use  of 
the  amateurs. 

Before  the  survey  proper  can  begin,  the  machinery  for  the  field 
work  must  be  prepared.  The  making  of  the  survey  schedules  is  the 
most  technical  procedure  antecedent  to  the  compilation  and  correla¬ 
tion  of  the  data,  for  upon  the  categories  which  the  schedules  contain 
depend  wholly  the  quality  and  almost  wholly  the  quantity  of  data 
that  will  be  gathered.  The  type  of  schedule  will  reflect  or  show  the 
type  of  survey  to  be  made,  the  general  knowledge  of  the  surveyor,  the 
facts  discovered  by  the  pathfinder  survey,  and  the  means  by  which 
the  schedules  are  to  be  filled.  If  the  survey  is  a  composite  investiga¬ 
tion  the  sets  of  schedules  will  be  as  numerous  as  are  the  segments  of 
the  investigation.  If  it  is  to  be  a  "segmental”  survey,  there  will  be 
but  one  set  of  schedules.  In  either  case  they  can  be  adequately  for¬ 
mulated  only  after  the  surveyor  has  made  himself  thoroughly  familiar 
with  what  there  is  to  be  known  about  the  general  field  in  which  he  is 
to  operate.  This  knowledge  he  should  have  gained  through  making 
previous  similar  investigations  or  through  published  reports  of  such 
investigations.  In  the  earliest  surveys,  and  even  today  in  the  case  of 
some  surveys,  the  only  possible  source  of  information  is  the  body  of 
knowledge  obtained  through  the  types  of  investigations  already  de¬ 
scribed.  In  rare  cases  it  may  be  possible  that  he  will  have  to  fall  back 
upon  the  theoretical  body  of  thinking  which  has  developed  in  that 
given  field.  The  pathfinder  survey  should  do  much  to  give  direction 
iS.  M.  Harrison,  An  Effective  Exhibition  of  a  Community  Survey. 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION 


181 


to  the  schedules.  There  is  nothing  which  proves  the  need  of  some 
antecedent  knowledge  so  thoroughly  as  the  experience  that  beginning 
surveyors  usually  have  with  schedules  which  are  not  properly  pre¬ 
pared  and  so  fail  to  gather  all  the  facts.  Fortunately  this  defect  be¬ 
comes  apparent  immediately  upon  beginning  the  survey  and  can  be 
remedied,  though  always,  of  course,  at  the  expense  of  preparing  new 
schedules  or  revising  old  ones. 

The  exact  form  of  the  schedule  will  depend  also  on  the  method  by 
which  it  is  to  be  filled.  If  it  is  to  be  mailed  as  a  questionnaire,  the 
categories  will  have  to  be  less  detailed  and  more  explicit.  If  the 
schedule  is  to  be  filled  by  the  surveyor  himself,  then  it  may  be  much 
more  detailed  and  the  categories  need  not  be  set  forth  in  question  form. 
In  any  case  the  categories  must  be  so  arranged  and  be  so  specific  that 
the  same  data  will  appear  in  them  no  matter  by  whom  they  are  filled. 
The  best  way  of  assuring  this  result  is  to  seek  quantitative  or  near- 
quantitative  replies  to  all  questions.  It  should  be  remembered  that 
the  survey  attempts  to  be  more  than  mere  social  description.  Its 
categories,  therefore,  must  be  filled  by  other  than  mere  descriptive 
terms.  Such  questions  as  "how  much,”  "how  many,”  "how  often,” 
"at  what  time,”  must  be  the  rule.  The  surveyor  is  asked  to  limit  his 
description  to  two  or  three  terms,  such  as  good,  fair,  bad ;  dry,  damp, 
wet ;  new,  modern,  old ;  terms  that  can  be  reduced  to  statistical  form 
in  the  process  of  tabulation.  The  surveyor  may  find  this  hard  to  do 
for  various  reasons.  He  may  be  filling  his  schedules  from  answers 
given  him  by  people  who  have  never  before  attempted  to  reduce  their 
opinions  or  knowledge  of  the  facts  sought  to  such  exact  terms.  In 
many  cases  the  person  questioned  will  be  unwilling  to  give  a  definite 
answer.  In  such  cases  the  surveyor  will  have  to  make  his  own  de¬ 
cision,  based  on  indirect  or  detailed  questioning  or  outside  knowledge. 
If  the  client  insists  on  giving  only  qualitative  answers,  the  surveyor 
is  under  the  necessity  of  translating  or  converting  these  qualitative 
statements  into  quantitative  form.  There  is  always  the  possibility 
that  the  client  will  misunderstand  the  question  and  thus  give  the 
wrong  information.  Against  this  the  surveyor  can  fortify  himself  in 
numerous  ways ;  first,  by  keeping  the  categories  of  his  schedules 
simple;  second,  by  knowing  enough  about  similar  facts  to  instantly 
mistrust  the  information  and  thus  correct  the  mistake  by  a  question 
which  will  put  his  client  right ;  and  third,  by  checking  his  findings 


182 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


from  other  sources  of  information.  In  all  cases,  both  in  making  the 
schedules  and  in  gathering  the  data,  the  surveyor  must  keep  in  mind 
the  fact  that  exact  tabulation  and  concrete  presentation  of  his  facts 
are  the  ends  toward  which  he  is  working. 

Some  of  the  above  statements  suggest  that  there  is  an  art  as  well 
as  a  science  of  social  surveying.  Such  unquestionably  is  true.  The 
whole  technique  of  field  work  is  an  art.  A  wrong  method  of  approach 
to  the  client  may  vitiate  the  whole  schedule  or  fail  to  get  it  filled  at  all. 
The  author  believes  as  a  general  rule  the  best  approach  or  introduc¬ 
tion  is  to  be  obtained  through  a  frank  statement  of  the  purpose  of 
the  survey.  If  the  project  has  been  preceded  by  a  well-timed  pub¬ 
licity  campaign,  the  approach  will  be  easy.  In  no  case  can  the  in¬ 
vestigator  expect  to  get  his  data  without  some  explanation  of  why 
he  wants  it.  The  surveyor  is  not  a  detective  and  the  more  frankly 
he  states  the  purpose  of  the  survey,  the  better  the  relationship  he 
establishes  with  his  client.  Needless  to  say,  there  are  some  situations 
where  such  frankness  would  at  once  close  the  door  of  his  opportunity. 
The  client  may  be  ignorant,  suspicious,  or  openly  opposed  to  the 
project.  If  ignorance  is  the  obstacle,  the  surveyor  will  have  to  act 
as  interpreter  between  the  client  and  his  schedule.  If  suspicion  is  the 
obstacle,  he  will  have  to  be  constantly  on  guard  against  wilful  mis¬ 
representation  of  facts  getting  into  the  record.  If  open  defiance  and 
protest  is  the  obstacle,  he  may  have  to  fill  his  schedule  from  observa¬ 
tion  or  from  other  sources.  Another  possibility  is  that  the  client  may 
purposely  misrepresent  the  facts  for  the  sake  of  some  egoistic  end 
which  he  thinks  he  can  gain.  Such  a  case  can  and  should  be  checked 
through  other  sources.  The  client  also  may  forget  some  items  which 
the  surveyor  from  his  previous  knowledge  may  have  reason  to  believe 
are  present.  Indirect  and  suggestive  questioning  will  probably  get 
the  data  though  the  surveyor  should  be  careful  not  to  ask  leading 
questions  or  in  any  way  so  formulate  his  questions  as  to  get  answers 
which  the  client  would  not  honestly  have  otherwise  given. 

If  there  is  a  difference  in  the  manner  by  which  schedules  are  filled, 
some  from  one  source  and  some  from  another,  this  difference  should 
be  marked  and  taken  into  consideration  in  the  compilation  of  the 
complete  data.  For  insistence  cannot  be  too  emphatically  placed  upon 
the  need  of  accuracy  in  order  that  the  facts  may  be  trustworthy  and 
comparable.  A  schedule  would  better  not  be  filled  at  all  than  to  be 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION 


183 


filled  inaccurately.  One  of  the  steps  in  survey  technique  is  the  use 
of  checks  to  ratify,  amplify,  or  ramify  the  findings  of  the  house-to- 
house  schedules.  Survey  schedules  are  prepared  with  these  checking 
sources  in  mind.  Public  records  of  all  kinds — marriage,  and  divorce 
records,  jail  and  court  records,  tax  records,  and  many  others,  should 
be  examined.  In  short  the  records  of  all  agencies  and  institutions 
which  touch  the  family’s  life  should  be  made  use  of.  Physicians, 
teachers,  pastors,  charity  agents,  and  policemen,  should  be  consulted. 
The  history  of  the  community,  and  the  geography  or  physiography  of 
the  community  should  be  taken  into  consideration.  Mental  and 
physical  tests  of  certain  types  or  classes  add  much  to  the  specific 
knowledge  and  interpretation  of  data.  In  short,  no  social  survey  has 
completed  its  task  until  it  has  thoroughly  studied  the  whole  social 
situation  in  its  origin,  development,  and  present  status.  This  is  why 
the  social  survey  is  and  must  be  a  composite  investigation.  It  studies 
all  the  factors,  phases,  and  tensions  of  the  community’s  life  and 
utilizes  all  the  sources  from  which  any  information  can  be  obtained 
about  the  community. 

From  what  has  been  said,  it  should  be  clear  that  the  field  work  of 
the  survey  is  by  no  means  its  most  difficult  task.  Its  most  difficult 
task  is  the  compilation  and  tabulation  of  the  data  and  the  presentation 
of  results  and  conclusions  to  the  community.  In  a  survey  of  the 
magnitude  of  the  Pittsburgh  Survey  or  the  Springfield  Survey,  the 
work  of  tabulation,  compilation,  and  correlation  is  turned  over  to  a 
corps  of  expert  statisticians.  In  less  comprehensive  surveys  or  in 
surveys  made  of  small  communities,  the  work  will  probably  be  done 
by  the  same  persons  who  gather  the  data.  This  has  both  its  advan¬ 
tages  and  disadvantages.  The  chief  disadvantage  is  that  the  tabula¬ 
tion  and  correlation  may  not  be  done  by  persons  who  are  thoroughly 
skilled  statisticians.  The  chief  advantage  is  that  the  persons  who 
filled  the  schedules  are  best  acquainted  with  them,  and  thus  may  be 
capable,  from  memory  or  notes,  of  strengthening  weak  or  defective 
data.  In  no  case,  however,  should  schedules  and  categories  be  in¬ 
cluded  in  the  tabulation  unless  they  are  trustworthy.  Even  if  it  is 
necessary  to  eliminate  whole  schedules  or  categories  from  a  number 
of  schedules,  the  compilation  should  be  made  only  upon  those  that 
are  reliable.  Conclusions  can  then  be  safely  drawn  from  the  body  of 
data  compiled,  and  the  survey  findings  or  exhibit  can  be  presented  to 


184 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  community  with  the  assurance  that  it  is  being  apprised  of  its 
true  social  condition. 

The  method  by  which  and  the  form  in  which  the  findings  of  the 
survey  are  presented  to  the  community  are  fairly  well  standardized. 
The  most  universally  used  form  of  presentation  is  that  of  formal 
publication  in  book  or  bulletin  form.  The  Pittsburgh  Survey  findings 
were  published  in  six  large  volumes.  The  Cleveland  Survey  findings 
were  published  in  twenty-seven  small  volumes.  The  findings  of  most 
"segmental”  surveys  and  some  composite  surveys  of  small  com¬ 
munities  are  published  in  a  single  book  or  bulletin. 

Criteria  oj  the  Social  Survey 

It  is  our  purpose  to  compare,  as  concisely  and  as  briefly  as  possible, 
the  general  methods  and  criteria  of  science  with  the  methods  and 
criteria  of  the  social  survey,  to  check  the  methods  of  the  social  survey 
by  the  recognized  methods  of  science  and  thus  get  some  appreciation 
of  the  possibilities  and  limitations  of  the  social  survey  as  a  scientific 
method  of  social  research. 

We  know  of  no  more  definite  means  of  comparing  the  methods  of 
the  social  survey  with  the  methods  of  science  than  that  of  stating, 
as  definitely  as  possible,  the  criteria  of  science  and  then  stating 
the  demonstrated  procedure  of  social  surveys.  The  first  and  most 
important  criterion  of  science  is  that  it  be  a  method  of  exact  and  im¬ 
partial  analysis  of  facts.1  The  social  survey,  without  a  single  excep¬ 
tion,  so  far  as  the  writer  knows,  has  developed  upon  the  basis  of 
impartial  analysis.  It  has  developed  practically  outside  the  field  of 
theoretical  sociology  and  so  has  escaped  altogether  any  preconceived 
notions  which  social  theorists  may  have  had.  The  case  worker  and 
other  expert  field  workers  who  have  developed  the  method  of  the 
social  survey  have  cared  only  for  the  facts  which  were  actually  opera¬ 
tive  in  the  community  where  they  labored.  They  accumulated  a  large 
body  of  data  for  the  sake  of  carrying  on  specific  projects,  with  no 
thought  of  its  scientific  significance,  but  we  have  come  to  see  that 
these  data  are  the  basic  facts  out  of  which  social  theory  must  be 

1K.  Pearson,  The  Grammar  of  Science ,  p.  q;  H.  Poincare,  The  Value  of  Science , 
p.  137;  E.  Mach,  Popular  Scientific  Lectures,  p.  232;  F.  Enriques,  Problems  of 
Science,  p.  67. 


TECHNIQUE  OF  SOCIAL  INVESTIGATION  185 

formed.  These  social  workers  and  investigators  have  been  not  only 
impartial  in  their  collection  and  analysis  of  facts,  but  they  have  also 
been  exact  in  their  methods.  They  were  seeking  these  facts  only 
because  they  wanted  to  use  them  for  very  definite  purposes.  These 
definite  purposes  demanded  that  the  facts  be  exact,  that  they  be 
representative  of  some  very  definite  condition  or  situation,  and  that 
they  be  so  specifically  stated  that  other  social  workers  would  be  able 
to  understand  and  use  them. 

The  second  criterion  of  science  that  we  would  name  is  that  the 
phenomena  which  are  the  objects  of  investigation  be  typical,  that 
they  be  representative  of  a  species,  a  type,  or  a  class  of  facts.1  The 
social  survey  attempts  to  meet  this  criterion.  Not  all  surveys  have 
been  made  with  the  purpose  of  investigating  or  discovering  typical 
situations,  typical  counties,  or  typical  communities  and  typical  sec¬ 
tions  of  communities.  Many  of  them,  however,  have  specifically 
stated  this  to  be  their  purpose.  To  what  extent  they  have  accom¬ 
plished  this  purpose  we  shall  probably  be  unable  to  state  until  a 
much  greater  number  of  surveys  have  been  made.  The  only  thing 
that  we  can  definitely  assert  at  this  stage  of  development  of  the  social 
survey  is  that  many  social  surveyors  hold  it  as  their  ideal  to  discover 
and  reveal  typical  phenomena. 

The  third  and  final  general  criterion  of  science  is  that  it  discovers 

or  formulates  scientific  laws.2  The  social  survey  lays  no  claim  to 

having  accomplished  this  final  step  in  scientific  method.  Social  sur- 
•  _ 

veying  is  the  task  of  the  expert.  The  formulation  of  the  laws  of 
science  is  the  task  of  the  scientist. 

1K.  Pearson,  op.  cit.  p.  29;  H.  Poincare,  op.  cit.  p.  140;  E.  Mach,  op.  cit. 
p.  194;  F.  Enriques,  op.  cit.  p.  50. 

2K.  Pearson,  op.  cit.  p.  37 ;  H.  Poincare,  op.  cit.  p.  13 ;  E.  Mach,  op.  cit.  p.  156. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 

24.  Education1 

In  handing  on  to  a  new  generation  its  notions  of  what  life  means, 
of  what  the  several  instincts  mean,  society  is  compelled  to  face  itself, 
take  stock  of  its  ideas,  pass  judgment  upon  itself.  The  advantage  of 
education,  therefore,  is  not  exclusively  to  the  young.  Dealing  with 
growing  minds,  society  perforce  domesticates  the  principle  of  growth : 
for  self-consciousness  is  never  purely  complacent,  least  of  all  when 
its  eyes  are  the  critical  and  questioning  eyes  of  a  child,  a  new  vital 
impulse,  unharnessed  and  unbought. 

It  strikes  us  as  notable — when  we  think  how  severe  is  the  effort 
of  self-review,  and  how  little  satisfying — that  society  has  never  been 
content  simply  to  let  its  young  grow  up.  Unintentional  suggestion 
might  conceivably  have  been  left  to  do  its  work  on  a  gregarious  and 
imitative  human  substance.  To  an  unknown  degree  children  always 
educate  themselves,  and  what  they  thus  do  is  well  done.  But  from 
earliest  visible  times,  educating  has  been  a  deliberate  process.  Human 
beings  clearly  like  to  educate :  for  better  or  worse  this  activity  is  an 
especially  human  form  of  the  parental  instinct.  It  looks  at  times  as  if 
the  young  serve  simply  as  a  stimulus  to  an  activity  of  the  elders  of 
which  they,  the  children,  become  the  helpless  objects,  an  activity 
which  tends  to  increase  without  limit  as  leisure  and  the  economic 
margin  grow.  Children  create  the  necessity,  but  also  the  exciting 
opportunity,  for  society’s  effort  to  make  vocal  the  sense  of  its  ideals, 
customs,  laws,  and  (ominous  word)  to  inculcate  them. 

But  though  a  profound  human  interest,  analytic  self-consciousness 
is  difficult  and  slow  of  growth;  and  as  individual  self-consciousness 
begins  in  the  form  of  memory,  social  self-consciousness  begins  in  the 

1From  Human  Nature  and  its  Remaking  (pp.  226-253),  by  William  Ernest 
Hocking,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Harvard  University.  Copyright,  1918, 
by  the  Yale  University  Press,  New  Haven. 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING  187 


form  of  history.  For  this  reason,  society  has  always  tried  to  expound 
itself  largely  through  the  story  of  its  own  past,  its  folklore,  epic,  and 
myth.  But  with  history  there  has  been  from  the  earliest  times  a  de¬ 
mand  for  images  of  that  to  which  history  leads,  images  of  a  more  com¬ 
pletely  interpreted  will  such  as  have  hovered  before  the  imaginations  of 
dreamers,  prophets,  reformers.  Thus  in  the  work  of  educating,  social 
self-consciousness  expands  until  it  envisages  more  or  less  darkly  the 
entire  tale  of  tribal  destiny  from  its  beginnings  to  its  goal. 

Because  education  requires  this  self-conscious  looking  before  and 

after,  a  discussion  of  education  in  the  midst  of  a  book  on  the  remaking 

of  human  nature  must  anticipate  the  end,  and  in  some  degree  mirror 

the  entire  undertaking.  But  deliberate  educational  effort  has  its  own 

specific  part  to  play,  more  or  less  separable  from  other  parts  of  the 

remaking  process.  Bending  over  the  younger  generation  during  the 

long  years  before  the  full  impact  of  law  and  institution  is  allowed  to 

♦ 

reach  them,  transmitting  its  wishes  through  the  protecting  (and  no 
doubt  refracting)  media  of  family  and  school,  speaking  at  least  as 
much  through  what  it  is  as  through  what  it  tries  to  say  for  itself, 
society  in  educating  is  exercising  a  function  whose  purpose,  like  that 
of  most  natural  organs,  we  but  gradually  become  fully  aware  of.  In 
our  day  education  affects  the  technical ;  it  becomes  highly  doctrinaire ; 
it  is  the  jousting  place  of  all  the  new  realisms,  pragmatisms,  behavior¬ 
isms,  psychologisms  of  all  brands.  We  need  to  think  anew  of  the 
nature  of  this  organic  function  and  of  its  control. 

There  was  a  time  when  we  might  have  defined  education  as  a 
continuation  of  the  reproductive  process.  Physical  reproduction  sup¬ 
plies  more  of  the  same  species :  social  reproduction  supplies  more  of 
the  same  tribe  or  nation.  From  the  beginning  of  organized  social  life, 
each  people  has  regarded  its  own  folkways  as  an  asset,  distinctive  and 
sacred  ;  in  imposing  them  upon  the  new  brood  it  has  supposed  itself  to 
be  conferring  its  most  signal  benefit.  And  the  newcomers,  most  of 
them,  seem  to  have  adopted  this  view :  they  have  as  little  fancied  it  a 
hardship  that  the  social  order  should  impose  its  type  upon  them  as 
that  their  parents  should  have  given  them  their  physical  image.  It 
has  simply  completed  the  definition  of  what  they  are. 

We  have  not  outgrown  this  conception  of  education.  We  still  speak 
of  it  as  a  'preparation  for  life,’  understanding  by  'life’  a  certain  kind 
of  life,  that  which  marks  out  our  own  group  or  nation.  It  still  seems 


i88 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


to  us  the  essential  failure  of  education  that  our  children  should  find 
themselves  a  misfit  in  'life’;  so  we  steer  them  toward  the  existing 
grooves  of  custom  as  a  matter  of  duty — I  do  not  say  of  duty  to 
society,  but  of  duty  to  the  children  themselves.  Discussing  the 
place  of  classics  in  Prussian  schools,  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II  said  (Decem¬ 
ber,  1890),  "It  is  our  duty  to  educate  young  men  to  become  young 
Germans,  and  not  young  Greeks  or  Romans.”  And  what  do  other 
nations  expect  of  their  schools,  if  not  to  bring  forth  after  their  kind  ? 
What  are  the  facts  of  our  own  practice  ? 

We  certainly  do  not  put  all  traditions  on  the  same  level,  any  more 
than  all  languages  or  all  sets  of  laws.  But  neither  we  nor  any  other 
modern  nation  limits  its  offering  to  its  own  type.  We  train  our  wards 
to  some  extent  to  become  young  Greeks,  Romans,  Britons,  French¬ 
men,  Germans,  Asiatics,  as  well  as  young  Americans.  We  teach  them 
history  and  geography,  not  indifferently,  but  still  to  a  liberal  distance 
from  our  own  center  of  space  and  time.  We  pave  the  way  to  literatures 
other  than  our  own.  We  discreetly  announce  the  existence  of  other 
religions.  Better  than  this,  we  offer  them  at  the  outset  the  free  and 
primitive  worlds  of  fairyland  and  legend  where  all  desires  find  satis¬ 
faction.  We  give  them  poetry  and  drama,  dealing  with  social  orders 
invitingly  different  from  the  actual  order,  such  as  must  set  tingling 
any  cramped  or  unused  nerve  in  growing  nature,  and  so  give  voice  to 
the  latent  rebel  in  our  youth,  or  the  latent  reformer.  Our  homes  and 
schools  habitually  look  out  upon  'the  world’  not  as  a  decorous  and 
settled  place,  but  as  a  comparatively  perilous  and  unfinished  place,  call¬ 
ing  for  much  courage  and  chivalrous  opposition,  requiring  much  change. 
The  career  of  the  hero  who  redresses  an  untold  number  of  wrongs  still 
hovers  as  a  wholly  accessible  destiny  before  the  fancies  of  our  child¬ 
hood.  To  this  extent,  we  warn  our  successors-to-be  against  our  own 
fixity,  put  the  world  before  them,  and  set  them  free  from  our  type.1 

1  Admitting  all  the  abuses  of  mechanical  and  wholesale  popular  schooling,  I  must 
decline  to  believe  as  the  primary  truth  of  any  modern  nation  that  "It  is  not  in 
the  spirit  of  reverence  that  education  is  conducted  by  States  and  Churches  and  the 
great  institutions  that  are  subservient  to  them”  (B. Russell, Principles  of  Social  Re¬ 
construction,  p.  158).  I  know  of  no  society  Which  fails  to  wish  its  children  a  better 
life  than  its  own.  And  especially  at  this  moment,  in  the  war-ridden  states  of  Europe 
a  deep  and  pathetic  tenderness  toward  childhood  is  evident,  as  if  to  say,  "  We  have 
made  a  mess  of  our  world :  yours  must  be  a  better  one.”  This  spirit  is  making 
itself  felt  in  thorough  revisions  of  the  plan  of  education  in  France  and  England. 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING  189 

* 

And  to  this  extent,  we  recognize  that  education  has  two  functions 
and  not  one  only.  It  must  communicate  the  type,  and  it  must  provide 
for  growth  beyond  the  type.  It  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  spiritual  re¬ 
production,  unless  we  take  reproduction  in  the  wider  sense  as  an  op¬ 
portunity  to  begin  over  again  and  do  better,  the  locus  not  alone  of 
heredity  but  of  variation  and  of  the  origin  of  new  species. 

But  why  insist  at  all  upon  the  reproducing  of  the  old  type?  and 
why  limit  to  "this  extent”  the  scope  of  the  liberty  of  choice?  Why 
do  we  not  display  with  complete  equableness  all  views  of  the  best  way 
of  life  and  say,  "Now  choose  ;  think  out  your  course  for  yourselves”  ? 
Instead  of  teaching  our  children  our  morality,  why  not  teach  them 
ethical  science?  instead  of  religion,  metaphysical  criticism?  instead 
of  our  political  faith,  political  philosophy?  instead  of  our  manners, 
the  principles  of  aesthetics  ?  In  short,  why  not  make  thinkers  of  them 
rather  than  partisans?  Why  not  abolish  the  last  remnant  of  that 
ancestor-worship  which  dwarfs  the  new  life  by  binding  it  to  the 
passing  life? 

The  answer  is,  we  have  no  right  to  aim  at  any  smaller  degree  of 
freedom  than  this,  nor,  for  the  most  part,  do  we :  but  before  a  com¬ 
pletely  free  will  can  be  brought  into  being,  it  is  first  necessary  to 
bring  into  being  a  will.  The  manifest  absurdity  of  asking  a  child  to 
choose  his  own  moral  code  and  the  rest  is  due  not  alone  to  the  fact 
that  he  lacks  the  materials  to  choose  from,  but  still  more  to  the  fact 
that  he  does  not  know  what  he  wants.  The  first  task  of  education 
is  to  bring  his  full  will  into  existence.  And  this  can  only  be  done  by  a 
process  so  intimate  that  in  doing  it  the  type  is  inevitably  transmitted. 
The  whole  meaning  of  education  is  wrapped  up  in  this  process  of 
evoking  the  will ;  and  apart  from  it  nothing  in  education  can  be  either 
understood  or  placed. 

The  will  can  develop  only  as  the  several  instincts  wake  up  and 
supply  examples  of  the  goods  and  evils  of  experience.  To  bring 
instincts  into  action,  all  that  any  social  environment  need  do  (and 
almost  all  it  can  do1)  is  to  supply  the  right  stimulus,  together  with  an 

1  Noting  in  passing  that  the  exhibition  of  instinctive  behavior  often  acts  by- 
suggestion  as  a  substitute  for  the  direct  stimulus;  and  in  gregarious  animals  as 
an  alternative  stimulus.  And  further,  just  as  artificial  respiration  may  lead  to 
actual  breathing,  so  a  mechanical  repetition  of  instinctive  behavior  even  under 
duress  may  sometimes  work  backward,  as  if  breaking  a  way  through  an  occluded 
channel,  to  set  an  instinctive  impulse  free. 


igo  SOCIAL  METHOD 

* 

indication  of  what  the  stimulus  means.  A  response  cannot  be  com¬ 
pelled;  for  whatever  is  compelled  is  not  a  response.  No  behavior 
to  which  we  might  drive  a  child  would  be  play :  if  playthings  and 
playing  comrades  fail  to  bring  out  the  play  in  him,  we  are  all  but 
helpless.  A  response  can  only  be  e-duced. 

If  we  were  dealing  with  an  organism  whose  instincts  we  did  not 
know,  the  educing  process  would  consist  in  exposing  that  organism, 
much  as  one  would  expose  a  photographic  plate,  to  various  environ¬ 
ments  to  see  which  ones  would  elicit  reactions.  And  in  dealing  with 
a  new  human  being,  always  unknown,  the  work  of  educing  his  in¬ 
stincts  would  likewise  consist  in  exposing  him  to  those  stimuli  which 
may  appeal  to  him, — to  speech,  to  things  graspable  or  ownable,  to 
color,  form,  music,  etc.,  to  the  goods  of  cleanliness,  truthfulness,  and 
the  like.  What  powers  any  child  has  of  responding  to  these  things, 
whether  or  how  far  they  will  take  in  his  case,  neither  he  nor  we  can 
know  until  he  has  been  exposed — and  perhaps  persistently  and  pain¬ 
fully  exposed — to  specific  examples  of  these  goods. 

This  exposure  is  the  first  work  of  education. 

And  the  first  peril  of  education  is  not  that  the  child’s  will  will  be 
overborne,  but  that  through  no  exposure  or  inadequate  exposure  to  the 
objects  that  would  call  out  his  best  responses,  he  achieves  only  half 
a  will  instead  of  a  whole  one,  a  will  partly-developed  and  therefore 
feebly-initiative,  casual,  spiritless,  uninterested.  If  I  were  to  name 
the  chief  defect  of  contemporary  education,  it  would  not  be  that  it 
turns  out  persons  who  believe  and  behave  as  their  fathers  did — it 
does  not :  but  that  it  produces  so  many  stunted  wills,  wills  prematurely 
grey  and  incapable  of  greatness,  not  because  of  lack  of  endowment, 
but  because  they  have  never  been  searchingly  exposed  to  what  is 
noble,  generous,  and  faith-provoking. 

Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  voices  a  common  objection  to  immersing  the 
defenceless  younger  generation  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  faiths  re¬ 
ligious  and  political  that  have  made  our  nations.1  Has  he  considered 
whether  in  these  faiths  there  lies  anything  more  than  the  wilful 
choice  of  an  unproved  theory,  anything  of  human  value  such  as  a 
growing  will  might,  for  complete  liberation,  require  exposure  to? 
Politically  guided  education,  he  feels,  is  dangerous,  and  so  it  is.  But 
I  venture  to  say  that  the  greatest  danger  of  politically  guided  educa- 
1  Principles  of  Social  Reconstruction ,  chapter  on  "Education.” 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING  191 

tion,  particularly  in  democracies  which  feel  themselves  obliged  in  their 
educational  enterprises  to  cancel  out  against  one  another  the  divergent 
opinions  of  various  parties,  is  that  the  best  places  will  be  left  blank, 
because  it  is  on  the  most  vital  matters  that  men  most  differ.  The 
pre-war  experience  of  France  in  secularized  education  has  furnished  a 
striking  instance  of  the  principle  that  in  education  a  vacuum  is 
equivalent  to  a  negation.  In  one  case  as  in  the  other,  instinct  is 
robbed  of  its  possibility  of  response. 

Children  have  rights  which  education  is  bound  to  respect.  The 
first  of  these  rights  is  not  that  they  be  left  free  to  choose  their  way  of 
life,  i.e.,  to  make  bricks  without  either  straw  or  clay.  Their  first 
right  is  that  they  be  offered  something  positive,  the  best  the  group 
has  so  far  found.  Against  errors  and  interested  propaganda  the 
growing  will  has  natural  protection:  it  has  no  protection  against 
starvation,  nor  against  the  substitution  of  inferior  food  for  good  food. 
No  social  authority  can  make  pain  appear  pleasure.  No  social 
authority  can  make  a  stimulus  of  something  which  has  no  value.  But 
it  is  quite  possible,  through  crowding  out  the  better  by  the  worse,  to 
produce  a  generation  which  thinks  "push-pin  as  good  as  poetry,”  pre¬ 
fers  bridge  to  sunsets,  or  worships  the  golden  calf. 

But  there  is  a  radical  and  obvious  difference  between  exposing  a 
plate  to  the  light  and  exposing  a  human  instinct  to  a  possible  stimulus. 
Anybody  can  expose  the  plate,  a  machine  can  expose  it :  the  operation 
and  the  stimulus  are  alike  mechanical.  But  for  the  human  being 
there  is  many  a  possible  stimulus  which  lies  partly  or  wholly  outside 
the  world  of  physics.1  In  these  regions  of  experience,  neither  a  ma¬ 
chine  nor  any  random  person  can  achieve  an  exposure. 

It  is  true  that  for  most  of  the  'units  of  behavior’  which  men  have 
in  common  with  the  rest  of  the  animal  kingdom,  the  stimuli  are  strewn 
about  in  such  profusion  that  exposure  takes  place  with  little  or  no 
need  for  social  guidance.  It  is  a  commentary  upon  the  artificiality  of 
our  urban  society  that  a  Mme.  Montessori  is  required  to  remind  us 
of  the  need  (among  other  things)  of  sufficient  and  varied  tactile 
stimuli  in  early  years.  Haphazard  encounters  with  strings,  stones, 

1  As  an  example,  the  stimulus  of  the  'instinct  of  curiosity’;  see  Hocking,  Human 
Nature  and  its  Remaking ,  p.  62.  It  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  through  this 
discussion  that  the  'stimulus’  of  an  instinct  is  understood  to  be  'the  perception 
of  the  end  as  the  meaning  of  the  initial  situation’;  ibid.  p.  42. 


192 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


and  sticks,  now  kept  carefully  'cleaned  up’  and  out  of  reach,  aided 
by  personal  struggles  with  the  more  exact  weapons  of  toilet  and  table, 
once  provided  most  of  the  stimuli  which  we  must  now  measure  out 
with  psychological  ingenuity.  Hereby  we  are  making  no  doubt  es¬ 
sential  progress  in  self-consciousness ;  but  for  young  children,  country 
life  and  self-help  are  still  the  unmatched  educators  of  their  primary 
instincts. 

But  for  the  specifically  human  developments  of  instinct,  the  stimuli 
are  commonly  either  non-existent  or  imperceptible  except  through  the 
behavior  of  other  human  beings  who  are  actively  responding  to  them. 
Of  these,  the  principle  holds  that  no  one  can  expose  a  child  to  that 
stimulus  unless  he  himself  appreciates  it.  Imagine  to  what  experience 
an  unmusical  person  might  expose  a  child  under  the  name  of  music. 
Consider  what  it  is  to  which  many  a  human  being  has  been  exposed 
under  the  name  of  mathematics.  To  many  the  true  statement  that 
number  is  an  object  of  profound  instinctive  interest  would  appear  a 
mockery  because,  having  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Philistines 
in  the  days  of  their  initiation  into  the  world  of  number,  they  have 
never  so  much  as  come  into  view  of  its  peculiar  beauties. 

But  it  is  especially  with  regard  to  those  modes  of  interpreting  in¬ 
stinct  which  constitute  our  moral  and  religious  tradition  that  this 
principle  becomes  important.  For  no  one  can  so  much  as  present  the 
meaning  of  an  idea  of  this  kind, — let  us  say  of  a  particular  way  of 
meeting  pain  or  injustice,  a  Spartan  way,  a  Stoical  way,  or  some 
other, — unless  he  himself  finds  satisfaction  in  that  idea.  And  then 
it  follows,  since  satisfaction  and  happiness  are  highly  convincing  states 
of  mind  (understanding  by  happiness  not  temperamental  gaiety,  but 
the  subconscious  and  hence  serious  affirmation  of  life  as  a  whole  by 
the  will  as  a  whole), —  it  follows  that  children  will  tend  to  adopt  the 
beliefs  of  those  whom  they  instinctively  recognize  as  happy,  and  of 
no  others. 

This  is  both  a  protection  to  children  and  a  danger.  A  protection : 
for  surely  the  child  who  has  found  no  hero  in  the  flesh  from  among 
the  supporters  of  the  existing  order  is  in  no  danger  of  being  over¬ 
borne  by  that  order.  If  a  tradition  can  get  no  great  believers,  it  will 
die  a  natural  death.  If  the  wilder  people  are  genuinely  the  happier, 
—  Bohemians,  declassees,  gay  outlawry  in  general, — it  is  they  who 
will  convince  and  be  followed.  If  sobriety,  self-restraint,  all  the 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


193 


"  awful  and  respectable  virtues”  have- a  value,  whether  as  necessary 
nuisances  on  the  way  to  some  great  good,  or  as  goods  on  their  own 
account,  they  will  find  a  following  through  the  persons  of  those  who 
are  enamored  of  those  goods,  so  far  as  such  persons  become  known. 

If  the  social  group  is  simple,  any  genuine  values  it  has  will  be  likely 
to  find  their  way  into  new  minds.  One  of  the  most  marvelous  exam¬ 
ples  of  social  conservation  has  been  the  transmission  of  folksong ;  yet 
if  any  tradition  has  been  spontaneous  and  unforced,  this  has  been. 
But  in  our  modern  complex  and  split-up  societies,  the  chances  grow 
large  that  many  children  are  never  reached  by  our  best  ideas,  trans¬ 
mitted  through  an  overworked  and  not  markedly  happy  teaching 
body.1 

In  any  case,  what  is  transmitted  is  that  intangible  thing  we  call 
belief,  the  effective  belief  of  the  teaching  surface  of  society.  And 
since  the  type  of  any  society  is  chiefly  defined  by  its  prevalent  beliefs, 
we  see  why  it  is  that  the  process  of  bringing  a  will  into  existence 
inevitably  tends,  as  we  said,  to  reproduce  the  type. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  best  of  our  values  that  lead  the  most  perilous 
lives,  are  most  easily  lost  or  defaced  in  the  relay  of  the  generations : 
but  determination  and  system  will  not  save  them.  Ethics  and  re¬ 
ligion  must  be  removed  from  set  courses  of  public  instruction  unless 
the  believers  are  there;  for  mechanical  teaching  of  these  things  is 
worse  than  none.  Every  society  has,  beside  its  rebels  who  are  fre- 

!If  the  chief  excellence  of  teachers  in  a  parsimonious  democracy  is  to  spend 
much  time,  teach  as  many  as  possible,  make  neat  reports  showing  high  averages 
of  prize-made  punctuality,  and  'prepare’  their  charges  for  the  enjoyment  of  some¬ 
thing  else  than  what  is  before  them,  we  shall  produce  and  deserve  little  else  than 
a  constitutionally  weary  and  commonplace  citizenry. 

The  idea  of  'preparation,’  an  indispensable  workshop  notion  for  those  who 
consider  educational  systems  as  a  whole,  is  a  disease  when  it  becomes  prominent 
in  the  minds  of  the  children.  What  children,  and  poets,  never  forget  is  that  "Life 
is  now !  the  center  of  the  universe  is  here !  the  middle  point  of  all  time,  this 
moment!”  If  children  are  led,  for  example,  to  read  good  writers  in  order  that 
they  may  hereafter  enjoy  good  writers,  their  chance  is  lost.  The  only  justifiable 
reason  for  putting  a  good  writer  into  their  hand  is  that  he  is  good  and  can  be 
enjoyed  then  and  there.  I  do  not  say  understood  :  for  children  have  great  powers 
of  living  on  a  future  understanding. 

That  the  first  qualification  of  a  teacher  is  to  be  happy  has  perhaps  never  been 
propounded  as  an  educational  doctrine.  Yet  it  is  a  fair  question  whether  truth 
has  been  more  harmed  by  those  who  are  wrong  but  happy  (if  there  are  any  such) 
than  by  those  who  are  right  but  unhappy. 


T94 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


quently  persons  of  great  faith,  many  members  who  have  dragged 
themselves  barely  to  the  edge  of  a  creed ;  what  such  persons  transmit 
is  hardly  that  creed,  but  a  pestilential  belief  in  the  moral  painfulness 
of  one’s  intellectual  duty. 

But  given  the  believer,  the  more  vigorous  and  affirmative  his  be¬ 
lief,  the  better.  Life  becomes  worth  living  according  to  the  greatness 
of  faith,  not  the  lack  of  it.  If  any  element  of  a  great  faith  proves 
wrong,  its  greatness  survives  as  a  standard  to  be  reached  by  what 
displaces  it.  According  to  this  measure  will  be  the  dimension  of  the 
wills  we  develop. 

But  beside  the  dimension  of  the  will,  the  proportion  of  the  will 
is  also  a  matter  of  importance ;  and  to  this  end  it  is  the  business  of 
education  to  see  that  none  of  the  more  general  instincts  or  groups  of 
instincts  have  an  inadequate  exposure. 

There  is  in  the  human  being,  as  we  saw,  a  large  power  of  substitu¬ 
tion  among  the  instincts,  and  this  power  increases  as  the  central 
current  of  the  will  grows  strong.  Hence  as  children  get  older  it  be¬ 
comes  less  and  less  important  that  all  the  possible  '  units  of  behavior  ’ 
should  be  proportionately  called  forth.  It  is  a  pity,  to  be  sure,  if  the 
climbing  period  goes  by  without  a  fair  exposure  to  trees,  fences,  stair¬ 
cases,  shed  roofs,  and  the  like ;  but  the  loss  is  not  irremediable.  If 
however  any  of  the  more  general  instincts  lies  long  latent,  as  in  the 
case  of  a  delay  in  the  use  of  language  which  might  retard  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  sociability,  the  loss  is  more  serious.  Let  me  speak  of  some 
of  the  questions  of  proportion  which  present  conditions  of  life  more 
especially  raise. 

A  fair  balance  ought  to  be  kept  between  the  instincts  that  deal  with 
persons  and  those  that  deal  with  things.  The  small  arts  developed 
by  handling,  exploring,  controlling,  making,  and  owning  things  must 
furnish  all  the  themes  for  the  give-and-take  of  primitive  sociability : 
only  through  the  administering  of  such  all-important  privileges  as 
those  of  'hollering  down  our  rain  bar’l’  or  'climbing  our  apple  tree’ 
can  the  various  shades  of  amity  and  hostility  be  realized.  The  child’s 
social  life  will  run  shallow  unless  his  physical  interests  are  vigorous. 
It  is  true  that  the  deeper  his  roots  strike  into  the  material  world  and 
its  mastery,  the  more  occasion  there  is  for  pugnacity,  the  more  difficult 
the  personal  problems  aroused ;  but  also,  the  more  significant  the 
solutions  when  they  come.  It  is  a  mistake  to  try  to  impose  a  pre- 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


195 


mature  altruism  upon  these  concerns  in  mine  and  thine.  The  two 
sets  of  impulses,  competitive  and  non-competitive,  must  grow  side  by 
side  and  to  some  extent  independently  before  they  are  ready  to 
recognize  their  relationship.  Meantime,  the  instincts  occupied  with 
things  indicate  by  their  strength  the  degree  of  mastery  over  nature  we 
are  destined  to ;  and  the  qualities  developed  in  their  exercise  are  the 
most  primitive  elements  of  'character7  and  the  foundation  of  all 
likeableness.1  Thus  what  these  instincts  seem  to  take  from  social 
quality,  they  pay  back  again. 

But  between  the  possessive  and  masterful  interest  in  things  and  the 
friendly  interest  in  persons  there  is  a  middle  term,  most  important  in 
the  proportioning  of  the  will.  I  mean  a  companionable  interest  in 
nature.  Being  'alone’  has  possibilities  of  occupation  that  come  not 
merely  from  hands  and  senses  but  from  thought  and  fancy.  A  child’s 
fear  of  solitude  is  an  evidence  that  his  imagination  has  already  begun 
to  work  in  this  direction ;  and  what  is  needed  in  order  to  reassure  him 
is  not  that  nature  should  be  depersonalized,  but  that  his  instinctive 
personifying  trait  should  be  made  a  resource.  The  growing  self,  if  it 
is  to  acquire  depth,  has  need  of  a  region  not  intruded  upon  by  other 
human  personalities,  not  even  by  such  as  move  across  the  stage  of 
history  and  literature.  While  he  is  in  this  human  company  the 
initiative  of  his  own  thoughts  is  perpetually  broken :  the  impulses  of 
mental  play,  as  sensitive  as  they  are  precious,  may  easily  be  discour¬ 
aged  and  weakened  unless  an  environment  is  found  which  is  at  once 
an  escape  and  a  stimulus.  Our  over-socialized  city-bred  children  often 
lose  the  capacity  to  be  'by  themselves’  without  intolerable  tedium. 
Normally,  however,  'nature’  means  much  more  than  permission  to 
ruminate:  it  is  a  positive  educing  force.  For  nature  appears  to 
humanity  everywhere,  and  early  to  children,  as  (more  or  less  cheer¬ 
fully)  enigmatic:  it  is  deceptively  quiescent,  or  it  is  eventful  but 
with  invisible  agency ;  it  teases  out  essays  in  interpretation.  Society 
drives  away  the  muse, — it  'amuses’  us:  but  in  the  presence  of  nature 

^Vhat  attracts  us  in  another,  old  or  young,  is  always  the  sign  not  of  animal 
vitality  primarily  but  of  validity,  the  quality  of  spirit  which  is  challenged  and 
evoked  in  the  elementary  struggles  with  the  inertia  and  refractoriness  of  physical 
things:  resourcefulness,  persistence,  grit,  integrity,  fertility  of  design.  Power  over 
nature  is  the  most  summary  expression  of  what  a  spirit  ought  ,to  have,  and  does 
have  in  proportion  to  its  degree  of  reality  :  it  is  this  degree  of  reality  which  we 
most  immediately  perceive  in  another,  and  which  is  the  foundation  of  likeableness. 


196 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  thread  of  our  fancies  is  drawn  at  once  into  the  living  fabric  of 
the  world,  making  connection  in  the  freest,  and  I  believe  not  untruest 
way,  with  the  spirit  that  dwells  there.  Thus  the  foundations  are  being 
laid  for  a  thoughtfulness  more  than  literal  in  its  quality,  which  may 
ripen  in  one  direction  into  scientific  observation  and  hypothesis,  in 
another  toward  merging  with  the  poetic  and  animistic  gropings  of 
the  race.1  In  any  case,  since  the  imagination  is  actively,  not  pas¬ 
sively  engaged,  and  the  mental  furniture  is  one’s  own,  one  returns  to 
his  social  world  a  little  more  than  before  a  self.  An  individual  'I- 
think  ’  is  growing  which  in  time  may  have  its  own  contribution  to  the 
'We- think ’  of  the  crowd. 

But  whether  we  thus  deal  with  the  'I-think,’  or  as  above  with  the 
'I-own,’  it  is  clear  that  we  are  at  the  same  time  dealing  with  the 
'I-can.’  The  will  to  power,  because  of  its  central  position,  is  being 
educated  in  all  education.  But  this  fact  does  not  imply  that  the  will 
to  power  needs  no  distinct  attention.  It  has  its  own  technique  to 
acquire,  and  its  own  interpretation  to  find:  and  everything  in  the 
child’s  further  career  depends  on  how  these  problems  are  solved.  Like 
all  the  more  particular  forms  of  instinct  the  will  to  power  needs  to  be 
developed  by  deliberate  exposure  to  its  own  kind  of  stimulus, — dif¬ 
ficulty,  and  to  its  own  type  of  good, — success. 

Play,  we  have  said,  may  be  regarded  as  practice  in  success.  The 
play  obstacles  are  so  chosen  as  to  be  surmountable ;  the  play-things 

Dn  making  this  plea  for  the  encouragement  of  an  anthropomorphic  imagi¬ 
nation,  I  am  shamelessly  favoring  what  Professor  Thorstein  Veblen  has  called 
the  "self-contamination  of  the  sense  of  workmanship”  ( The  Instinct  of  Work¬ 
manship ,  pp.  52  ff.),  a  deliberate  mixing  of  the  personal  and  impersonal  phases  of 
the  world  which  it  may  prove  difficult  later  on  to  resolve  into  a  wholly  natural¬ 
istic  deadness  of  attitude  toward  the  physical.  I  do  so  with  my  eyes  open. 

What  and  how  much  solitude  may  mean  to  any  child  cannot  be  told  in  ad¬ 
vance  :  education  can  only  effect  the  exposure,  not  at  first  without  guidance,  and 
certainly  not  without  noting  results. 

Let  me  quote  from  a  letter  written  by  Sir  Rabindranath  Tagore  to  Mr.  Frederic 
Rose,  Stockton  Heath,  England.  "Mornings  and  evenings  (speaking  of  his  school 
in  Bolpur)  fifteen  minutes’  time  is  given  them  to  sit  in  an  open  space,  composing 
their  minds  for  worship.  We  never  watch  them  and  ask  questions  about  what  they 
think  in  those  times,  but  leave  it  entirely  to  themselves,  to  the  spirit  of  the  place 
and  the  time  and  the  suggestion  of  the  practice  itself.  We  rely  more  upon  the 
subconscious  influence  of  Nature,  of  the  association  of  the  place  and  the  daily  life 
of  worship  that  we  live  than  on  any  conscious  effort  to  teach  them.”  The  same 
principle  in  a  different  mood  is  found  in  John  Boyle  O’Reilly’s  poem  "At  School.” 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


197 


oppose  no  ultimate  resistance  to  their  owner.  But  that  which  seems 
the  opposite  of  play,  the  set  task,  is  needful  to  provide  the  complete 
stimulus  for  this  instinct.  We  need  not  open  the  old  debate  whether 
the  will  is  best  trained  through  what  one  spontaneously  likes  or  is 
'interested’  in  or  through  the  opposite.  Kant  and  William  James  are 
far  apart  on  many  matters ;  but  in  this  they  seem  to  agree,  that  for 
the  sake  of  habitual  freedom  from  the  domination  of  feelings  it  is 
well  to  do  voluntarily  a  certain  amount  of  what  is  hard  or  distasteful. 
But  I  presume  that  they  would  equally  agree  that  there  is  little  value 
in  effort  for  effort’s  sake :  there  is  as  little  to  be  gained  from  pure 
difficulty  as  from  pure  ease.  The  right  stimulus  for  any  instinct  is 
'the  perception  of  the  goal  as  the  meaning  of  the  beginning’:1  the 
right  stimulus  of  the  will  to  power  is  the  glimmer  of  a  possible  success, 
which  is  another  name  for  hope.  The  only  significant  difficulties,  for 
purposes  of  education,  are  those  accompanied  by  hope.  It  is  thus  as 
idle  a  procedure  to  exhort  the  child  halted  by  an  obstacle  to  "work  it 
out  for  himself”  as  it  is  to  do  the  work  for  him:  there  is  no  more  de¬ 
humanizing  state  of  mind  than  the  perpetuation  of  directionless  effort 
in  a  despairful  mood.  Educatibn  in  such  a  case  consists  in  supplying 
the  halted  mind  with  a  method  of  work  and  some  examples  of  success. 
There  are  few  more  beautiful  miracles  than  that  which  can  be  wrought 
by  leading  a  despairing  child  into  a  trifling  success:  and  there  are  few 
difficulties  whose  principle  cannot  be  embodied  in  such  simple  form 
that  success  is  at  once  easy  and  revealing.  And  by  increasing  the 
difficulty  by  serial  stages,  the  small  will,  under  the  cumulative  excite¬ 
ment  of  repeated  and  mounting  success,  may  find  itself  far  beyond 
the  obstacle  that  originally  checked  it. 

Such  use  of  mental  momentum  is  a  practice  which  I  believe  all  in¬ 
stinctive  teachers  resort  to.  And  it  shows  incidentally  how  false  a 
guide  'interest’  may  be  in  education  when  taken  as  we  find  it.  Lack 
of  interest  in  any  subject  depends,  for  children,  far  less  on  the  nature 
of  the  subject  than  on  a  persistent  thwarting  of  the  will  to  power  in 
dealing  with  it ;  interest  accompanies  any  task  in  which  a  mental 
momentum  is  established.  But  momentum  can  be  gaifted  only  when 
difficulty  can  be  indefinitely  increased,  so  that  the  very  conditions 
which  may  discourage,  drive  away  interest,  and  even  induce  loathing 
of  a  subject,  are  conditions  which  make  great  interest  possible  when 
1  Hocking,  Human  Nature  and  its  Remaking ,  p.  42. 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


198 

the  will  to  power  is  called  into  lively  action.  We  may  put  it  down  as 
a  maxim  of  education,  so  far  as  interest  is  concerned, — Without  dif¬ 
ficulty,  no  lasting  interest. 

But  after  the  education  derived  from  play,  and  from  the  set  task 
with  its  relatively  prompt  conclusion,  the  will  to  power  has  still  to 
learn  to  deal  with  the  situation  of  indefinite  delay.  If  it  is  hard  to 
point  out  what  instinctive  satisfaction  can  be  found  in  a  deferred  suc¬ 
cess,  it  would  be  hazardous  to  assert  that  there  is  no  such  satisfaction, 
when  we  consider  that  the  greatest  of  human  ends  are  such  as  are 
never  finally  achieved.  The  imagination,  the  'I-think,’  would  be 
cramped  in  any  house  narrower  than  infinity ;  and  it  is  through  them 
that  the  will  to  power  can  be  led  to  its  next  stage  of  development.  By 
the  aid  of  imagination  I  can  count  it  a  success  to  have  made  a  defin¬ 
able  approach  to  a  distant  end ;  and  thus  increasingly  long  series  of 
means  that  lie  between  initial  effort  and  attainment  can  take  on  the 
meaning  of  continuous  successes.  If  our  view  of  the  State  is  right,1  it 
is  only  as  we  become  capable  of  taking  an  interest  in  permanent  ancl 
cumulative  objects  that  the  will  to  power  can  subordinate  its  com¬ 
petitive  to  a  non-competitive  character  and  so  become  thoroughly 
social.  And  it  must  be  seasoned  to  delay,  before  the  problems  with 
which  adolescence  confronts  instinct  can  be  even  fairly  well  met. 

The  strain  upon  instinct  at  adolescence  is  due  largely  to  the  delay 
imposed  on  the  impulses  of  acquisition  and  sex.  The  vigorous  ways 
of  primitive  food-getting  and  property-getting  have  to  recognize 
their  transformed  selves,  if  they  can,  in  the  devious  routine  of  labor 
and  exchange.  The  sex-interest,  under  any  set  of  customs  so  far 
proposed,  must  learn  to  express  itself  for  a  time  in  partial  and  sub¬ 
limated  forms.  The  circumstance  that  children  usually  grow  up  in 
families  is  nature’s  simple  and  effective  device  for  imposing  on  the 
powerful  current  of  sex-feeling  its  presumptive  meaning :  every  child 
starts  life  with  a  prejudice  to  the  effect  that  its  affections  will  lead  it 
sooner  or  later  to  found  a  family  resembling  (with  improvements) 
the  family  from  which  it  came.  But  when  sex-interest  becomes  a 
practical  personal  impulse  it  outruns  the  restricted  possibilities  of 
family-founding;  it  meets  on  every  hand  the  unexplained  check,  the 
unexplained  inner  compunction  quite  as  much  as  the  unexplained 
social  ruling.  Inhibition  and  prohibition  alike  mean  delay ;  and  the 
1  Hocking,  Human  Nature  and  its  Remaking ,  p.  205. 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


199 

tendency  of  all  delay  is  to  cast  the  energies  of  impulse  upward  into 
the  region  of  dream,  romance,  speculation,  substitution. 

Here  the  will  to  power  should  provide  the  great  natural  resource ; 
and  will  do  so  if  it  has  been  linked  with  imagination.  Delay  becomes 
supportable  if  imagination  gives  the  'prolonged  vestibule’1  the  shape 
of  a  conscious  plan,  with  the  many  possible  successes  of  approach : 
and  for  the  acquisitive  impulses  this  may  at  least  ease  the  situation. 
But  delay  becomes  more  than  tolerable,  it  becomes  significant,  if  it 
affords  leeway  for  the  creation  of  the  plan  itself,  enlisting  the  inex¬ 
haustible  plan-making  impulses  of  the  youthful  brain.  Here  the  pos¬ 
sibilities  of  the  imaginative  will  to  power  are  so  great  that  it  may 
assume  an  actual  equivalence  for  the  satisfaction  of  other  instincts ; 
and  in  particular  the  creative  element  in  the  sex-impulse  may  be 
largely  absorbed  or  'sublimated’  in  the  new  preoccupation. 

For  at  adolescence  there  is  at  least  one  such  task  of  creation  which 
the  will  cannot  escape,  that  of  constructing  one’s  philosophy.  The 
youth  finds  himself,  at  his  own  estimate,  for  the  first  time  an  equal 
among  equals.  There  is  a  change  in  the  order  of  authority.  Children 
have  an  appetite  for  authority  corresponding  to  their  mental  unfin¬ 
ishedness  and  rapid  growth ;  with  adolescence  comes  a  sense  of  com¬ 
petence  and  a  disposition  to  be  critical.  The  conceit  of  opinion  in  the 
adolescent  is  not  empty :  it  is  based  on  a  readiness  to  assume  responsi¬ 
bility,  and  on  an  actual  assumption  of  responsibility  in  the  work  of 
mental  world-building  if  not  of  physical  world-building.  He  ap¬ 
preciates  for  the  first  time  that  he  has  his  own  life  to  lead ;  he  finds 
himself  morally  alone ;  he  can  no  longer  endure  to  see  things  through 
the  eyes  of  others. 

In  dealing  with  this  readiness  to  assume  responsibility  and  with  its 
accompanying  conceit — the  'instinct  of  self-assertion’  as  it  is  called 
by  McDougall  and  others — we  commit  some  of  our  most  serious 
educational  blunders.  We  customarily  put  the  boy  into  continued 
schooling  where  his  powers  of  serious  action  beat  the  air,  and  we  re¬ 
buke  his  conceit  by  external  pressure:  the  first  wrong  brings  the  sec¬ 
ond  after  it.  Continued  schooling  is  inevitable  and  not  necessarily 
unnatural ;  but  the  only  fair  corrective  for  the  conceit,  or  rather  the 
only  right  environment  for  this  new  development  of  instinct,  is  the 
actual  responsibility  it  craves.  Our  school  days  and  years  have  their 

1  Hocking,  ibid.  p.  178. 


200 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


intervals ;  and  those  intervals  should  be,  at  least  in  part,  intervals  of 
earning  a  living.  The  boy  who  passes  his  adolescence  without  know¬ 
ing  the  feeling  of  doing  a  day’s  work  for  a  day’s  wages  is  risking  not 
only  a  warp  in  his  instinctive  make-up,  but  a  shallowing  of  all  further 
work  in  school  and  college,  because  of  a  loss  of  contact  with  this 
angle  of  reality  at  the  moment  when  his  will  was  ripe  for  it.  The 
mental  helplessness  of  many  students  who  cumber  the  colleges  of  this 
and  other  lands,  the  dispositional  snobbery  and  self-saving  of  many 
an  over-confident  and  over-sexed  youth  sent  out  as  'educated’  to 
justify  once  more  the  spirit  of  rebellion  against  the  mental  and  moral 
incompetence  of  those  who  assume  to  lead  and  govern,  has  much  of 
its  explanation  in  our  failure  at  this  point.  The  marvel  is  not  that 
such  misshapen  births  occur ;  the  marvel  is  that  young  human  nature 
shows  such  magnificent  self-righting  qualities  when  its  will  to  power 
is  once  thoroughly  engaged. 

But  whether  or  not  the  concrete  responsibility  he  craves  is  permit¬ 
ted  him,  the  responsibility  for  mental  world-building  cannot  be  refused 
the  adolescent,  and  he  will  take  it.  This  is  the  natural  moment  for 
tearing  down  and  rebuilding  the  beliefs  absorbed  during  the  era  of  his 
subordination  to  authority.  Youth  is  metaphysical  not  because  meta¬ 
physics  is  a  youthful  malady  but  because  youth  has  metaphysical 
work  to  do ;  it  has  been  attached  to  the  universe  through  the  mental 
veins  of  its  authorities ;  now  it  must  win  an  attachment  of  its  own. 
The  old  structure  of  belief  will  not  be  wholly  abandoned, — it  may  not 
be  so  much  as  altered ;  but  it  must  be  hypothetically  abandoned,  sur¬ 
veyed  from  outside  largely  by  the  aid  of  the  materials  furnished  the 
imagination  in  early  years,  the  young  Greek,  the  young  Utopian  we 
have  implanted  in  the  young  modern.  That  to  which  one  returns  is 
then  no  longer  another’s,  but  one’s  own.  Originality  is  not  measured 
by  the  amount  of  change,  but  by  the  depth  of  this  re-thinking. 

It  is  originality  of  this  sort,  another  name  for  'individuality/  which 
is  chiefly  at  stake  during  adolescence.  If  the  will  to  power  cannot 
take  this  metaphysical  direction,  individuality  will  be  curtailed  in  its 
growth.  If  self-assertion  takes  the  form  of  rebellion  against  restraint 
of  sex-impulse,  individuality  will  be  the  loser  not  the  gainer.  For  sex- 
expression  is  the  merging  of  the  individual  in  the  currents  of  the 
genus;  and  early  sex-expression  signs  away  just  the  last  and  highest 
reaches  of  individual  development.  It  ensures  mediocrity,  and  by  a 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


201 


curious  paradox,  conventionality  of  mind :  nothing  is  so  uninventive 
as  ordinary  sex-rebellion.  Only  deferment  and  sublimation  can  carry 
individual  self-consciousness  to  its  own.1 

If  the  instinctive  life  of  adolescence  is  to  be  dominated  by  the  will 
to  power  in  the  form  of  creative  thinking,  the  impulse  and  power  to 
think  must  be  well  grown ;  whereas  originality  of  this  sort  is  the 
rarest  product  of  our  education.  The  abundant  will  of  childish  curi¬ 
osity  which  should  now  be  brimming  into  the  channel  of  explorative 
thought,  we  are  commonly  compelled  to  see  running  dry.  Is  it  neces¬ 
sary  to  stand  helpless  before  this  serious  failure  of  the  attempt 
to  educate? 

The  difficulty  does  not  lie  primarily  in  the  fact  that  explorative 
thought  is  the  most  arduous  way  of  meeting  life,  whether  for  educator 
or  educated.  It  is  certainly  much  simpler  for  both  sides  to  accept 
classified  solutions  for  classified  situations,  after  the  fashion  of  the 
manuals  of  casuistry,  than  to  discount  every  actual  hypothesis  in 
favor  of  a  possibly  better  one.  But  the  difficulty  is  that  with  the 
best  of  will,  the  power  of  explorative  thinking  cannot  be  taught  by 
direct  effort.  In  attempting  to  communicate  it,  what  we  pass  on  is  a 
solution,  never  the  mental  process  that  reached  it.  In  our  labora¬ 
tories  we  undertake  to  teach  scientific  method,  the  method  by  which 
Galileo  and  his  successors  made  their  discoveries ;  but  our  typical 
product  still  lacks  something  that  was  in  Galileo.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
has  revealed  to  mankind  the  secret  of  Rodin’s  art ;  yet  no  one  takes 
Rodin’s  place.  The  attempt  to  transmit  originality,  and  the  attempt 
to  transmit  tradition  are  in  the  same  case :  if  with  the  tradition  could 
be  given  the  power  that  created  it,  tradition  would  have  few  enemies. 
Imitation  never  quite  imitates ;  education  never  educes  the  most  vital 
power.  Platonism  produces  no  other  Plato:  Christianity  yields  no 
other  Jesus  nor  Paul.  If  instead  of  trying  to  conserve  itself,  every 
society  and  every  tradition  put  out  all  its  efforts  to  make  new  proph- 

1  There  is  a  similar  loss  through  hasty  self-assertion  in  the  direction  of  the 
acquisitive  instincts.  To  win  the  early  attention  of  the  market  it  is  necessary  to 
offer  something  new.  Novelty  is  a  natural  product  of  thought;  but  premature 
gathering  of  this  crop  has  a  biological  reaction  on  the  root.  The  normal  source  of 
the  new  is  not  direct  attention  to  the  new,  but  attention  to  the  real ;  the  novelty 
that  comes  as  a  result  of  the  painful  quest  for  novelty  will  prove  in  the  end  to  be 
a  mere  variation  of  a  conventional  pattern,  like  the  scenarios  of  our  movies,  and 
so  in  time  to  pall  by  its  tawdry  repetition. 


202 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


ets,  new  iconoclasts,  it  would  still  find  itself  conserving  the  husk,  un¬ 
less  the  spring  of  that  unteachable  power  can  be  touched. 

It  is  here  that  we  realize  most  keenly  that  education  in  the  last 
analysis  must  be  on  the  part  of  the  educator  a  study  of  self¬ 
elimination.  It  has  throughout  a  paradoxical  character.  In  those 
beginnings  of  independent  thought  which  we  found  in  the  'com¬ 
panionable  interest  in  nature,’  the  art  of  exposure  involved  the  with¬ 
drawal  of  society  by  society,  a  self-effacement  which  must  gradually 
become  complete.  It  is  the  moments  of  loneliness  that  are  critical 
for  the  spontaneity  of  the  mind ;  and  they  can  be  to  some  extent  pro¬ 
cured  for  the  growing  self  by  increasing  the  opportunities  for  learning 
through  one’s  own  mistakes,  through  experiments  in  opposition,  and 
through  attempts  at  the  solitary  occupation  of  leadership. 

But  self-eliminating  is  not  a  purely  negative  process ;  for  explora¬ 
tive  thought  has  never  been  a  purely  disconnected  fact  in  the  uni¬ 
verse:  it  has  had  its  sources,  and  the  last  rite  of  the  self-eliminating 
art  would  be  to  poin-t  out  those  sources  so  far  as  we  know  them. 
We  may  at  least  conduct  our  youth  to  the  farthest  point  on  our  own 
horizon,  to  the  point  from  which  all  that  is  tentative  is  seen  as 
tentative,  all  that  is  small  as  small,  all  that  is  human  as  merely  human. 
"For  each  man,”  we  may  say  to  them,  "there  is  a  region  of  con¬ 
sciousness  more  nearly  just  and  free  than  others,  looking  out  toward 
absolute  truth,  if  not  seeing  it.  In  all  ages  men  have  sought  out  this 
region,  and  have  found  there  a  promise  of  freedom  from  all  residual 
tyrannies  of  custom  and  education ;  and  from  this  source  innovations 
without  number  have  made  their  way  into  social  life.  What  men  have 
called  their  religion  has  been  the  inertia-breaking,  bond-breaking 
power,  the  mother  of  much  explorative  thought.  It  has  at  times  ex¬ 
ercised  a  tyranny  of  its  own,  and  this  is  the  most  hideous  of  tyran¬ 
nies  because  it  invades  the  region  of  most  intimate  freedom.  But  from 
it  has  come  the  power  for  breaking  these  same  shackles.  There  you 
may  find  or  recover  the  vision  which  nullifies  all  imposture  of  the 
Established,  the  Entrenched,  of  all  the  self-satisfied  Toryisms,  Capi¬ 
talisms,  Obscurantisms  of  the  world.  And  there  you  may  find  what 
is  not  less  necessary  for  originality :  unity  in  the  midst  of  distraction, 
composure  in  the  midst  of  necessary  and  unnecessary  flux,  quiet  confi¬ 
dence  in  your  own  eyesight  in  presence  of  the  Newest,  the  Noisiest, 
the  Scientificalest,  the  Blatantest,  all  the  brow-beating  expositions  of 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


203 


pseudo-Originality,  pseudo-Progress.  Your  need  is  not  for  novelty  for 
its  own  sake,  but  for  truth :  out  of  your  personal  relation  to  truth  comes 
all  the  novelty  that  can  serve  you,  or  mankind  through  you.  This  per¬ 
sonal  relation  to  truth  you  must  win  for  yourself ;  but  you  may  be  left 
with  good  hope  to  win  it,  for  truth  is  no  dead  thing,  but  is  itself  a  spirit.” 

Society,  I  dare  say,  has  never  been  wholly  false  to  this  self- 
displacing  conception  of  education :  even  its  most  hide-bound  ortho¬ 
doxies  have  produced  characters  capable  of  social  and  political 
resistance,  revolution  if  need  be.  And  the  modes  of  conduct  which  it 
has  attempted  to  transmit  have  been  derived  seldom  from  a  direct 
study  of  its  own  welfare,  chiefly  from  its  own  view  of  the  dictates  of 
this  more  absolute  consciousness. 

For  this  reason,  in  our  own  study  of  society  we  have  given  little 
attention  to  specific  transformations  of  instinct.  If  anything  is  dis¬ 
coverable  more  adequate  and  final  than  a  given  stage  of  social  trans¬ 
formation,  it  is  that  which  social  education  reaches  toward,  and  which 
alone  can  concern  us,  even  as  social  beings.1 

25.  Equality  of  Opportunity2 

A  man’s  power  is  due  ( 1 )  to  physical  heredity  ;  ( 2 )  to  social  hered¬ 
ity,  including  care,  education,  and  the  stock  of  inventions,  information, 
and  institutions  which  enables  him  to  be  more  efficient  than  the  sav¬ 
age;  and  finally  (3)  to  his  own  efforts.  Individualism  may  properly 
claim  this  third  factor.  It  is  just  to  treat  men  unequally  so  far  as 
their  efforts  are  unequal.  It  is  socially  desirable  to  give  as  much  in¬ 
centive  as  possible  to  the  full  development  of  every  one’s  powers.  But 
the  very  same  reason  demands  that  in  the  first  two  respects  we  treat 
men  as  equally  as  possible.  For  it  is  for  the  good  of  the  social  body 
to  get  the  most  out  of  its  members,  and  it  can  get  the  most  out  of 
them  only  by  giving  them  the  best  start  possible.  In  physical  heredity 
the  greater  part  is,  as  yet,  wholly  outside  control,  but  there  is  an  im¬ 
portant  factor  which  is  in  the  sphere  of  moral  action,  namely,  the 
physical  condition  of  the  parents,  particularly  of  the  mother.  Con¬ 
ditions  of  food,  labor,  and  housing  should  be  such  that  every  child  may 

1  In  chapters  xxxi  and  xxxii  of  Human  Nature  and  its  Remaking,  Hocking  deals 
with  the  problems  of  the  rebel  and  the  criminal. —  Ed. 

-Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  pp.  548-550.  Compare  with  earlier  citations.— Ed 


204 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


be  physically  well  born.  In  the  various  elements  included  under  social 
heredity  society  has  a  freer  hand.  Not  a  free  hand,  for  physical  and 
mental  incapacity  limit  the  amount  of  social  accumulation  which  can 
be  communicated,  but  we  are  only  beginning  to  appreciate  how  much 
of  the  deficiency  formerly  acquiesced  in  as  hopeless  may  be  prevented 
or  remedied  by  proper  food,  hygiene,  and  medical  care.  Completely 
equal  education,  likewise,  cannot  be  given;  not  in  kind,  for  not  all 
children  have  like  interests  and  society  does  not  want  to  train  all  for 
the  same  task ;  nor  in  quantity,  for  some  will  have  neither  the  ability 
nor  the  disposition  to  do  the  more  advanced  work.  But  as,  little  by 
little,  labor  becomes  in  larger  degree  scientific,  the  ratio  of  opportuni¬ 
ties  for  better  trained  men  will  increase,  and  as  education  becomes  less 
exclusively  academic,  and  more  an  active  preparation  for  all  kinds  of 
work,  the  interests  of  larger  and  larger  numbers  of  children  will  be 
awakened.  Such  a  programme  as  this  is  one  of  the  meanings  of  the 
phrase  "equal  opportunity,”  which  voices  the  demand  widely  felt  for 
some  larger  conception  of  economic  and  social  justice  than  now  obtains. 
It  would  make  formal  freedom,  formal  "equality”  before  the  law,  less 
an  empty  mockery  by  giving  to  every  child  some  of  the  power  and 
knowledge  which  are  the  necessary  conditions  of  real  freedom. 

Society  has  already  gone  a  long  way  along  the  line  of  giving  an 
equal  share  in  education.  It  is  moving  rapidly  toward  broader  con¬ 
ceptions  of  education  for  all  occupations — farming,  mechanics,  arts, 
trade,  business — as  well  as  for  the  "learned  professions.”  It  is  mak¬ 
ing  a  beginning  toward  giving  children  (see  the  Report  of  the  New 
York  Tenement  House  Commission)  a  chance  to  be  born  and  grow 
up  with  at  least  a  living  minimum  of  light  and  air.  Libraries  and  dis¬ 
pensaries  and  public  health  officials  are  bringing  the  science  and  litera¬ 
ture  of  the  world  in  increasing  measure  into  the  lives  of  all.  When 
by  the  better  organization  of  the  courts  the  poor  man  has  real,  and 
not  merely  formal  equality  before  the  law,  and  thereby  justice  itself 
is  made  more  accessible  to  all,  another  long  step  will  be  taken  toward  a 
juster  order.  How  far  society  can  go  is  yet  to  be  solved.  But  is  it 
not  at  least  a  working  hypothesis  for  experiment,  that  society  should 
try  to  give  to  all  its  members  the  gains  due  to  the  social  progress  of 
the  past  ?  How  far  the  maxim  of  equal  opportunity  will  logically  lead 
it  is  impossible  to  say.  Fortunately,  the  moral  problem  is  to  work 
out  new  ideals,  not  merely  to  administer  old  ones. 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING  205 

t 

26.  Health  as  the  Basis  of  Character1 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  attempt  to  do  justice  to  all  the  great 
natural  influences  which  act  upon  temperament,  instinct,  and  habit. 
Climate,  for  example,  and  geographical  conditions,  the  succession,  the 
rigour,  the  mildness  of  the  seasons,  the  relative  length  of  day  and  night 
— these  all  profoundly  modify  man’s  life  and  development.  But,  for 
the  most  part,  we  must  take  them  as  we  find  them.  They  are  not 
within  control,  and  in  a  practical  enquiry  like  the  present,  it  is  enough 
to  bear  in  mind  that  such  influences  operate ;  and  to  pass  on.2 

It  is  very  different  however  when  we  turn  to  the  conditions  of 
bodily  health.  Hygiene  and  therapeutics  prove  them  to  be  emphati¬ 
cally  within  control,  indeed  they  are  so  generally  considered  to  be  so 
that  persons  not  a  few  live  for  little  else.  As  to  the  manner  and  limits 
of  such  control,  it  is  for  writers  upon  Hygiene  to  speak.  It  must 
suffice  here,  touching  but  cursorily  on  a  large  subject,  to  specify  some 
general  aspects  in  which  moral  development  is  conspicuously  condi¬ 
tioned  by  physical  health. 

( 1 )  This  is  so,  in  its  most  obvious  aspect,  because  good  health  is  a 
prime  condition  of  practical  energy.  For  energetic  constitutions  enjoy 
an  advantage  that  goes  far  beyond  the  mere  superior  ability  to  do 
what  others  cannot.  This  may  give  them  their  political  or  economic 
value.  But,  ethically,  the  gain  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  by  energetic 
action  that  men  make  themselves.  They  do  this  when  by  their  actions 
they  form  the  corresponding  habits :  but  they  do  it  even  more,  because 
it  is  substantially  through  action  far  more  than  through  instruction 
that  they  come  to  identify  their  lives  with  diverse  social  ends  and  in¬ 
terests.  Thus  Spinoza’s  almost  fierce  denunciation  of  ascetic  contempt 
for  the  body  turns  upon  the  conviction  that  the  well-nurtured  body  is 
the  organ  of  all  true  development,  because  it  brings  its  possessor  into 
varied  practical  relations  with  experience.  On  his  view  to  macerate 
the  body  is  thus  to  starve  the  soul.3  Hence  too  the  wisdom  of  the 

1From  The  Making  of  Character  (pp.  54-60),  by  John  MacCunn,  M.A., 
LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  University  College,  Liverpool.  The  University 
Press,  Cambridge,  England,  1900.  Copyright,  1900,  by  The  Macmillan  Company, 
New  York.  Reprinted  by  permission. 

2  For  fuller  treatment  of  these  compare  Lotze,  Mikrocosmus,  Book  VI,  chap.  ii. 

3  Ethics,  Part  IV,  Prop.  XLV,  Scholium,  with  which  compare  Props.  XXXVIII 
and  XXXIX. 


206 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


Carlylian  dictum  that,  if  any  man  would  ever’know  "that  poor  Self 
of  his/’  the  first  step  is  to  find  his  work  and  to. do  it.  Otherwise  he 
will  never  realise  a  self  that  is  worth  the  knowing. 

So,  conversely,  with  lack  of  energy.  Idleness,  says  proverbial  wis¬ 
dom,  comes  to  want.  But  its  worst  want  is  not  the  empty  purse:  it 
is  the  soul  atrophied  for  lack  of  the  spiritual  wages  that  never  fail  the 
strenuous  life.  What  holds  of  idleness  holds  likewise  of  physical 
languor  and  weakness.  We  may  not  impute  these  as  a  sin,  thereby 
"beating  the  cripple  with  his  own  crutches”;  yet  we  must  just  as 
little  refuse  to  face  the  fact  that  a  weak  or  sickly  body  is  a  grievous 
moral  disability,  in  so  far  as  by  narrowing  the  range  of  contact  with 
life  it  stunts  the  character. 

(2)  Similarly  when  we  turn  to  moral  endurance.  Thus,  when  some 
trial  falls  upon  anyone  we  love,  one  of  the  best  things  to  wish  for  him 
is  good  health  and  well-strung  nerves.  And  this,  not  for  the  obvious 
reason  that  he  will  then  not  break  down  in  health  nor  yet  for  the  less 

t 

materialistic  reason  that  he  can  always  find  a  manly  anodyne  in 
intense  and  absorbing  physical  exertion,  but  for  the  better  reason  still 
that  physical  strength  minimises  the  risk,  never  absent  when  the 
wheels  of  vital  being  run  slow,  that  trial  and  shock  may  cut  short  the 
life,  even  of  a  brave  spirit,  before  the  virtues  of  endurance  have  had 
time  for  their  maturing.  Hence  the  folly  of  indulging  the  natural  reck¬ 
lessness  of  bodily  health  in  the  dark  days  of  trial.  Well  has  Rousseau 
said  that  the  weaker  the  body  is  the  more  it  commands.  It  commands 
in  the  hour  when  we  cannot  face  our  willing  work,  or  when  we  wince 
like  cowards  under  demands  that  shake  the  unstrung  nerves,  or  when 
it  makes  us,  in  spite  of  resolutions,  morbid,  irritable,  wrong-headed 
in  our  estimates  of  men  and  things.  And,  as  the  same  counsellor  adds, 
it  is  the  strong  body  that  obeys.  For  the  body  will  be  best  subjugated, 
not  by  hair-shirt  or  scourge  or  any  other  of  the  like  devices  which  too 
often  thrust  the  physical  life  into  prominence  in  the  very  effort  to 
repress  it,  but  by  enlisting  the  fulness  of  manly  strength  in  the  service 
of  some  cause  or  person,  which  will  tax  it  to  the  uttermost.  Hence 
the  strength  of  the  ethical  argument  for  physical  education.  If  we  are 
apt  to  have  misgivings  about  the  long  hours  and  days  given  in  boy¬ 
hood  and  youth  to  the  strenuous  idleness  of  sports  and  games,  we  must 
not  think  too  exclusively  of  the  immediate  results.  We  must  think 
of  the  heavy  drafts  which  arduous  vocations  make  in  after  year$  on 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING  207 


bodily  vigour  and  endurance,  of  the  habitual  cheerfulness  that  follows 
health,  and  not  least  of  that  sense  of  insurance  against  whatever  the 
future  can  bring  which  comes  of  the  consciousness  of  calculable  physi¬ 
cal  fitness.  Plato  startles  us  in  his  educational  ideal  by  assigning  two 
and  a  half  of  the  most  precious  years  of  life  to  the  exclusive  pursuit  of 
"gymnastic.”1  If  it  seem  a  costly  tribute  to  the  body,  it  is  to  be 
borne  in  mind  that  it  is  prompted  by  the  principle  "Body  for  the 
sake  of  Soul,”  and  finds  its  justification  in  the  strenuous  service  to  be 
exacted  by  the  State  of  its  citizens  in  later  years. 

(3)  Add  to  this  that  bodily  health  is  also  a  condition  of  all  sound¬ 
ness  of  practical  judgment.  The  best  of  health  will  not  of  course 
ensure  wisdom.  Not  all  wise  men  are  robust,  nor  are  all  robust  men 
wise.  Yet  the  connexion  is  intimate. 

Spontaneous  wisdom  breathed  by  health, 

Truth  breathed  by  cheerfulness, 

says  Wordsworth,2  in  a  familiar  couplet  whose  full  significance  is 
perhaps  not  always  understood.  For  though  health  and  cheerfulness 
may  not  bring  wisdom,  they  afford  securities  against  unwisdom  in 
some  of  its  most  familiar  forms.  For  our  errors  of  judgment  are  not 
due  merely,  or  even  mainly,  to  positive  blindness  to  the  conditions 
involved.  They  come  rather  from  a  distorted  emphasis,  a  false  per¬ 
spective  in  regard  to  conditions  that  are  well  within  our  horizon.  We 
realise  this  when  we  come  to  ourselves.  "How  could  I  have  thought 
it  ?  How  could  I  have  said  it  ?  ” — this  is  what  we  say  when  we  regain 
our  balance — that  balance  that  is  so  hopelessly  upset  when  our  nerves 
are  shaken,  and  our  sensibilities  morbid.  For,  by  subtle  organic  in¬ 
fluence,  the  morbid  state  of  body  dulls  a  susceptibility  here,  and  ex¬ 
aggerates  a  susceptibility  there,  till  we  lose,  and  often  know  we  lose, 
the  power  of  seeing  things  as  they  really  are,  and  as  they  come  to 
be  seen  by  ourselves  when  health  returns.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that 
even  the  salt  of  the  earth  may  thus  on  occasion  be  betrayed,  by  nothing 
more  dignified  than  physical  exhaustion  or  irritability,  into  judgments 
peevish,  uncharitable,  precipitate ;  and  thereby  put  to  the  blush  by 
their  worldly  neighbours  in  whom  the  placid  good  health  that  goes 
with  an  easy-going  life  has  kept  the  balance  true. 

1  Between  17  and  20 — just  the  time  most  valuable  for  forming  intellectual 
tastes  and  habits.  Compare  Republic.  2  "The  Tables  Turned.” 


208 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


Hence  the  futility  of  attempting  to  argue  a  victim  of  Hypochondria 
into  a  healthy  view  of  life.  He  may  listen  to  us  and,  after  a  fashion, 
understand  us.  For  our  words  are  his  words.  But  the  facts  as  they 
image  themselves  in  our  minds  are  not  the  facts  as  imaged  in  his. 
This  is  the  gravest  injury  that  weak  or  shattered  nerves  can  inflict 
upon  us.  Pain,  exhaustion,  even  forced  inactivity,  are  lesser  evils. 
For  this  clouding  of  the  judgment  troubles  what,  in  adult  years,  is  the 
very  well-head  of  moral  action.  Sometimes,  no  doubt,  there  are  com¬ 
pensations  here.  Persons  of  weak  health  are  often  anxious,  and 
anxiety  begets  foresight ;  and  thus,  by  habitual  foresight,  they  may 
safeguard  themselves  against  mistakes.  Yet  this  is  at  best  a  poor 
substitute  for  the  even-balanced  healthy  outlook  that  goes  so  far  to 
keep  the  judgment  sound.  Better  to  render  such  compensations  un¬ 
necessary  by  setting  to  work  betimes  to  secure  the  healthy  body, 
remembering  that,  in  all  treatment  of  a  composite  being  like  man,  the 
most  powerful  moralising  influences  are  not  always  those  that  are 
directly  moral. 

Yet  we  must  not  press  these  truths  unduly.  Though  Dr.  Johnson 
once  declared  that  illness  makes  a  man  a  scoundrel,  the  retort  is  that 
illness,  and  indeed  all  bodily  weakness,  may  become  strength  when 
seized  as  a  spiritual  opportunity.  There  have  been  men — Erasmus, 
Montaigne,  Heine — who,  with  a  levity  more  touching  than  fortitude, 
made  humorous  capital  out  of  their  own  diseases  and  sufferings,  in  a 
fashion  which  puts  the  Johnsonian  dictum  to  confusion.  Nor  could 
mankind,  in  presence  of  all  the  slings  and  arrows  of  disease  and  decay, 
afford  to  surrender  even  one  of  those  consolations  which  have  taught 
physical  weakness  the  secret  of  moral  strength.  Physical  suffering 
can  beget  its  own  virtues,  of  which  fortitude  is  one.  A  weak  body  is, 
sometimes  at  any  rate,  the  condition  of  a  deeper  and  a  more  refined 
moral  insight ;  and  though  long-continued  delicacy  of  constitution  is 
only  too  prone  to  the  pitfall  of  a  valetudinarianism  that  is  fatally 
self-centred,  it  may  sometimes  induce  a  discerning  sympathy  with  the 
sorrows  of  others  which  robust  and  bustling  persons  do  not  always  feel. 

Yet  when  all  is  said  such  things  are  still  of  the  nature  of  compensa¬ 
tions.  They  do  not  touch  the  central  fact  that  he  who  would  form  a 
well-developed  character  must  stand  far  aloof  from  the  ascetic  super¬ 
stition,  rooted  in  a  false  psychology,  that  the  death  of  Body  is  the 
life  of  Soul. 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


There  is  no  materialism  in  this.  It  is  the  reverse  of  materialism  to 
believe  that  the  moral  life  is  not  so  resourceless  as  to  be  unable  to 
find  sufficiently  high  service  for  the  body  at  its  best.  Spinoza  makes 
the  pregnant  remark  that  we  do  not  know  what  Body  is  capable  of.1 2 
We  may  go  a  step  further  and,  following  Aristotle,  declare  that  we 
shall  never  know,  till  Body  finds  its  true  function  as  instrument  of 
fully  developed  Soul.  For  materialism  consists,  not  in  frankest  recog¬ 
nition  of  matter,  but  in  the  assignment  to  it  of  a  spurious  supremacy 
or  independence.  There  can  be  no  materialism  in  utmost  emphasis 
upon  physical  education,  so  long  as  "Body  for  the  sake  of  Soul” is,  as 
it  was  with  Plato,  the  presiding  principle  of  educational  action. 

w 


27.  The  Training  of  Habit" 

Ethical  and  pedagogical  importance  of  the  principle  of  habit.3 
"Habit  a  second  nature!  Habit  is  ten  times  nature,”  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  is  said  to  have  exclaimed ;  and  the  degree  to  which  this  is 
true  no  one  probably  can  appreciate  as  well  as  one  who  is  a  veteran 
soldier  himself.  The  daily  drill  and  the  years  of  discipline  end  by 
fashioning  a  man  completely  over  again,  as  to  most  of  the  possibilities 
of  his  conduct. 

1  Ethics,  Part  III,  Prop.  II,  Scholium,  "For  what  the  Body  can  do  no  one  has 
hitherto  determined.” 

2  From  Psychology ;  Briefer  Course  (pp.  142-150),  by  William  James,  formerly 
Professor  of  Psychology  in  Harvard  University.  Copyright,  1892,  by  Henry  Holt 
and  Company,  New  York. 

3J.  H.  Muirhead  writes:  "There  is  the  distinction  between  the  so-called  natural 
tendencies  and  inherited  characteristics,  such  as  quick  temper  or  indolent  disposi¬ 
tion,  which  are  the  raw  material  of  moral  training,  and  these  same  as  elaborated 
and  systematised  by  will  and  intelligence  in  that  peculiar  mode  which  we  call 
character.  The  former,  as  isolated  elements  of  character,  may  in  a  sense  be  said 
to  be  'given/  and  to  be  independent  of  will;  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they 
never  come  before  us  in  a  being  whose  conduct  may  be  made  the  object  of  moral 
judgment,  except  in  a  form  which  they  owe  to  the  reaction  of  will  and  intelligence 
upon  them.  Character,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  acquired  habit  of  regulating  these 
tendencies  in  a  certain  manner,  in  relation  to  consciously  conceived  ends.  In  other 
words,  character  is  not  something  separate  from  will  and  acting  upon  it  from 
without,  but  is  the  habitual  mode  in  which  will  regulates  that  system  of  impulses 
and  desires  which,  looked  at  subjectively,  is  the  field  of  its  exercise.  Hence  char¬ 
acter  has  been  defined  as  a  'habit  of  will/  J.  S.  Mill  calls  character  'a  completely 
fashioned  will.’” — Ed. 


210 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


"There  is  a  story,”  says  Professor  Huxley,  "which  is  credible  enough, 
though  it  may  not  be  true,  of  a  practical  joker  who,  seeing  a  discharged 
veteran  carrying  home  his  dinner,  suddenly  called  out,  '  Attention ! 5 
whereupon  the  man  instantly  brought  his  hands  down,  and  lost  his 
mutton  and  potatoes  in  the  gutter.  The  drill  had  been  thorough,  and 
its  effects  had  become  embodied  in  the  man’s  nervous  structure.” 

Riderless  cavalry-horses,  at  many  a  battle,  have  been  seen  to  come 
together  and  go  through  their  customary  evolutions  at  the  sound  of 
the  bugle-call.  Most  domestic  beasts  seem  machines  almost  pure  and 
simple,  undoubtingly,  unhesitatingly  doing  from  minute  to  minute  the 
duties  they  have  been  taught,  and  giving  no  sign  that  the  possibility 
of  an  alternative  ever  suggests  itself  to  their  mind.  Men  grown  old  in 
prison  have  asked  to  be  readmitted  after  being  once  set  free.  In  a  railroad 
accident  a  menagerie-tiger,  whose  cage  had  broken  open,  is  said  to  have 
emerged,  but  presently  crept  back  again,  as-  if  too  much  bewildered  by 
his  new  responsibilities,  so  that  he  was  without  difficulty  secured. 

Habit  is  thus  the  enormous  fly-wheel  of  society,  its  most  precious 
conservative  agent.  It  alone  is  what  keeps  us  all  within  the  bounds  of 
ordinance,  and  saves  the  children  of  fortune  from  the  envious  uprisings 
of  the  poor.  It  alone  prevents  the  hardest  and  most  repulsive  walks 
of  life  from  being  deserted  by  those  brought  up  to  tread  therein.  It 
keeps  the  fisherman  and  the  deck-hand  at  sea  through  the  winter ;  it 
holds  the  miner  in  his  darkness,  and  nails  the  countryman  to  his  log- 
cabin  and  his  lonely  farm  through  all  the  months  of  snow ;  it  protects 
us  from  invasion  by  the  natives  of  the  desert  and  the  frozen  zone.  It 
dooms  us  all  to  fight  out  the  battle  of  life  upon  the  lines  of  our  nurture 
or  our  early  choice,  and  to  make  the  best  of  a  pursuit  that  disagrees, 
because  there  is  no  other  for  which  we  are  fitted,  and  it  is  too  late  to 
begin  again.  It  keeps  different  social  strata  from  mixing.  Already  at 
the  age  of  twenty-five  you  see  the  professional  mannerism  settling 
down  on  the  young  commercial  traveller,  on  the  young  doctor,  on  the 
young  minister,  on  the  young  counsellor-at-law.  You  see  the  little 
lines  of  cleavage  running  through  the  character,  the  tricks  of  thought, 
the  prejudices,  the  ways  of  the  'shop/  in  a  word,  from  which  the  man 
can  by-and-by  no  more  escape  than  his  coat-sleeve  can  suddenly  fall 
into  a  new  set  of  folds.  On  the  whole,  it  is  best  he  should  not  escape. 
It  is  well  for  the  world  that  in  most  of  us,  by  the  age  of  thirty,  the 
character  has  set  like  plaster,  and  will  never  soften  again. 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


2  1 1 


If  the  period  between  twenty  and  thirty  is  the  critical  one  in  the 
formation  of  intellectual  and  professional  habits,  the  period  below 
twenty  is  more  important  still  for  the  fixing  of  personal  habits,  prop¬ 
erly  so  called,  such  as  vocalization  and  pronunciation,  gesture,  motion, 
and  address.  Hardly  ever  is  a  language  learned  after  twenty  spoken 
without  a  foreign  accent ;  hardly  ever  can  a  youth  transferred  to  the 
society  of  his  betters  unlearn  the  nasality  and  other  vices  of  speech 
bred  in  him  by  the  associations  of  his  growing  years.  Hardly  ever, 
indeed,  no  matter  how  much  money  there  be  in  his  pocket,  can  he  even 
learn  to  dress  like  a  gentleman-born.  The  merchants  offer  their  wares 
as  eagerly  to  him  as  to  the  veriest  'swell/  but  he  simply  cannot  buy 
the  right  things.  An  invisible  law,  as  strong  as  gravitation,  keeps  him 
within  his  orbit,  arrayed  this  year  as  he  was  the  last ;  and  how  his 
better-clad  acquaintances  contrive  to  get  the  things  they  wear  will  be 
for  him  a  mystery  till  his  dying  day. 

The  great  thing,  then,  in  all  education,  is  to  make  our  nervous 
system  our  ally  instead  of  our  enemy.  It  is  to  fund  and  capitalize  our 
acquisitions,  and  live  at  ease  upon  the  interest  of  the  fund.  For  this 
we  must  make  automatic  and  habitual,  as  early  as  possible,  as  many 
useful  actions  as  we  can,  and  guard  against  the  growing  .into  ways 
that  are  likely  to  be  disadvantageous  to  us,  as  we  should  guard  against 
the  plague.  The  more  of  the  details  of  our  daily  life  we  can  hand 
over  to  the  effortless  custody  of  automatism,  the  more  our  higher 
powers  of  mind  will  be  set  free  for  their  own  proper  work.  There  is 
no  more  miserable  human  being  than  one  in  whom  nothing  is  habitual 
but  indecision,  and  for  whom  the  lighting  of  every  cigar,  the  drinking 
of  every  cup,  the  time  of  rising  and  going  to  bed  every  day,  and  the 
beginning  of  every  bit  of  work,  are  subjects  of  express  volitional 
deliberation.  Full  half  the  time  of  such  a  man  goes  to  the  deciding, 
or  regretting,  of  matters  which  ought  to  be  so  ingrained  in  him  as 
practically  not  to  exist  for  his  consciousness  at  all.  If  there  be  such 
daily  duties  not  yet  ingrained  in  any  one  of  my  readers,  let  him  begin 
this  very  hour  to  set  the  matter  right. 

In  Professor  Bain’s  chapter  on  ''The  Moral  Habits”  there  are  some 
admirable  practical  remarks  laid  down.  Two  great  maxims  emerge 
from  his  treatment.  The  first  is  that  in  the  acquisition  of  a  new  habit, 
or  the  leaving  off  of  an  old  one,  we  must  take  care  to  launch  ourselves 
with  as  strong  and  decided  an  initiative  as  possible.  Accumulate  all 


212 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  possible  circumstances  which  shall  re-enforce  the  right  motives ; 
put  yourself  assiduously  in  conditions  that  encourage  the  new  way ; 
make  engagements  incompatible  with  the  old ;  take  a  public  pledge,  if 
the  case  allows ;  in  short,  envelop  your  resolution  with  every  aid  you 
know.  This  will  give  your  new  beginning  such  a  momentum  that  the 
temptation  to  break  down  will  not  occur  as  soon  as  it  otherwise  might ; 
and  every  day  during  which  a  breakdown  is  postponed  adds  to  the 
chances  of  its  not  occurring  at  all. 

The  second  maxim  is:  Never  suffer  an  exception  to  occur  till  the 
new  habit  is  securely  rooted  in  your  life.  Each  lapse  is  like  the  letting 
fall  of  a  ball  of  string  which  one  is  carefully  winding  up ;  a  single  slip 
undoes  more  than  a  great  many  turns  will  wind  again.  Continuity 
of  training  is  the  great  means  of  making  the  nervous  system  act  in¬ 
fallibly  right.  As  Professor  Bain  says : 

The  peculiarity  of  the  moral  habits,  contradistinguishing  them  from  the 
intellectual  acquisitions,  is  the  presence  of  two  hostile  powers,  one  to  be 
gradually  raised  into  the  ascendant  over  the  other.  It  is  necessary,  above 
all  things,  in  such  a  situation,  never  to  lose  a  battle.  Every  gain  on  the 
wrong  side  undoes  the  effect  of  many  conquests  on  the  right.  The  essential 
precaution,  therefore,  is  so  to  regulate  the  two  opposing  powers  that  the 
one  may  have  a  series  of  uninterrupted  successes,  until  repetition  has  forti¬ 
fied  it  to  such  a  degree  as  to  enable  it  to  cope  with  the  opposition,  under  any 
circumstances.  This  is  the  theoretically  best  career  of  mental  progress. 

The  need  of  securing  success  at  the  outset  is  imperative.  Failure 
at  first  is  apt  to  damp  the  energy  of  all  future  attempts,  whereas  past 
experiences  of  success  nerve  one  to  future  vigor.  Goethe  says  to  a 
man  who  consulted  him  about  an  enterprise  but  mistrusted  his  own 
powers:  "Ach!  you  need  only  blow  on  your  hands!”  And  the  re¬ 
mark  illustrates  the  effect  on  Goethe’s  spirits  of  his  own  habitually 
successful  career. 

The  question  of  "tapering-off,”  in  abandoning  such  habits  as  drink 
and  opium-indulgence  comes  in  here,  and  is  a  question  about  which 
experts  differ  within  certain  limits,  and  in  regard  to  what  may  be  best 
for  an  individual  case.  In  the  main,  however,  all  expert  opinion  would 
agree  that  abrupt  acquisition  of  the  new  habit  is  the  best  way,  if  there 
be  a  real  possibility  of  carrying  it  out.  We  must  be  careful  not  to 
give  the  will  so  stiff  a  task  as  to  insure  its  defeat  at  the  very  outset ; 
but,  provided  one  can  stand  it,  a  sharp  period  of  suffering,  and  then 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


213 


a  free  time,  is  the  best  thing  to  aim  at,  whether  in  giving  up  a  habit 
like  that  of  opium,  or  in  simply  changing  ,one’s  hours  of  rising  or  of 
work.  It  is  surprising  how  soon  a  desire  will  die  of  inanition  if  it  be 
never  fed. 

One  must  first  learn,  unmoved,  looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  left,  to 
walk  firmly  on  the  strait  and  narrow  path,  before  one  can  begin  "to  make 
one’s  self  over  again.”  He  who  every  day  makes  a  fresh  resolve  is  like  one 
who,  arriving  at  the  edge  of  the  ditch  he  is  to  leap,  forever  stops  and  returns 
for  a  fresh  run.  Without  unbroken  advance  there  is  no  such  thing  as  ac¬ 
cumulation  of  the  ethical  forces  possible,  and  to  make  this  possible,  and  to 
exercise  us  and  habituate  us  in  it,  is  the  sovereign  blessing  of  regular  work.1 

A  third  maxim  may  be  added  to  the  preceding  pair :  Seize  the  very 
first  possible  opportunity  to  act  on  every  resolution  you  make,  and  on 
every  emotional  prompting  you  may  experience  in  the  direction  of  the 
habits  you  aspire  to  gain.  It  is  not  in  the  moment  of  their  forming, 
but  in  the  moment  of  their  producing  motor  effects,  that  resolves  and 
aspirations  communicate  the  new  'set’  to  the  brain.  As  the  author 
last  quoted  remarks : 

The  actual  presence  of  the  practical  opportunity  alone  furnishes  the  ful¬ 
crum  upon  which  the  lever  can  rest,  by  means  of  which  the  moral  will  may 
multiply  its  strength,  and  raise  itself  aloft.  He  who  has  no  solid  ground  to 
press  against  will  never  get  beyond  the  stage  of  empty  gesture-making. 

No  matter  how  full  a  reservoir  of  maxims  one  may  possess,  and  no 
matter  how  good  one’s  sentiments  may  be,  if  one  have  not  taken  ad¬ 
vantage  of  every  concrete  opportunity  to  act,  one’s  character  may 
remain  entirely  unaffected  for  the  better.  With  mere  good  intentions, 
hell  is  proverbially  paved.  And  this  is  an  obvious  consequence  of  the 
principles  we  have  laid  down.  A  'character,’  as  J.  S.  Mill  says,  'is  a 
completely  fashioned  will  ’ ;  and  a  will,  in  the  sense  in  which  he  means 
it,  is  an  aggregate  of  tendencies  to  act  in  a  firm  and  prompt  and 
definite  way  upon  all  the  principal  emergencies  of  life.  A  tendency  to 
act  only  becomes  effectively  ingrained  in  us  in  proportion  to  the 
uninterrupted  frequency  with  which  the  actions  actually  occur,  and 
the  brain  'grows’  to  their  use.  When  a  resolve  or  a  fine  glow  of 
feeling  is  allowed  to  evaporate  without  bearing  practical  fruit  it  is 


XJ.  Bahnsen,  Beitrage  zu  Charakterologie  (1867),  Vol.  I,  p.  209. 


214 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


worse  than  a  chance  lost ;  it  works  so  as  positively  to  hinder  future 
resolutions  and  emotions  from  taking  the  normal  path  of  discharge. 
There  is  no  more  contemptible  type  of  human  character  than  that  of 
the  nerveless  sentimentalist  and  dreamer,  who  spends  his  life  in  a 
weltering  sea  of  sensibility  and  emotion,  but  who  never  does  a  manly 
concrete  deed.  Rousseau,  inflaming  all  the  mothers  of  France,  by  his 
eloquence,  to  follow  Nature  and  nurse  their  babies  themselves,  while 
he  sends  his  own  children  to  the  foundling  hospital,  is  the  classical 
example  of  what  I  mean.  But  every  one  of  us  in  his  measure,  when¬ 
ever,  after  glowing  for  an  abstractly  formulated  Good,  he  practically 
ignores  some  actual  case,  among  the  squalid  'other  particulars’  of 
which  that  same  Good  lurks  disguised,  treads  straight  on  Rousseau’s 
path.  All  Goods  are  disguised  by  the  vulgarity  of  their  concomitants, 
in  this  work-a-day  world ;  but  woe  to  him  who  can  only  recognize 
them  when  he  thinks  them  in  their  pure  and  abstract  form!  The 
habit  of  excessive  novel-reading  and  theatre-going  will  produce  true 
monsters  in  this  line.  The  weeping  of  the  Russian  lady  over  the 
fictitious  personages  in  the  play,  while  her  coachman  is  freezing  to 
death  on  his  seat  outside,  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  everywhere  happens 
on  a  less  glaring  scale.  Even  the  habit  of  excessive  indulgence  in 
music,  for  those  who  are  neither  performers  themselves  nor  musically 
gifted  enough  to  take  it  in  a  purely  intellectual  way,  has  probably  a 
relaxing  effect  upon  the  character.  One  becomes  filled  with  emotions 
which  habitually  pass  without  prompting  to  any  deed,  and  so  the  in¬ 
ertly  sentimental  condition  is  kept  up.  The  remedy  would  be,  never  to 
suffer  one’s  self  to  have  an  emotion  at  a  concert,  without  expressing  it 
afterward  in  some  active  way.  Let  the  expression  be  the  least  thing 
in  the  world — speaking  genially  to  one’s  grandmother,  or  giving  up 
one’s  seat  in  a  horse-car,  if  nothing  more  heroic  offers — but  let  it  not 
fail  to  take  place. 

These  latter  cases  make  us  aware  that  it  is  not  simply  particular 
lines  of  discharge,  but  also  general  forms  of  discharge,  that  seem  to  be 
grooved  out  by  habit  in  the  brain.  Just  as,  if  we  let  our  emotions 
evaporate,  they  get  into  a  way  of  evaporating ;  so  there  is  reason  to 
suppose  that  if  we  often  flinch  from  making  an  effort,  before  we  know 
it  the  effort-making  capacity  will  be  gone ;  and  that,  if  we  suffer  the 
wandering  of  our  attention,  presently  it  will  wander  all  the  time. 
Attention  and  effort  are,  as  we  shall  see  later,  but  two  names  for  the 


EDUCATION  AND  CHARACTER  BUILDING 


215 


same  psychic  fact.  To  what  brain-processes  they  correspond  we  do 
not  know.  The  strongest  reason  for  believing  that  they  do  depend  on 
brain-processes  at  all,  and  are  not  pure  acts  of  the  spirit,  is  just  this 
fact,  that  they  seem  in  some  degree  subject  to  the  law  of  habit,  which 
is  a  material  law.  As  a  final  practical  maxim,  relative  to  these  habits 
of  the  will,  we  may,  then,  offer  something  like  this :  Keep  the  faculty 
of  effort  alive  in  you  by  a  little  gratuitous  exercise  every  day.  That 
is,  be  systematically  ascetic  or  heroic  in  little  unnecessary  points,  do 
every  day  or  two  something  for  no  other  reason  than  that  you  would 
rather  not  do  it,  so  that  when  the  hour  of  dire  need  draws  nigh,  it 
may  find  you  not  unnerved  and  untrained  to  stand  the  test.  Asceti¬ 
cism  of  this  sort  is  like  the  insurance  which  a  man  pays  on  his  house 
and  goods.  The  tax  does  him  no  good  at  the  time,  and  possibly  may 
never  bring  him  a  return.  But  if  the  fire  does  come,  his  having  paid 
it  will  be  his  salvation  from  ruin.  So  with  the  man  who  has  daily 
inured  himself  to  habits  of  concentrated  attention,  energetic  volition, 
and  self-denial  in  unnecessary  things.  He  will  stand  like  a  tower  when 
everything  rocks  around  him,  and  when  his  softer  fellow-mortals  are 
winnowed  like  chaff  in  the  blast. 

The  physiological  study  of  mental  conditions  is  thus  the  most 
powerful  ally  of  hortatory  ethics.  The  hell  to  |pe  endured  hereafter, 
of  which  theology  tells,  is  no  worse  than  the  hell  we  make  for  ourselves 
in  this  world  by  habitually  fashioning  our  characters  in  the  wrong 
way.  Could  the  young  but  realize  how  soon  they  will  become  mere 
walking  bundles  of  habits,  they  would  give  more  heed  to  their  conduct 
while  in  the  plastic  state.  We  are  spinning  our  own  fates,  good  or 
evil,  and  never  to  be  undone.  Every  smallest  stroke  of  virtue  or  of 
vice  leaves  its  never  so  little  scar.  The  drunken  Rip  Van  Winkle,  in 
Jefferson’s  play,  excuses  himself  for  every  fresh  dereliction  by  saying, 
'I  won’t  count  this  time!’  Well!  he  may  not  count  it,  and  a  kind 
Heaven  may  not  count  it ;  but  it  is  being  counted  none  the  less.  Down 
among  his  nerve-cells  and  fibres  the  molecules  are  counting  it,  regis¬ 
tering  and  storing  it  up  to  be  used  against  him  when  the  next  tempta¬ 
tion  comes.  Nothing  we  ever  do  is,  in  strict  scientific  literalness, 
wiped  out.  Of  course  this  has  its  good  side  as  well  as  its  bad  one.  As 
we  become  permanent  drunkards  by  so  many  separate  drinks,  so  we 
become  saints  in  the  moral,  and  authorities  and  experts  in  the  practical 
and  scientific  spheres,  by  so  many  separate  acts  and  hours  of  work. 


2l6 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


Let  no  youth  have  any  anxiety  about  the  upshot  of  his  education, 
whatever  the  line  of  it  may  be.  If  he  keep  faithfully  busy  each  hour 
of  the  working  day,  he  may  safely  leave  the  final  result  to  itself.  He 
can  with  perfect  certainty  count  on  waking  up  some  fine  morning,  to 
find  himself  one  of  the  competent  ones  of  his  generation,  in  whatever 
pursuit  he  may  have  singled  out.  Silently,  between  all  the  details  of 
his  business,  the  power  of  judging  in  all  that  class  of  matter  will  have 
built  itself  up  within  him  as  a  possession  that  will  never  pass  away. 
Young  people  should  know  this  truth  in  advance.  The  ignorance  of 
it  has  probably  engendered  more  discouragement  and  faint-heartedness 
in  youths  embarking  on  arduous  careers  than  all  other  causes  put 
together. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 

28.  Constructive  Democracy:  the  Non-Legislative 

Program  1 

J 

How  to  secure  equality  of  wealth  with  liberty ,  without  sacrificing  any¬ 
thing  that  we  now  prize ,  such  as  private  property ,  freedom  of  contract , 
freedom  of  initiative ,  and  economic  competition.  ( Parts  of  the  program  are 
arranged  in  the  inverse  order  of  their  importance.) 

I.  Legislative  Program 

A.  For  the  redistribution  of  unearned  wealth. 

1.  Increased  taxation  of  land  values. 

2.  Graduated  inheritance  tax. 

3.  Control  of  monopoly  prices. 

B.  For  the  redistribution  of  human  talent. 

1.  Increasing  the  supply  of  the  higher  or  scarcer  forms  of  talent. 

a.  Vocational  education,  especially  for  the  training  of  business  men. 

b.  Cutting  off  incomes  which  support  capable  men  in  idleness,  thus 

increasing  the  supply  of  active  talent,  cf.,  i,  2,  and  3,  under  A. 

2.  Decreasing  the  supply  of  the  lower  or  more  abundant  forms  of  labor 

power. 

a.  Restriction  of  immigration. 

b.  Restriction  of  marriage. 

(1)  Elimination  of  defectives. 

(2)  Requirement  of  minimum  standard  income. 

c.  Minimum  wage  law. 

d.  Fixing  building  standards  for  dwellings. 

C.  For  the  increase  of  material  equipment. 

1.  Increasing  the  available  supply  of  land. 

2.  Increasing  the  supply  of  capital. 

a.  Thrift  versus  luxury,  b.  Savings  institutions. 

c.  Safety  of  investments,  d.  "Blue  sky”  laws. 

1From  Essays  in  Social  Justice  (pp.  264-280),  by  Thomas  Nixon  Carver,  Ph.D., 
LL.  D.,  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  Harvard  University.  Copyright,  1915, 
by  the  Harvard  University  Press. 


217 


2l8 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


II.  Non-Legislative  Program 

A.  Raising  the  standard  of  living  among  the  laboring  classes. 

1.  The  function  of  the  advertiser. 

2.  The  educator  as  the  rationalizer  of  standards. 

3.  Thrift  and  the  standard  of  living. 

4.  Industrial  cooperation  as  a  means  of  business  and  social  education. 

B.  Creating  sound  public  opinion  and  moral  standards  among  the  capa¬ 

ble,  e.  g. 

1.  The  ambition  of  the  family  builder. 

2.  The  idea 

a.  That  leisure  is  disgraceful; 

b.  That  the  productive  life  is  the  religious  and  moral  life; 

c.  That  wealth  is  a  tool  rather  than  a  means  of  gratification ; 

d.  That  the  possession  of  wealth  confers  no  license  for  luxury  or 

leisure ; 

e.  That  government  is  a  means  not  an  end. 

3.  Professional  standards  among  business  men. 

C.  The  discouraging  of  vicious  and  demoralizing  developments  of  public 

opinion,  such  as: 

1.  The  cult  of  incompetence  and  self-pity. 

*  2.  The  gospel  of  covetousness,  or  the  jealousy  of  success. 

3.  The  emphasizing  of  rights  rather  than  obligations. 

4.  The  worship  of  the  almighty  ballot  and  the  almighty  dollar. 

5.  The  idea  that  a  college  education  should  aim  to  give  one  a  "gentle¬ 

manly  appreciation”  of  the  ornamental  things  of  life,  such  as  liter¬ 
ature,  art,  golf,  and  whiskey,  rather  than  to  strengthen  one  for  the 
serious  work  of  life. 

6.  The  idea  that  the  capitalization  of  verbosity  is  constructive  business. 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  the  consideration  of  a  constructive  program 
in  harmony  with  the  general  laws  of  economics.  This  program  must 
be  based  upon  the  universal  law  of  proportionality,  which  is  the  basis 
of  all  sound  valuation.  Let  it  be  understood  with  the  utmost  clearness 
once  and  for  all,  that  we  can  have  any  degree  of  equality  we  want  and 
in  the  strictest  harmony  with  economic  laws  if  we  are  willing  to  pay 
the  price  and  to  pursue  a  constructive  program  in  harmony  with 
economic  laws.  Economic  laws  are  not  opposed  to  equality.  They 
do,  however,  interfere  with  certain  ideas  of  equality.  Gravitation 
does  not  prevent  aviation ;  it  does,  however,  make  certain  systems  of 
aviation  impossible,  as  Darius  Green  found  to  his  sorrow.  Economic 
laws  interfere  only  with  the  plans  of  the  Darius  Greens  of  social  reform. 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


219 

It  is  not  only  inevitable,  but  justice  requires  that  any  factor  of  pro¬ 
duction  which  is  over-supplied  in  proportion  to  the  other  factors  which 
have  to  be  combined  with  it,  shall  be  poorly  paid,  whereas  any  other 
factor  which  is  under-supplied  in  proportion  to  those  which  have  to 
be  combined  with  it,  shall  be  well  paid.  There  is  only  one  possible 
way  to  bring  about  equality  of  pay  without  violating  the  principle  of 
justice,  and  that  is  so  to  adjust  the  quantities  of  the  different  factors 
to  the  need  for  them  that  a  unit  of  one  factor  is  just  as  much  needed 
and  just  as  productive  as  the  unit  of  any  other  factor.  So  long  as  a 
man  of  one  kind  of  training  or  ability  is  more  needed  than  another, 
owing  to  the  scarcity  of  the  ability  or  training  of  the  one  and  the 
abundance  of  the  ability  or  training  of  the  other,  it  must  follow 
that  the  one  will  be  better  paid  than  the  other.  But  if  things  can  be 
so  readjusted  as  to  make  a  man  of  one  kind  of  training  and  ability 
just  as  essential  as  another,  so  that  the  community  will  gain  as  much 
by  the  accession  of  an  additional  man  of  one  kind  as  of  another,  or 
lose  as  much  through  the  secession  of  one  as  of  another,  then,  under 
the  automatic  operation  of  economic  law,  one  man  will  get  as  much 
as  another  in  return  for  his  work  or  his  services.  A  constructive  pro¬ 
gram  of  social  democracy  must,  therefore,  aim  finally  and  ultimately 
at  such  a  redistribution  of  human  talent  as  will  make  it  as  desirable 
that  one  kind  should  be  increased  as  another,  or  as  undesirable  that 
one  kind  should  be  reduced  as  another. 

A  program  of  distributive  justice  may  be  divided,  however,  into  two 
main  divisions,  the  legislative  and  the  non-legislative.  Of  the  two, 
it  is  probable  that  the  non-legislative  is  the  more  important,  but  it 
may  be  well  to  consider  the  legislative  program  first,  because  people 
are  at  the  present  time  looking  to  legislation  for  the  relief  of  their 
economic  wants.  The  legislative  program  may  be  again  subdivided 
into  three  parts,  the  first  of  which  is  aimed  at  the  elimination  of 
unearned  wealth  or  the  securing  of  actual  justice.  The  second  part, 
more  important  than  the  first,  is  aimed  not  so  much  at  injustice  as  at 
inequality,  that  is  to  say,  the  first  part  aims  to  secure  for  each  in¬ 
dividual  exactly  what  he  earns  or  what  he  is  worth,  but  this  would 
not  eliminate  poverty  so  long  as  there  were  men  possessing  talents 
or  ability  so  over-supplied  as  to  make  the  accession  or  loss  of  a  man  a 
matter  of  indifference,  whereas  others  possessed  talents  or  ability  so 
scarce  as  to  make  the  accession  or  the  loss  of  a  man  a  matter  of  the 


220 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


greatest  concern.  In  order  to  secure  equality  under  justice,  we  must 
have  a  redistribution  of  human  talent.  And  finally,  in  order  that  labor 
power  of  all  kinds  may  be  effectively  applied,  there  must  be  an  abun¬ 
dance  of  land  on  which  to  work  and  of  tools  or  capital  with  which  to 
work.  This  represents  the  third  part  of  our  legislative  program. 

A  legislative  program  for  the  elimination  of  unearned  wealth  must 
be  aimed  at  the  three  largest  and  most  characteristic  forms  of  un¬ 
earned  wealth,  namely,  wealth  which  has  accrued  through  a  rise  in 
land  values,  inherited  wealth,  and  wealth  resulting  from  monopoly 
profits.  There  are,  of  course,  a  great  many  pilferings  and  stealings 
going  on  in  modern  society,  ranging  all  the  way  from  the  petty 
pilfering  of  gardens  and  orchards  in  our  suburbs  up  to  the  looting  of 
corporations  by  inside  cliques.  But  while  these  may  call  for  new 
legislation  at  times,  in  the  main  they  call  merely  for  the  administration 
of  existing  laws,  and  therefore  will  not  be  considered  here.  The  three 
forms  of  unearned  wealth  mentioned,  however,  are  not  only  in  com¬ 
plete  harmony  with  existing  governmental  policies,  but  public  opinion 
is  generally  favorable  to  them,  at  least  it  is  not  sufficiently  condem¬ 
natory  to  make  effective  legislation  immediately  possible.  This  will 
require,  therefore,  considerable  popular  education,  as  well  as  legisla¬ 
tion,  and  is  not  a  merely  administrative  problem.  So  nearly  do  these 
three  forms  of  wealth  exhaust  the  category  of  unearned  wealth  that 
even  the  socialist  never  uses  an  illustration  drawn  from  any  other 
source.  While  he  may  attack  capitalism  as  such,  he  never  in  any 
popular  discourse  selects  an  illustration  of  the  evils  of  capitalism  ex¬ 
cept  from  one  of  these  three  forms  of  wealth,  which  are  not  essential 
to'  capitalism  at  all.  That  is  to  say,  in  his  actual  illustrations  of  the 
evils  of  the  capitalistic  system  he  will  invariably  refer  to  some  fortune 
which  has  been  built  up  by  a  rise  in  land  values,  which  has  been 
inherited,  or  which  has  been  gained  through  monopolistic  methods. 
So  nearly  universal  is  this  practice  among  socialists  that  the  author 
hereby  challenges  any  socialist  to  talk  fifteen  minutes  on  the  evils 
of  capitalism  without  making  use  of  an  illustration  from  one  of  these 
three  sources. 

A  very  little  discrimination  at  this  point  will  help  amazingly  in 
clearing  up  the  problem.  If  we  object  to  that  form  of  individual 
wealth  which  comes  to  a  private  owner  through  a  rise  in  the  site 
value  of  his  land,  the  obvious  course  is  to  attack  the  evil  directly  and 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


221 


not  to  attack  the  private  ownership  of  all  productive  wealth,  which 
includes  many  other  things  besides  land.  If  we  object  to  the  private 
ownership  of  a  fortune  which  has  come  to  the  present  owner  through 
inheritance,  the  obvious  remedy  is  to  modify  our  laws  of  inheritance 
and  not  attack,  at  the  same  time,  the  ownership  of  capital  which  has 
not  been  inherited  but  accumulated  by  the  present  owner.  If  we  object 
to  wealth  which  has  been  accumulated  by  monopolizing  industry  and 
securing  abnormal  profits,  the  obvious  remedy  is  to  attack  monopoly 
and  not,  at  the  same  time,  attack  accumulations  that  have  been  the 
result  of  productive,  as  distinguished  from  acquisitive,  efficiency,  and 
by  the  exercise  of  the  useful  economic  virtues  of  frugality,  thrift,  and 
forethought.  It  is  certainly  not  unreasonable  to  ask  students  of  this 
problem  to  make  use  of  this  very  moderate  degree  of  discrimination, 
and  the  writer  hopes  that  he  will  not  seem  to  be  setting  up  an  impos¬ 
sible  standard  if  he  suggests  that  no  speaker  or  writer  is  worth  atten¬ 
tion  who  refuses  to  observe  these  rather  wide  distinctions. 

As  already  intimated,  the  non-legislative  part  of  our  program  is 
more  important  than  the  legislative.  This  includes  all  those  subtle 
but  mighty  forces  which  determine  and  direct  the  sentiments  and 
opinions  of  the  people.  One  of  the  most  tangible  economic  results  of 
social  sentiment  is  found  in  what  economists  have  come  to  call  the 
standard  of  comfort.  By  this  is  simply  meant,  the  amount  of  income 
or  the  degree  of  comfort  which  is  commonly  regarded,  in  any  class  of 
society,  as  essential  to  the  support  of  a  family.  To  be  effective,  this 
opinion  or  sentiment  must  be  so  strong  as  to  lead  men  to  defer  mar¬ 
riage  until  they  are  assured  of  an  income  sufficient  to  maintain  that 
standard  of  comfort. 

In  such  cases  it  operates  on  wages  very  much  as  the  cost  of  pro- 

* 

duction  operates  on  prices.  In  the  last  analysis,  cost  of  production  is 
only  the  price  which  is  necessary  in  order  to  persuade  producers  to 
keep  on  producing.  When  the  price  of  a  certain  commodity  is  so  low 
that  men  will,  in  considerable  numbers,  stop  producing  it,  the  supply 
of  the  commodity  decreases.  This  tends  to  check  the  fall  in  price,  or 
to  cause  the  price  to  rise.  A  similar  principle  operates  in  the  supply 
of  labor  and  the  price  of  it.  If  wages  were  so  low  that  men  in  con¬ 
siderable  numbers  would  stop  marrying  and  producing  families,  labor 
would,  barring  immigration,  eventually  become  scarce  and  hard  to 
find.  This  would  check  the  fall  in  wages  or  cause  them  to  rise. 


222 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


It  makes  a  great  deal  of  difference  in  the  case  of  a  material  product, 
how  much  is  necessary  to  induce  the  producers  to  keep  on  producing. 
If  they  are  satisfied  with  very  little,  they  will  keep  on  producing  even 
when  the  price  falls  to  a  very  low  level.  Under  these  conditions,  there 
is  no  counteracting  tendency  to  cause  the  price  to  rise  again.  It  is 
similar  in  the  case  of  labor.  It  makes  a  great  deal  of  difference  how 
much  is  necessary  in  order  to  induce  men  to  reproduce  their  kind. 
If  they  will  marry  on  a  very  low  wage,  it  operates  to  keep  up  the 
supply  of  labor,  and  to  keep  wages  low.  If  they  will  not  marry  except 
on  a  high  wage,  it  tends,  barring  immigration,  to  make  labor  so  scarce 
as  to  raise  wages  to  that  level.  The  parallelism  is  very  close,  in  all 
these  respects,  between  the  cost  of  producing  a  material  commodity 
and  the  standard  of  comfort  of  the  laboring  classes. 

But  the  same  principle  applies  as  well  to  the  employing  classes  as 
to  the  laboring  classes.  If  the  employing  classes  were  willing  to  marry 
and  raise  families  on  smaller  incomes  than  they  now  consider  suf¬ 
ficient,  there  would  be  more  people  in  the  employing  classes.  This 
would  make  competition  more  severe  among  them.  This  competition 
would  take  on  various  forms.  They  would,  among  other  things,  com¬ 
pete  for  the  labor  of  the  laboring  classes,  bidding  against  one  another 
to  get  it.  This  would  tend  to  raise  wages. 

If,  therefore,  the  laboring  classes  would  develop  a  higher  standard 
of  comfort,  and  refuse  to  marry  until  they  had  attained  it,  and  if  the 
employing  classes  would  develop  a  lower  standard  of  comfort,  and  be 
willing  to  marry  when  they  had  attained  it,  we  should  have  a  better 
balanced  population  and  a  better  distribution  of  human  talent.  This 
would  reduce  the  incomes  of  the  employing  classes  and  raise  those 
of  the  laboring  classes. 

There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  in  the  mind  of  any  reasonable 
person  that  both  these  changes  ought  to  take  place.  The  standard  of 
comfort  among  the  business  and  professional  classes  is  altogether  too 
high,  and  that  among  the  laboring  classes,  especially  the  unskilled 
classes,  is  altogether  too  low.  Education  and  democratic  freedom 
tend  to  raise  that  of  the  laboring  classes,  but  it  is  kept  down  by  the 
immigration  of  millions  of  people  with  a  low  standard.  If  this  factor 
could  be  eliminated,  the  low  standard  of  comfort  among  laborers 
would  soon  take  care  of  itself.  But  there  is  nothing  except  a  whole¬ 
some  religion  or  sound  moral  ideals  which  will  correct  the  tendency 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


223 


of  the  standard  among  the  employing  classes  to  become  too  high. 
This  is  one  of  the  most  important  questions  now  before  the  world, 
and  legislation  is  powerless  to'  affect  it.  No  one  but  the  moral  leader 
and  the  preacher  of  righteousness  can  reach  the  difficulty. 

Another  tangible  result  of  public  sentiment  on  economic  conditions 
is  found  in  the  matter  of  our  attitude  toward  productive  work.  If  the 
chief  desire  of  every  one  is  to  avoid  useful  work  and  to  pursue  the 
arts  of  elegant  leisure,  or  indulge  in  graceful  consumption,  it  will 
cause  much  excellent  talent  to  go  to  waste.  Men  who  ought  to  be 
draining  swamps,  irrigating  dry  land,  building  factories,  roads,  and 
bridges  will  fritter  away  their  time  in  self-amusement,  Toafing  and 
inviting  their  souls/  or  dilettantism.  But  if  the  chief  ambition  of 
every  capable  man  is  to  achieve  something  for  the  building  up  of  the 
nation,  this  talent  will  be  kept  from  going  to  waste.  Being  turned 
into  productive  channels  it  will  help  the  laboring  classes  in  two  ways. 
First,  it  will  increase  the  comforts  and  conveniences  and  place  more 
of  them  within  the  reach  of  those  classes.  Second,  it  will  give  em¬ 
ployment  to  increasing  numbers  of  those  classes.  As  pointed  out  in 
a  preceding  chapter  it  takes  several  different  kinds  of  talent  or  labor 
power,  to  do  effective  work  in  any  kind  of  production.  If  one  neces¬ 
sary  kind  is  lacking,  or  very  scarce,  it  limits  the  amount  of  the  other 
kind  which  can  be  employed.  The  effective  supply  of  business  talent 
is  made  scarce  by  the  tendency  among  business  men  to  retire,  and 
among  their  sons  to  cultivate  the  arts  of  elegant  leisure  instead  of 
training  themselves  for  the  hard  work  of  the  world.  If  they  would  do 
the  latter,  there  would  be  more  productive  enterprises  started  in 
which  laborers  might  find  remunerative  employment. 

In  a  similar  way,  the  attitude  of  the  popular  mind  toward  saving 
has  a  most  powerful  effect  upon  economic  conditions.  As  shown  in 
the  chapter  on  interest,  saving  increases  capital,  and  capital  requires 
labor  to  work  it.  If  there  is  less  capital  (that  is,  tools)  than  is  needed 
by  the  existing  number  of  laborers,  either  some  of  them  will  be  poorly 
equipped  with  tools,  or  some  must  remain  unemployed.  If  men  would 
save  more,  that  is,  invest  more  of  their  incomes  in  tools  instead  of 
consumers’  goods,  there  would  be  tools  enough  to  equip  every  laborer 
adequately.  There  might  be  even  more  than  the  laborers  could  use. 
In  that  case,  capital  would  be  cheap,  interest  low,  and  the  laborers 
would  get  a  larger  share  of  the  total  product  of  industry.  Besides, 


224 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


there  would  be  a  larger  total  product.  Thus  the  laborers  would  gain 
in  two  ways.  Luxury  tends  to  produce  poverty  whereas  frugality  and 
simplicity,  especially  among  the  rich,  tend  to  produce  high  wages  and 
prosperity. 

The  government  can,  it  is  true,  provide  savings  institutions  and 
other  encouragements  to  savings,  but  the  general  spirit  and  mental 
attitude  of  the  people  is  what  will  determine  whether  they  will  make 
use  of  them  or  not.  This  attitude  of  mind  is  probably  of  greater  im¬ 
portance  than  anything  which  the  government  can  do,  unless,  indeed, 
the  government  becomes  the  means  of  creating  that  attitude. 

Aside  from  these  direct  and  tangible  ways  in  which  economic  con¬ 
ditions  are  determined  by  the  spiritual  attitude  of  the  people,  there 
are  a  vast  number  of  indirect  and  intangible  but  none  the  less  powerful 
results  springing  from  this  fruitful  source.  A  robust  and  virile  mor¬ 
ality,  stimulated  by  a  sound  but  fervid  religion,  may  create  an  intense 
activity  in  nation-building  among  all  the  people.  When  every  man, 
'woman,  and  child  feels  a  direct  and  personal  responsibility  for  the 
nation's  welfare,  and  an  eager  desire  to  have  a  part  in  the  building  of 
its  prosperity,  you  have  conditions  of  growth  which  nothing  but  a 
geological  cataclysm  or  an  international  war  can  counteract.  This, 
more  than  anything  else,  according  to  the  best  students  of  the  prob¬ 
lem,  accounts  for  the  prodigious  growth  and  prosperity  of  Germany 
from  1871  to  1914. 

A  really  vigorous  church,  whose  preachers  were  burdened  with  a 
sense  of  responsibility  to  their  country,  and  endowed  with  the  powers 
of  leadership,  could  become,  next  to  the  government  itself,  the  most 
powerful  agency  for  the  creation  of  this  type  of  national  prosperity. 
It  would  have  to  preach  hard  and  honest  work  at  one’s  regular  job, 
rather  than  a  vague  kind  of  "  social  service.”  It  would  have  to  rise  to 
the  conception  of  religion  as  a  means  of  stimulating  the  productive 
virtue's  rather  than  of  providing  passive  spiritual  enjoyment  to  its 
communicants.  In  short,  it  would  have  to  preach  the  gospel  of  the 
productive  life,  and  itself  become  a  fellowship  of  the  productive  life 
if  it  would  accomplish  these  results. 

Suppose  that  every  time  a  doctor  got  religion  he  began  to  give 
himself  to  the  study  of  medical  science  with  a  new  zeal  and  to  the 
practice  of  the  healing  art  with  a  new  devotion.  The  more  doctors 
there  were  who  got  this  kind  of  religion  the  more  rapidly  medical 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


225 


science  would  advance,  the  better  medical  practice  we  should  have, 
and  the  lower  the  death  rate  would  be.  Spreading  this  kind  of  religion 
would  be  a  very  good  way  of  reducing  the  death  rate.  The  man  who  ' 
would  not  try  to  spread  such  a  religion  would  have  something  wrong 
with  his  mental  and  moral  make-up,  and  would  be  a  candidate  for 
the  madhouse  or  the  jail. 

Suppose  that  every  time  a  farmer  got  religion  he  began  to  give 
himself  to  the  study  of  agricultural  science  with  a  new  zeal,  and  to  the 
practice  of  his  productive  art  with  a  new  enthusiasm.  The  more 
farmers  there  were  who  got  this  kind  of  religion,  the  better  agriculture 
we  should  have.  The  effective  preaching  of  such  a  religion  as  this 
would  be  one  of  the  very  best  ‘ways  of  reducing  the  cost  of  living. 

Suppose  that  every  time  a  business  man  got  religion  he  began  to 
give  himself  with  a  new  enthusiasm  to  the  study  of  the  science  of 
business  management,  and  with  a  new  devotion  to  the  art  of  business 
administration.  The  more  business  men  there  were  who  got  such  a 
religion  as  this  the  better  business  conditions  we  should  have,  the 
more  productive  enterprises  would  be  started,  and  the  larger  the  de¬ 
mand  for  labor  would  be.  Spreading  such  a  religion  as  this  would  do 
more  than  anything  now  being  done  by  any  organization  for  the 
improving  of  industrial  conditions  and  the  elimination  of  poverty. 

And  suppose  that  every  time  a  mechanic  got  religion  he  began  to 
give  himself  with  a  new  devotion  to  the  study  of  the  sciences  under¬ 
lying  his  trade,  and  with  a  new  zeal  to  the  application  of  his  skill. 
The  more  mechanics  there  were  who  got  this  kind  of  religion  the  more 
rapid  would  be  the  advancement  in  the  mechanic  arts.  Spreading 
such  a  religion  as  this  would  be  one  of  the  most  effective  means  of 
promoting  general  mechanical  improvement.  And  so  on  through  all 
the  other  occupations,  trades,  and  professions  including  that  of  the 

• 

statesman, — suppose  that  the  spread  of  this  type  of  religion  made 
every  one  who  came  under  its  spell  a  better  worker  in  his  own  field 
of  useful  endeavor,  not  only  stimulating  him  to  greater  expenditures 
of  energy,  but  leading  him  to  conserve  and  utilize  his  energy  in  the 
most  useful  and  productive  ways,  avoiding  waste  and  dissipation, 
lavish  consumption  and  ostentatious  display,  and  all  the  other  un¬ 
economic  vices.  You  would  then  be  able  to  detect  the  spread  of  this 
religion  in  the  vital  statistics  of  the  country,  in  the  statistics  of  pro¬ 
duction,  of  the  increase  of  capital  and  the  rise  in  the  rate  of  wages. 


226 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


This  type  of  religion  could  base  itself  upon  a  very  definite  doctrine 
of  salvation,  which  always  implies  a  doctrine  of  damnation  as  its 
counterpart.  This  doctrine  of  salvation  would  be  quite  as  clear  cut  as 
the  old  doctrine,  but  would  differ  from  it  in  some  particulars.  Having 
a  clear  cut  doctrine  of  individual  salvation,  instead  of  a  vague  doctrine 
of  social  service,  the  church  could  preach  to  individuals  with  all  of  the 
old  fervor  and  would  need  no  longer  to  make  a  spectacle  of  itself  by 
running  around  in  a  circle  trying  to  find  something  in  the  way  of 
social  service  or  political  reform  to  espouse  in  order  to  justify  its 
own  existence. 

A  thing  may  be  said  to  be  saved  when  it  is  prevented  from  going 
to  waste.  If  a  man’s  life  is  going  to  waste,  he  is  lost.  If  it  can  be 
prevented  from  going  to  waste  and  put  to  some  use,  he  is  saved.  The 
old  Hebrew  word  for  sin  meant  an  arrow  that  has  missed  the  mark. 
It  is  wasted, — ineffective, — thrown  away, — lost.  The  only  rational 
definition  of  immorality  is  the  waste  of  human  energy.  That,  and 
that  only  is  sin  which  results  in  the  waste  or  dissipation  of  human 
energy.  When  a  man’s  energy  is  being  wasted  or  dissipated  in  sloth, 
in  vice,  in  needless  conflict  with  his  fellows,  or  in  misdirected  effort, 
the  man  is  to  that  extent  going  to  waste,  his  life  is  to  that  extent  lost, 
and  he  stands  in  need  of  salvation.  Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to 
say  that  the  community  needs  his  salvation.  The  most  precious  re¬ 
source  of  any  community  is  its  fund  of  human  energy.  If  that  re¬ 
source  is  wasted  the  community  will  be  impoverished.  If  it  is  saved, 
the  community  will  be  enriched.  Here  is  a  doctrine  of  salvation  in 
which  the  whole  community  is  vitally  interested.  This  kind  of  a 
program  of  salvation  is  the  greatest  conservation  program  ever  con¬ 
ceived.  Where  is  the  man  with  the  least  spark  of  ‘patriotism  who 
.  would  not  support  such  a  gospel  of  salvation  as  this  ? 

Possibly  we  may  conclude  that  we  have  been  talking  prose  all  our 
lives  without  knowing  it.  As  a  by-product  of  the  old  gospel  of  salva¬ 
tion  men  were  taught  such  economic  virtues  as  industry,  sobriety, 
thrift,  forethought,  and  mutual  helpfulness.  These  are  virtues  be¬ 
cause  they  are  ways  of  economizing  human  energy.  That  is  what  a 
virtue  is.  Men  have  been  taught  to  avoid  such  uneconomic  vices  as 
sloth,  drunkenness,  riotous  living,  frivolity,  and  quarrelsomeness. 
These  are  vices  because  they  are  ways  of  wasting  human  energy. 
That  is  what  a  vice  is.  In  so  far  as  the  churches  have  been  means  of 


227 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


promoting  those  virtues  and  discouraging  these  vices,  of  conserving 
human  energy  and  turning  it  into  useful  channels,  they  have  been 
performing  the  greatest  possible  social  service.  Compared  with  this 
kind  of  conservation  all  other  programs  of  social  service  are  trivial. 

This  by-product  of  the  old  gospel  of  salvation,  which  some  of  our 
more  ardent  religionists  have  affected  to  despise,  must  become  the 
chief  end  and  aim  of  all  preaching.  "The  stone  which  the  builders 
rejected  the  same  is  become  the  head  of  the  comer.”  The  wild,  un¬ 
tamed  energy  of  human  nature,  which  tends  too  much  to  run  riot,  to 
waste  itself  in  the  pursuit  of  whims,  to  dissipate  itself  in  vice  and 
luxury,  to  consume  itself  in  fruitless  conflict,  needs  to  be  tamed, 
harnessed,  and  put  to  work.  This  is  a  task  of  even  greater  importance 
than  that  of  taming  and  harnessing  the  winds,  the  tides,  and  the 
waterfalls. 

In  many  respects  the  moral  leader,  provided  he  is  genuine,  and  the 
engineer  are  performing  parallel  functions,  the  one  conserving  and 
utilizing  human  or  social  energy,  and  the  other  physical  forces. 
Viewed  from  this  standpoint,  the  real  moral  leader  or  the  preacher  of 
genuine  righteousness  need  not  apologize  for  his  existence  in  the 
presence  of  either  the  engineer  or  the  lawmaker,  for  his  work  is  more 
constructive  than  theirs.  Much  less  does  he  need  to  apologize  in  the 
presence  of  those  self-styled  political  reformers  whose  chief  task  is 
that  of  trying  to  invent  a  fool-proof  government.  This  assumes,  of 
course,  that  we  have  a  rational  idea  as  to  what  righteousness  is, 
namely,  that  it  is  the  economizing  and  utilizing  of  human  energy,  the 
application  of  it  to  the  building  of  a  strong,  prosperous  society ;  that 
it  is  "that  which  keeps  the  tribe  alive,”  to  use  the  words  of  an  old 
Indian  chief ;  that  it  is  the  kind  of  conduct  which  strengthens  the  pack 
and  enables  it  to  prevail  against  the  hostile  forces  of  the  surrounding 
universe ;  that  it  is  that  which  enables  the  human  pack  to  subdue  the 
earth  "and  have  dominion  over  the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over  the  fowl 
of  the  air,  and  over  every  living  thing  that  moveth  upon  the  earth.” 

All  this  becomes  perfectly  clear  to  one  who  has  grasped  the  full 
meaning  of  the  two  fundamental  and  antagonistic  philosophies  of  life, 
the  "work-bench”  philosophy  and  the  "pig-trough”  philosophy.  By 
the  work-bench  philosophy  is  meant  that  philosophy  of  life  which 
regards  the  world  as  an  opportunity  for  work,  or  for  the  active  joy  of 
productive  achievement.  By  the  pig-trough  philosophy  is  meant  that 


228 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


philosophy  of  life  which  regards  the  world  as  an  opportunity  for  con¬ 
sumption,  for  the  passive  pleasures  of  absorbing  the  good  things  which 
the  world  supplies.  Under  the  former,  we  consume  in  order  that  we 
may  produce,  under  the  latter  we  produce  in  order  that  we  may  con¬ 
sume.  Under  the  former  wealth  is  regarded  as  tools  to  be  used  in 
further  production  or  usefulness,  under  the  latter  it  is  regarded  as 
means  of  self-gratification ;  under  the  former  as  wealth  accumulates 
it  is  invested  and  put  to  work,  under  the  latter  it  is  gathered  into 
barns  in  order  that  its  possessor  may  say,  "Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods 
laid  up  for  many  years,  take  thine  ease,  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry.’’ 

He  who  has  adopted  the  work-bench  philosophy  of  life  will  ob¬ 
viously  avoid  idleness,  vice,  and  luxury.  Since  he  is  intent  upon  pro¬ 
duction  rather  than  consumption,  on  seeing  how  much  he  can  put  into 
the  world  rather  than  how  much  he  can  take  out,  he  will  naturally 
avoid  destructive  conflict  as  he  will  idleness,  vice,  or  luxury.  Compe¬ 
tition  among  such  people  becomes  rivalry  in  well-doing,  in  productive 
achievement.  Since  the  faculties,  impulses,  and  propensities  of  each 
are  harnessed  to  productive  purposes-,  each  is  also  freed  from  the  dis¬ 
tractions  which  would  waste  human  energy.  But  precisely  the  op¬ 
posite  happens  to  him  who  has  adopted  the  pig-trough  philosophy  of 
life.  He  continually  tries  to  avoid  work,  and  seeks  idleness  as  soon  as 
he  is  able  to  live  without  work.  From  his  point  of  view,  since  there 
is  no  special  reason  why  he  should  discipline  himself  and  conserve  his 
energies,  vice  is  cultivated  as  a  means  of  immediate  and  obvious 
pleasure.  And,  from  the  same  point  of  view,  if  one  is  able  to  afford 
luxuries  why  should  one  deny  oneself  merely  in  order  to  be  more  use¬ 
ful,  or  to  use  one’s  wealth  more  productively  ?  Again,  if  one’s  purpose 
in  life  is  to  get  as  much  out  of  it  as  possible,  rather  than  to  put  as 
much  in  it  as  possible,-  the  manners  and  the  morals  of  the  pig-trough 
prevail.  It  is  only  under  this  attitude  toward  life  that  destructive 
conflict  prevails.  And  finally,  the  distractions  of  life  have  a  peculiar 
hold  upon  people  who  are  not  anchored  to  a  purpose  outside  themselves. 

One  of  the  most  wasteful  and  destructive  of  all  vices  is  that  of 
covetousness  or  jealousy  of  success.  Wherever  the  tendency  is  strong 
to  regard  with  hostility  the  man  who  has  achieved  conspicuous  suc¬ 
cess  either  in  business,  politics,  scholarship,  or  art,  you  have  one  of 
the  most  effective  means  of  repressing  useful  endeavor.  Such  a  com¬ 
munity  can  never  prosper.  But  on  the  other  hand,  where  in  addition 


229 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 

to  such  pecuniary  rewards  as  may  be  won,  conspicuous  success  in 
productive  work  of  any  kind  whether  it  be  in  business,  in  politics,  in 
scholarship,  or  in  art,  receives  the  reward  of  a  high  degree  of  social 
esteem  and  popularity,  we  have  the  greatest  possible  stimulus  to  high 
endeavor  in  these  productive  fields.  This  consideration  has  peculiar 
value  in  the  field  of  productive  business  where  accumulation  of  capital, 
that  is,  tools,  is  such  an  important  element  in  business  success  and 
social  service.  In  a  community  in  which  the  man  who  consumes 
lavishly  and  even  ostentatiously  or  wastefully  is  well  thought  of,  while 
the  man  who  lives  simply,  preferring  to  spend  his  surplus  wealth  for 
more  tools  rather  than  for  the  means  of  luxurious  consumption,  is 
despised,  we  have  the  greatest  possible  encouragement  to  wastefulness, 
and  the  greatest  discouragement  to  productive  accumulation.  Such 
a  community  will  remain  poor  and  unprosperous,  and  the  people  who 
display  such  vicious  sentiments  will  be  the  ones  to  suffer  most,  but 
they  will  have  the  poor  consolation  of  having  inflicted  the  suffering 
upon  themselves.  In  proportion  as  a  community  has  acquired  the 
radically  different  spirit  which  makes  it  condemn  wasteful  and  osten¬ 
tatious  luxury  and  approve  the  simple  but  strenuous  life  of  productive 
business,  the  investment  of  surplus  income  in  tools  of  production 
rather  than  in  articles  of  self-gratification,  in  that  proportion  will  the 
community  prosper  and  the  poor  be  benefited.  In  this  and  many  other 
ways  a  wholesome  moral  sentiment  throughout  the  community  will 
promote  its  prosperity,  even  more  effectively,  if  that  be  possible,  than 
sound  legislation  under  wise  administration  of  law. 

29.  Social  Work1 

The  new  type  of  effort  called  social  work  gets  its  distinctive  quality 
in  seeking  first  to  understand,  and  secondly,  to  affect  the  problems  of 
the  community  by  means  of  direct  contact  with  all  sorts  and  condi¬ 
tions  of  men.  Government,  we  now  know,  is  not  a  tradition,  but  a 
science,  which  must  rely  not  only  upon  principles  that  were  once 
derived  from  living  facts  in  the  past,  and  remain  applicable  in  so  far 
as  these  facts  continue  to  be  living,  but  upon  principles  got  by  actual 
wrestling  with  many  new  situations.  That  type  of  government  which 

1By  Robert  A.  Woods,  head  of  the  South  End  House,  Boston.  Adapted  from 
"Social  Work:  A  New  Profession,”  International  Journal  of  Ethics ,  October,  1905. 


230 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


subsists  entirely  or  largely  upon  traditions  of  the  past  is  naturally 
much  more  concerned  with  the  methods  of  government  than  with  its 
aims.  As  the  co-ordination  of  government  with  the  developing  needs 
of  the  people  is  imperfect  and  incomplete,  the  mere  technical  ef¬ 
ficiency  of  administration  is  highly  emphasized,  while  conditions 
among  the  people  become  such  as  to  corrupt  good  government  at  its 
source.  It  goes  without  saying  also  that  a  government  whose  vision 
is  fixed  on  the  past  is  doing  little  to  anticipate  the  rising  issues  or  to 
be  in  a  state  of  preparedness  for  new  needs  in  the  life  of  the  people. 
In  a  community  whose  public  standards  become  thus  belated  the  same 
lack  of  vitality  also  affects  its  private  and  voluntary  collective  life. 
The  institutions  of  industry  and  culture,  enormously  progressive  as 
they  may  be  within  certain  lines,  and  perhaps  on  account  of  that 
very  progress,  come  to  have  but  a  partial  and  ineffectual  grasp  upon 
what  is  in  the  last  analysis  the  only  issue,  the  properly  proportioned 
and  distributed  welfare  of  the  entire  community. 

The  two  great  social  forces  to  be  grappled  with.  The  new  social 
work  profession  has  for  its  object  to  restore  to  its  true  place  in  the 
fields  of  politics,  industry,  and  culture  this  end  and  aim  of  all  things 
in  the  life  we  are  now  living. 

In  the  effort  to  make  rapprochement  with  things  as  they  now  are, 
there  are  two  great  social  forces  to  be  understood  and  at  first  hand 
grappled  with — democracy  and  cosmopolitanism.  It  is  probable  that 
the  knowledge  of  these  forces  to  which  we  have  as  yet  attained  is  in 
the  relation  which  the  prelude  bears  to  the  play.  Their  great  develop¬ 
ments  lie  not  in  the  past,  but  in  the  present  and  in  the  future.  They 
must  be  studied  on  the  move.  The  old  way  of  seeing  a  boat  race  was 
to  sit  still  and  see  the  race  disappear  in  the  distance.  The  new  way  is 
to  see  it  by  racing  with  it.  That  is  the  only  way  in  which  the  swift  and 
sudden  movement  of  these  social  forces  can  be  estimated  and  affected. 

For  the  future,  democracy  is  not  merely  a  scheme  of  governmental 
administration,  but  an  ethical  system  applying  to  all  departments  of 
life.  It  involves  a  larger  degree  of  public  service,  such  as  to  meet 
new  and  pressing  common  needs.  It  holds  to  the  principle  of  equal 
opportunity  to  all  for  the  proper  development  of  the  physical  and 
spiritual  powers.  It  is  moving  toward  a  more  highly  organized  and 
more  productive  type  of  industry.  Social  work  stands  for  an  effort  on 
the  part  of  those  who  represent  some  type  of  privilege  or  resource  to 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY  231 

study  and  in  experimental  ways  to  serve  the  human  needs  and  desires 
which  are  the  urgent  forces  back  of  this  great  tendency.  It  aims  to 
bring  together  people  belonging  to  separate  classes,  and  for  certain 
purposes  to  organize  little  groups  or  societies  in  which  the  resources 
of  life  shall  be  in  wider  commonalty  spread.  It  means  through  such 
experiments  to  lead  the  way  toward  a  further  and  broader  adjustment 
with  the  life  of  the  people ;  toward  mutualization,  so  to  speak,  on  the 
part  not  only  of  the  government,  but  of  the  university  and  the  in¬ 
dustrial  corporation.  Its  endeavor  at  every  point  is  to  train  the  people 
to  trust  the  expert ;  but  it  stands  distinctly  for  the  principle  that  in 
most  cases,  to  say  the  least,  the  expert  must  be  such  in  the  applica¬ 
tion  of  his  knowledge  and  capacity  to  the  precise  needs  of  the  total 
constituency  in  whose  behoof  the  knowledge  and  capacity  exists.  It 
is  because  so  many  experts  know  little  or  nothing  as  to  the  life  of 
the  masses  of  people  that  the  people  reject  them,  choosing  rather  from 
among  their  own  number  those  who  have  this,  to  them,  more  impor¬ 
tant  branch  of  expertness. 

As  to  cosmopolitanism — in  this  country  that  problem  of  the  con¬ 
tact  and  conflict  of  racial  types  which  faces  other  nations  from  with¬ 
out,  we  have  nearly  everywhere  within  arm’s  length.  The  cautions 
which  have  been  suggested  with  regard  to  overreachings  on  the  part 
of  such  noble  national  traditions  as  our  own  become  tenfold  more 
forcible  when  we  have  to  do  with  the  conglomerate  social  impulse  of 
people  who,  as  a  rule,  by  the  very  fact  of  their  presence  here,  show 
that  they  have  been  under  government  encrusted  with  age-long 
despotism,  inefficiency,  corruption.  It  is  their  nemesis  that  they  bring 
with  them  some  seeds  of  this  contagion,  coming  to  our  shores  with 
little  or  no  training  in  constructive  citizenship,  largely  lacking  even  in 
elementary  education,  and  having  an  economic  standard  that  for  the 
time,  at  least,  threatens  the  welfare  of  our  working  classes.  The  so¬ 
cial  worker  undertakes  to  see  that  these  strangers  when  they  arrive, 
are  not  met  only  by  the  most  degrading  influences  in  our  civilization, 
but  come  in  touch,  as  soon  as  possible,  with  what  is  uplifting  in  citi¬ 
zenship,  in  education,  and  in  industry.  He  lays  increasing  stress  upon 
getting  these  new  members  of  the  community  established  upon  an 
economic  basis  of  self-respect,  not  only  for  their  own  sakes,  but  be¬ 
cause  American  patriotism  has  to  do  essentially  not  only  with  certain 
great  political  ideas,  but  with  an  advanced  type  of  material  welfare. 


232 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


The  social  worker  in  this  connection  applies  the  results  of  his  study 
and  travel  toward  bringing  to  light  all  the  best  characteristic  traits 
and  intellectual  inheritances  of  people  representing  the  different  na¬ 
tionalities  and  races.  By  recognizing  and  protecting  these  qualities 
he  is  able  to  help  the  immigrant  in  making  the  proper  relation  between 
the  old  life  and  the  new,  and  to  encourage  him  in  holding  his  family 
loyally  together  through  the  anxious  time  when  the  children  are  going 
so  eagerly  into  all  the  life  of  the  new  and  strange  country.  The  result 
of  such  effort  is  what  in  the  aggregate  will  make  a  contribution  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  the  variety  and  resource  of  our  future  national 
life.  Politically  America  is  a  federal  union.  In  its  racial  character 
and  its  type  of  civilization  in  general  it  must  be  that  also.  Social 
work  has  to  do  with  the  building  up  of  a  natural  federation  among 
all  our  different  racial  groups,  which  will  in  reasonable  degree  preserve 
all  that  is  valuable  in  the  heredity  and  traditions  of  each  type,  but 
will  link  all  types  together  into  a  universal  yet  coherent  and  distinc¬ 
tively  American  nationality. 

The  statesmanship  of  the  social  worker.  The  social  worker  thus 
serves  to  unite  the  now  scattered  industrial,  racial,  and  religious  ele¬ 
ments  that  are  thrown  together  to  make  up  the  population  particu¬ 
larly  of  our  great  city  communities.  He  establishes  bits  of  neutral 
territory  where  the  descendant  of  the  Puritans  may  meet  the  chosen 
leaders  among  the  immigrants  from  Italy,  Russia,  and  the  Levant; 
where  the  capitalist  may  meet  the  trade  unionist ;  where  the  scholar 
may  meet  the  ingenious,  practical  mechanic,  or  perhaps  the  philoso¬ 
pher  or  poet  of  the  people ;  where  the  Protestant  may  meet  the 
Catholic ;  where  the  Christian  may  meet  the  Jew ;  and  where  all  can, 
by  establishing  friendly  relations,  aside  from  and  in  advance  of  the 
conflicts  of  social  sectionalism,  come  to  consider  their  common  in¬ 
terests  with  regard  to  particular  steps  in  political  development,  in¬ 
dustrial  progress,  or  the  betterment  of  family  life  and  neighborly 
intercourse.  No  mistake  can  be  greater  than  to  think  that  social 
work  has  to  do  merely  with  sporadic  labors  of  compassion,  with  the 
drudgery  of  endeavoring  to  uplift  a  few  individuals  only  out  of  the 
hopeless  social  residuum,  while  the  great  forces  of  society  continue  all 
undisturbed  to  develop  directly  or  as  by-products,  their  train  of  social 
evils.  It  has  taken  a  considerable  part  in  the  noteworthy  develop¬ 
ments  of  city  government  toward  improving  social  conditions  among 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


233 


the  mass  of  city  population.  It  is  leading  in  a  marked  way  toward 
the  development  of  additional  opportunities  of  training,  academic, 
industrial,  and  physical,  for  the  eighty  or  ninety  per  cent  of  our 
children  whose  education  ends  with  the  grammar  school.  It  has  been, 
and  is,  taking  an  active  share  in  the  large  and  growing  movement  both 
among  workmen  and  employers  and  among  the  general  public  for  the 
improvement  of  all  the  conditions  of  labor.  There  is  no  person  who 
has  a  greater  task  upon  his  hands  than  the  social  worker,  who  touches 
more  sides  of  life  and  finds  himself  in  co-operation  with  a  greater 
variety  of  people  representing  all  classes  in  the  community. 

Social  work  is  in  its  intention,  and  to  an  increasing  degree  in  its 
results,  in  the  nature  of  unofficial  statesmanship.  Here  lies  the  real 
force  of  its  claim  upon  the  university  man.  We  are  told  from  time 
to  time  by  some  of  our  foremost  public  teachers  and  leaders  that  un¬ 
der  existing  conditions  politics  is  to  the  educated  man  a  duty,  but  can 
hardly  be  a  career.  We  are  told  that  it  is  incumbent  upon  every  man 
to  give  some  portion  of  his  time  to  serving  the  best  needs  of  the  public 
administration,  but  that  so  long  as  there  is  so  much  corruption  in  poli¬ 
tics  the  man  who,  not  having  ample  private  means,  enters  a  politi¬ 
cal  career,  involves  himself  in  the  risk  of  having  to  choose  between 
his  honor  and  a  proper  living  for  himself  and  his  children;  a  risk 
which  the  young  man  is  explicitly  advised  not  to  take.  That  the 
political  career  of  a  man  without  independent  means  does  involve 
a  possibility  of  this  alternative  is  undoubtedly  true,  but  that  for  the 
sake  of  serving  his  country,  particularly  at  the  present  crisis,  when  it 
is  admitted  to  be  thus  seriously  threatened  by  internal  foes,  a  patriot 
should  not  be  willing  to  confront  such  a  choice  is  certainly  a  new  and 
strange  sort  of  ethical  doctrine.  It  scarcely  harmonizes  with  the  senti¬ 
ments  of  men  who  have  pledged  their  lives,  their  fortunes,  and  their 
sacred  honor  to  their  country  in  its  need ;  of  women  who  at  one  time 
or  another  faced  every  privation  to  urge  their  husbands  and  brothers 
into  their  country’s  defence ;  of  sons  and  daughters  who  rejoiced  in 
hampered  lives  and  restricted  careers  on  account  of  the  names  they 
bore.  Without  warrant  in  the  past,  such  teaching  falls  sadly  short 
of  the  demands  as  well  as  of  the  actual  working  motives  of  the  present. 

This  new  type  of  effort  stands  for  the  fact  that  in  times  of  peace 
the  same  high  patriotic  devotion  may  be  as  absolutely  required  as  in 
times  of  war.  It  calls  upon  young  men  to  enter  upon  a  definite  and 


234 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


absorbing  career  of  public  service  at  those  points  where  the  public 
need  is  greatest.  It  opens  the  way  in  some  cases  to  political  action 
and  to  public  office.  It  brings  men  into  a  political  activity  of  that 
sort  which  has  to  do  not  only  with  correcting  the  technique  of  gov¬ 
ernment  in  our  cities,  but  with  humanizing  them  through  causing  them 
more  largely  to  meet  great  collective  human  needs.  Aside  from  direct 
contact  with  the  government,  it  undertakes  more  and  more  to  build 
up,  first  in  local  units,  and  then  in  larger  federations,  a  kind  of  moral 
municipality  and  commonwealth,  including  all  existing  organizations 
and  institutions  that  advance  the  general  good,  and  such  new  enter¬ 
prises  as  rapidly  developing  conditions  require. 

The  social  work  profession  thus  provides  a  distinct  and  inviting  op¬ 
portunity  for  those  university  men  who  feel  the  moral  attraction  of 
public  service,  but  have  thought  that  conditions  being  as  they  are,  the 
door  of  such  opportunity  is  closed.  Here  it  is  possible  for  such  a  man 
to  lay  out  before  himself  a  continuous,  consecutive  career,  in  which 
may  be  included  public  office  so  far  and  so  long  as  political  and 
ethical  conditions  allow;  active  political  effort  in  support  of  good 
administrative  policies  and  in  opposition  to  bad ;  the  development 
under  private  auspices  of  experiments  toward  social  betterment  which 
may  in  due  time  prove  worthy  of  being  made  part  of  the  public 
administration ;  the  strengthening  of  old  and  the  creation  of  new 
organizations  designed  to  render  that  fundamental  service  of  elevating 
the  electorate,  and  so  making  possible  through  an  improved  citizenship 
entirely  new  standards  of  public  administrative  rectitude  and  effi¬ 
ciency.  Let  no  man  feel,  therefore,  that  there  is  anything  other  than 
a  wide-open  opportunity  for  his  entering  permanently  into  what  is 
essentially,  and  even  to  a  considerable  extent,  technically,  the  work 
of  the  public  administration  of  the  community. 

Social  work  within  its  wide  scope  includes  the  extension  of  all  the 
older  callings  so  as  to  meet  new  and  pressing  needs.  The  university 
settlement,  located  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  congested  area  of  the  great 
city,  has  been  likened  to  the  monastery  of  the  middle  ages,  which 
centered  in  itself  resources  for  every  sort  of  productive  human  service. 
One  social  worker  is  primarily  a  doctor,  another  a  lawyer,  another  a 
teacher,  another  a  clergyman,  another  an  artist,  another  a  musician, 
another  a  business  man,  another  a  sanitary  expert,  another  a  politician. 
The  only  common  requisites  for  all  are  human  feeling,  a  sense  of 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY 


235 


humor,  and  the  spirit  of  moral  adventure.  In  all  these  spheres  of 
work  the  effort  is  not  only  to  push  out  into  new  territory,  and  to  bring 
the  best  training  and  capacity  to  bear  upon  the  needs  which  exist 
among  new  constituencies  of  those  who  cannot  seek  out  and  command 
such  high-grade  service,  but  definitely  to  create  new  agencies,  new 
institutions,  new  laws,  which  will  in  large  ways  actually  shut  off  at 
their  source  the  influences  which  produce  great  social  miseries  and 
iniquities.  In  social  work  the  lawyer  not  only  defends  the  victim  of 
injustice,  but  classifies  the  forms  of  injustice  which  he  sees  about  him 
and  undertakes  by  appealing  in  one  form  or  other  to  the  public  ad¬ 
ministration,  to  reduce  or  even  abolish  whole  types  of  injustice.  The 
doctor  endeavors  to  provide  better  care  in  cases  of  illness,  but  is  more 
intent  upon  general  sanitary  inspection,  upon  training  in  cookery,  and 
instruction  in  personal  hygiene;  upon  the  establishment  of  public 
baths,  playgrounds,  and  gymnasiums,  so  as  to  make  it  more  possible 
for  the  masses  of  children  in  crowded  districts  to  grow  up  into  healthy 
adult  life.  The  teacher,  while  striving  to  secure  for  the  people  some 
increase  of  general  educational  opportunity,  is  more  concerned  about 
such  industrial  training  as  will  definitely  equip  them  for  real  demands 
of  life,  and  strives  to  overcome  those  economic  handicaps  which  often 
prevent  children  of  talent,  or  even  of  genius,  among  the  working 
classes  from  realizing  upon  their  capacities.  The  moral  leader,  per¬ 
ceiving  that  the  sort  of  guidance  and  inspiration  which  might  serve 
among  the  well-to-do  has  only  a  partial  appeal  where  there  are  so 
many  adverse  moral  conditions,  finds  himself  giving  a  large  part  of 
his  time  to  organizations  for  clearing  the  way  for  the  new  generation, 
so  that  the  hard  environment  can  no  longer  so  greatly  restrict  the  free 
outgrowth  of  the  spiritual  nature.  The  business  man,  realizing  that 
it  is  his  function  to  provision  the  community,  endeavors  so  far  as  may 
be  to  outdo  and  have  done  with  charity,  providing  good  housing  and 
good  food  upon  the  most  reasonable  business  terms,  organizing  thrift, 
seeking  to  better  the  means  by  which  employment  is  found,  and 
initiating  experiments  toward  improving  the  conditions  under  which 
labor  is  done  and  raising  the  standard  of  wages. 

Social  and  educational  experimentation .  I  have  said  that  social 
work  is  intended  to  have  a  peculiar  closeness  of  relation  to  the  historic 
forces  of  the  present.  It  deals,  however,  with  advancing  historical 
forces.  It  is  not,  indeed,  concerned  with  distant  Utopias,  but  on  the 


236 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


other  hand  it  leaves  behind  the  ethical  perspective  of  the  past,  even  of 
the  immediate  past,  except  so  far  as  to  preserve  respect  for  yesterday’s 
motive  in  forming  a  postulate  for  the  work  of  to-morrow.  The  ideal¬ 
ism  of  the  social  worker  is  of  the  opportunist,  possibilist  type.  He 
seeks  to  take  each  successive  next  step  towards  a  better  social  order, 
which  he  dares  to  dream  of  but  does  not  expect  to  see  let  down  from 
the  skies.  So  also  the  social  worker  is  not  primarily  a  builder  of  in¬ 
stitutions.  He  seeks  first  of  all  to  permeate  existing  institutions  with 
a  new  spirit,  thus  gaining  for  his  cause  the  driving  force  of  the 
acquired  momentum  of  this  existing  institutional  life.  Where  suitable 
organizations  do  not  exist  to  accomplish  results  which  seem  desirable 
and  important,  he  creates  such  organizations ;  but  as  soon  as  may  be 
he  cuts  them  adrift,  leaving  them  go  by  their  inherent  forces,  and 
trusting  that  they  will  gradually  gather  for  themselves  the  general 
support  of  the  conservative  elements  in  the  community. 

30.  Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy1 

The  common  object  in  the  promotion  of  which  the  many  and  varied 
activities  of  constructive  and  preventive  philanthropy  find  their  unity, 
and  can  be  classified  and  understood,  is  the  fostering  of  life, — the 
protection  and  cultivation,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  spiritual  element  in 
the  individuals  and  communities  whom  they  seek  to  benefit.  Philan¬ 
thropists  have  sought  this  object  partly  by  means  that  may  be  called 
in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  term  preventive :  by  laws  and  other 
measures,  that  is  to  say,  for  the  direct  repression  of  evil  or  for  the 
abolition  of  influences  or  surroundings  found  to  be  an  injury  or  a 
hindrance  to  life,  on  either  the  moral  or  the  physical  side.  But  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  present  philanthropic  effort  is  aimed  directly 
at  the  development  of  the  spiritual  life  through  the  encouragement 
and  facilitating  of  its  expression  in  concrete  and  definite  achievement. 
This  effort  is  also  preventive  in  its  effects,  as  the  promotion  of  health 
is  inevitably  prevention  of  disease. 

The  institutions  that  promote  the  saving  of  money  aim  to  build  up, 
by  exercise,  in  the  minds  of  those  whom  they  can  reach,  the  habit 

1By  Joseph  Lee,  president  of  Community  Service,  Inc.  Adapted  from  Con¬ 
structive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy ,  pp.  2-7.  Copyright,  1902,  by  The  Mac¬ 
millan  Company,  New  York.  Reprinted  by  permission. 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY  237 

of  vividly  imagining  their  own  future,  and  of  the  determination  to 
control  it,  aim  to  cultivate  in  them  the  unity  of  thought  and  of  purpose 
that  distinguishes  life  properly  so  called  from  a  mere  succession  of  un¬ 
organized  and  unrelated  acts  and  sensations.  The  philanthropies  that 
aid  in  the  formation  and  successful  conduct  of  the  home  seek  to  secure 
for  the  individual  that  broadening  of  the  conception  of  life  that  comes 
from  the  habitual  and  active  subordination  of  one’s  individual  and 
private  aims  to  the  life  of  the  family.  The  philanthropy  that  has  dealt 
directly  with  children  has,  unconsciously  and  independently,  redis¬ 
covered  the  great  educational  truths  that  life  grows  by  expression,  by 
doing  and  not  by  receiving,  and  that  child  life  and  family  life  are  one. 
It  seeks,  by  promoting  the  activities,  such  as  sloyd  and  outdoor  games, 
which  make  the  deepest  emotional  appeal  to  the  nature  of  the  child, 
to  call  into  fullest  and  most  vital  activity  all  the  power  that  is  in  him ; 
and  it  aims  by  its  introduction  of  the  kindergarten  into  the  school, 
by  the  reverential  attitude  expressed  in  all  its  dealings  with  family 
life,  and  by  relating  as  far  as  possible  every  activity  to  it,  to  develop 
the  child  as  a  child,  as  a  member  of  a  family  and  the  inhabitant  of  a 
home,  and  not  as  an  unrelated  and  irresponsible  social  atom  or  out¬ 
sider.  For  grown  people  philanthropy  aims,  by  trade  teaching,  by 
forms  of  partnership,  by  village  industries,  to  make  men’s  daily  work 
an  expression  of  thought  and  character,  a  part  of  life,  not  a  squander¬ 
ing  of  life’s  best  hours  on  a  task  alien,  extraneous  to  life  and  making 
no  contribution  to  it.  Finally,  in  its  efforts  on  behalf  of  adults  out¬ 
side  of  business  and  the  home,  philanthropy  is  beginning  to  show  at 
least  so  much  of  educational  insight  as  is  implied  in  seeking  to  make 
of  the  individual,  not  a  social  atom  in  whom  life  and  purpose  have 
been  starved  down  to  the  narrow  limits  of  unrelated  individual  exist¬ 
ence,  but  a  member  of  a  family  and  a  citizen. 

In  short,  constructive  philanthropy  seeks  to  intensify  life  by  pro¬ 
moting  activity  toward  objects  at  once  more  definite  and  more  inclu¬ 
sive,  objects  embracing  first  the  individual’s  own  future  definitely 
conceived,  and  then  the  larger  whole  of  the  family,  and  finally  of  the 
state.  Such  is  its  nature  and  essence ;  but  the  subject  has  certain 
conventional,  and,  from  the  philosophical  point  of  view,  arbitrary, 
limitations  which  must  be  noted. 

First  and  especially,  I  wish  to  say  that  I  do  not  seek  to  arrogate 
to  the  class  of  effort  and  achievement  of  which  I  am  to  write  a 


238 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


monopoly  of  the  titles  "constructive”  and  "preventive,”  which  does 
not  properly  belong  to  it. 

Constructive  and  preventive  work  may  be  divided  into  two  classes, 
one  dealing  with  the  question  of  who  shall  be  born,  and  the  other  with 
the  question  of  what  shall  happen  to  people  after  they  are  born.  Of 
these  two  classes  of  work  the  biologists  tell  us  alternately  that  the 
former  is  the  more  important  way  of  producing  permanent  and  cumu¬ 
lative  results,  and  that  it  is  the  only  way ;  and  yet  direct  preventive 
work  of  this  kind — the  sterilization  of  the  insane,  the  feeble-minded, 
the  epileptic,  the  morally  impotent,  and  the  incorrigibly  vicious — 
belongs  to  that  part  of  philanthropy  which  is  generally  considered 
farthest  removed  from  the  preventive,  namely,  that  which  deals  with 
the  more  hopeless  classes. 

Furthermore,  all  good  work  which  we  ordinarily  class  as  "treat¬ 
ment”  is  really  largely  constructive.  The  friendly  visitor  to  a  poor 
family  is  laying  the  foundations  for  a  healthy  and  successful  life  in 
the  children ;  he  is  also  filling  a  place  that  would  otherwise  probably 
be  filled  by  unwise  public  relief,  and  is  thus  indirectly  preventing  the 
positive  culture  of  pauperism. 

Nor  is  it  any  part  of  my  task  to  tell  of  those  principal  constructive 
forces  which  are  found  in  our  every-day  political  and  business  life. 
If  a  man  leaves  the  town  or  the  part  of  the  city  where  he  was  brought 
up  and  goes  to  live  in  a  college  settlement  to  take  part  in  recognized 
philanthropic  effort,  he  comes  within  my  subject ;  but  if  he  stays  at 
home,  goes  on  his  school  committee  and  board  of  selectmen,  attends 
primary  conventions,  and  in  general  does  his  share  of  the  public  work 
to  be  done,  his  service,  although  perhaps  it  is  the  most  important 
constructive  work  that  is  done  at  all,  is  regarded  as  being  a  matter  of 
course,  becomes  merged  in  the  larger  subject  of  good  citizenship,  and 
is  not  classed  as  philanthropic. 

And  in  general,  as  soon  as  a  social  service  has  become  an  estab¬ 
lished  and  fully  recognized  part  of  our  public  or  private  duties,  it 
ceases  to  come  within  the  present  subject.  When  public  schools  were 
started  in  this  country,  they  were,  and  still  remain,  the  most  impor¬ 
tant  step  ever  taken  in  the  way  of  constructive  philanthropy,  but  they 
have  now  become  a  matter  of  course,  and  are  not  included  here,  while 
such  recent  extensions  of  the  same  principle  as  are  found  in  our 
vacation  schools  and  trade  schools  do  come  within  the  subject,  simply 


THE  ROLE  OF  PRIVATE  ACTIVITY  239 

because  they  are  new.  It  is,  in  short,  only  with  such  constructive  or 
preventive  work  as  is  a  part  of  the  new  growth  on  the  ever-growing 
tree  of  social  life  that  we  have  to  deal. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  beneficent  activities  undertaken 
for  purely  business  motives,  of  which  the  social  effects  are  wholly 
incidental,  are  not  classed  as  philanthropic  ;  nevertheless,  for  the  sake 
of  proportion  and  of  the  relations  of  things  we  must  remember  how 
important  these  are.  Thus,  I  shall  speak  a  great  deal  in  what  follows1 
of  new  developments  of  opportunity  for  play  and  exercise,  but  it  is 
important  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  evolution  of  the  bicycle,  of  which 
I  shall  say  nothing,  has  done  far  more  in  that  direction  than  all  our 
philanthropic  efforts  put  together. 

Finally,  in  order  to  understand  the  philanthropy  of  the  present  day, 
it  is  necessary  to  note  that  its  motive  has  shifted  and  is  shifting,  from 
a  motive  felt  by  one  class  to  do  good  to  another  class,  into  a  motive 
that  can  be  entered  into  by  all,  which  takes  as  its  object  not  the 
helping  of  one  sort  of  people,  but  the  building  up  of  the  better  life  of 
the  community.  It  is  no  longer  what  I  can  do  for  you,  but  what  we 
can  all  do  for  ourselves  and  our  country. 


1  Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy ,  chaps,  vii-xiii. 


CHAPTER  X 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 
31.  Social  Self-Control1 

Assuming  that  general  sociology,  whatever  else  it  may  comprise,  is 
particularly  concerned  with  the  phenomenon  of  social  self-control,2 
including  under  this  term  the  social  determination  of  the  composition 
of  the  community,  the  control  of  conduct,  the  promotion  of  efficiency, 
the  shaping  of  social  organization  and  the  determination  of  general 
policies,  we  may  further  look  at  the  whole  subject  in  certain  other 
lights,  hoping  so  to  get  a  more  rounded  notion  of  what  social  self- 
control  is,  how  it  arises,  what  it  does  and  by  what  methods  it  may 
be  subjected  to  effective  scientific  study. 

All  nations  compel  their  subjects  to  live  under  restraints  and  to 
perform  prescribed  acts.  As  far  as  their  observed  conduct  goes,  sub¬ 
jects  must  be  loyal,  whether  or  not  they  are  patriotic  at  heart.  In  a 
lesser  degree  the  modern  nations  constrain  their  subjects  in  accordance 
with  some  prevailing  idea  of  the  common  good.  A  protective  tariff, 
for  example,  does  not  altogether  prevent,  but  it  restricts,  the  purchase 
of  desired  commodities  produced  abroad. 

Within  the  broad  limits  fixed  by  national  policy,  states  and  munici¬ 
palities  regulate  the  individual  lives  of  their  citizens  in  endless  detail. 
From  birth  to  death  the  pressure  of  organized  society  is  hourly  felt 
by  its  conscious  units.  Parental  authority  is  restrained  within  bounds 
which  the  state  prescribes.  At  the  command  of  the  state  the  child  is 
taught  and  drilled.  Growing  to  manhood,  he  orders  his  walk  and 
conversation  as  the  state  instructs,  or  he  languishes  in  jail. 

1From  Studies  in  the  Theory  of  Human  Society  (pp.  200-208),  by  Franklin 
H.  Giddings,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Sociology  and  the  History  of  Civiliza¬ 
tion  in  Columbia  University.  Copyright,  1922,  by  The  Macmillan  Company.  Re¬ 
printed  by  permission. 

2  In  employing  this  term  I  am  not  trying  to  improve  upon  the  phrase  made 
familiar  through  Professor  Ross’s  admirable  book  on  Social  Control  but  am  only 
examining  some  aspects  of  social  control  more  particularly. 

240 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


241 


If  the  citizen,  thus  reared  and  moulded  by  an  external  power  mani¬ 
festing  itself  through  government  and  law,  happens  to  be  a  religious 
as  well  as  a  political  animal,  he  finds  himself  subjected  to  further  rules 
and  orders.  The  church  to  which  he  belongs  exacts  an  obedience 
sanctioned  by  penalties  which  may  be  as  fearsome  to  his  mind  as  are 
the  fines  and  imprisonments  imposed  by  a  secular  power.  If  he  earns 
his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  he  discovers  that  he  is  only  partly 
free  to  work  as  he  pleases,  or  when  or  as  long  as  he  pleases,  or  to  make 
such  contracts  as  his  own  best  judgment  approves.  The  "walking 
delegate  ”  finds  him  out  and  instructs  him  in  the  ethics  of  industrial 
solidarity.  If  in  idleness  he  consumes  the  substance  that  other  men 
have  provided  and,  in  the  quiet  of  his  club,  seeks  refuge  from  the 
over-regulated  life  of  a  Philistine  world,  even  there  he  encounters  the 
rules  committee  taking  cognizance  of  his  language  and  his  drinks, 
and  standing  ready  to  exclude  him  if  he  oversteps  the  line  of  that 
conduct  which  is  reputable  among  gentlemen. 

In  barbarian  and  in  savage  communities  the  collective  regulation 
of  life  is  not  less  but  greater  than  it  is  in  the  civilized  state.  The 
bounds  that  may  not  be  overstepped  are  narrow  and  dread.  Imme¬ 
morial  custom  is  inflexible,  and  half  of  all  the  possible  joys  of  existence 
are  forbidden  and  taboo. 

Even  in  animal  bands  and  herds,  individual  behavior  is  constrained. 
Inadequate  or  obnoxious  members  of  the  company  are  abandoned, 
expelled,  or  killed  by  their  fellows.  We  do  not  presume  that  in  animal 
groups  there  is  any  cooperative  understanding  in  these  matters.  We 
cannot  suppose  that  there  is.  But  through  like  response  to  the  same 
stimulus  or  to  similar  stimuli,  through  suggestion  and  impression,  a 
real  although  non-reasoned  cooperation  is  effected.  While,  therefore, 
we  may  not  say  that  animal  society  abides  by  rules,  we  observe  that 
it  lives  by  habits  from  which  a  member  departs  only  at  the  risk  of  life. 

There  would  be  no  excuse  for  bringing  forward  observations  so 
commonplace  as  these  if  the  general  truth  which  they  thrust  upon  us 
had  not  been  very  nearly  left  out  of  consideration  in  our  attempts  to 
establish  the  broad  conceptions  of  a  science  of  society.  Whatever  else 
society  is,  it  is  a  group  of  units  and  relations  which  collectively  acts 
under  self-direction.  It  not  only  manifests  a  continuing  process,  as 
brain  and  nervous  system  manifest  the  processes  of  mind,  as  organic 
matter  manifests  the  processes  of  life,  but  also,  like  living  matter 


242 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


and  like  mind,  it  controls  its  own  processes.  Society  constrains. 
Unconsciously  at  first,  but  consciously  in  its  later  and  higher  develop¬ 
ment,  it  brings  pressure  to  bear  upon  its  component  units.  It  incites 
and  restrains  them.  It  trains  and  moulds  them.  It  conforms  them  to 
a  norm  or  type  and  sets  limits  to  their  variation  from  it. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  generalization  of  significance.  Society  is  a  type 
or  norm  or  mode,  which  in  a  measure  controls  the  variations  from  itself. 

In  thus  functioning,  society,  by  trial  and  error  and  by  rational 
effort,  carries  further  and  brings  to  greater  precision  that  process 
which  in  its  unconscious  mode  we  call  natural  selection.  In  the 
organic  struggle  for  existence  those  individuals  and  those  groups  sur¬ 
vive  which  are  adapted  to  the  conditions  under  which  they  dwell. 
This  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  organisms  which  in  some 
fortunate  way  combine  certain  structures,  qualities,  and  traits,  and 
which,  therefore,  conform  closely  to  a  type  that  happens  to  be  suited 
to  a  given  place,  can  live  there;  while  individuals  or  groups  that 
vary  too  widely  from  this  type  sooner  or  later  fail  there  to  perpetuate 
their  race.  Or,  to  put  it  in  yet  another  way,  in  every  inhabitable 
region  there  is  an  environmental  constraint,  compelling  conformity  of 
organic  structure  and  of  life  to  certain  adapted  or  adaptable  types, 
from  which  variation  is  possible  only  within  somewhat  definite  limits. 

It  is  because  of  this  conformity  to  type  that  society  arises.  Typical 
units  or  individuals  of  a  given  species  or  variety  are  alike  as  far  as 
they  are  typical.  Animate  individuals  that  closely  resemble  one  an¬ 
other  respond  in  like  ways  to  the  same  given  stimulus  or  to  similar 
stimuli.  So  organized  and  responding,  they  want  the  same  things  and 
by  similar  behavior  try  to  obtain  them.  If  the  supply  is  inadequate 
for  all  and  some  part  of  it  can  be  obtained  by  individual  effort,  like 
acts  develop  into  competition.  If  the  supply  is  adequate  for  all  but 
cannot  easily  be  obtained  by  individual  effort,  the  like  efforts  of  many 
individuals  directed  toward  the  same  end  develop,  unconsciously  and 
accidentally  at  first,  but  afterwards,  in  mankind,  rationally,  into 
cooperation.  In  either  case,  those  adaptations  which  the  animate 
organism,  in  common  with  all  others,  makes  directly  to  its  environ¬ 
ment  in  general,  are  supplemented  by  a  set  of  highly  complicated 
adjustments  made  to  the  similar  adaptations  of  other  units  like  itself. 

These  adjustments  of  animate  individuals  to  the  like  adaptations 
of  other  individuals  of  their  own  kind  are  the  bases  of  social  relations. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


243 

Repeated  and  developed  into  habits,  they  create  and  establish  those 
relationships  which  we  call  social  organization. 

The  similarity  which  is  antecedent  to  all  these  adjustments  and 
relations  becomes  to  some  extent  an  object  of  consciousness  in  all 
associating  creatures  of  the  higher  varieties.  Appearing  first  as  sym¬ 
pathy,  it  develops  into  a  perception  of  likeness  and  at  length,  in 
mankind,  into  a  more  or  less  rationalized  understanding  of  resem¬ 
blances  and  differences,  of  agreements  and  dissensions.  Step  by  step 
with  this  evolution  of  a  consciousness  of  kind,  the  importance  of 
:,kind”  itself  is  apprehended.  Fundamental  identities  or  similarities 
of  nature  and  purpose,  of  instinct  and  habit,  of  mental  and  moral 
qualities,  of  capacities  and  abilities,  are  recognized  as  factors  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  To  the  extent  that  safety  and  prosperity  de¬ 
pend  upon  group  cohesion  and  cooperation,  they  are  seen  to  depend 
upon  such  conformity  to  type  as  may  suffice  to  insure  the  cohesion  and 
to  fulfil  the  cooperation. 

Conforming  to  the  requirement  of  group  life — which  itself  is  a 
product  of  the  struggle  for  existence — animals  instinctively  and  by 
habit,  human  beings  instinctively,  by  habit,  and  rationally,  manifest 
a  dominant  antipathy  to  those  variations  from  type  which  attract 
attention.  There  are  striking  exceptions  to  this  rule,  as  there  are  to 
nearly  all  rules  of  behavior  by  organic  units.  But  the  rule  is  beyond 
question.  From  the  insects  to  the  highest  mammals,  individuals  de¬ 
formed  or  queer  are  commonly  objects  of  attack  and  may  be  put  to 
death  by  their  fellows.  Death  or  abandonment  usually  overtakes  the 
conspicuous  variates  among  savages  and  barbarians,  while  in  civilized 
communities  they  are  objects  of  suspicion  and  avoidance,  or  of 
guardianship  or  restraint,  according  to  the  state  of  enlightenment  and 
the  degree  of  humane  feeling. 

How  far  individual  conduct  in  swarms  of  insects  and  in  bands  of 
gregarious  animals  is  forced  into  conformity  to  type  by  an  instinctive 
adjustment,  distinct  from  a  circumstantial  constraint,  it  is  not  possible 
on  the  basis  of  present  knowledge  to  say.  That  the  uniformity  of 
human  conduct  in  savage  and  barbarian  communities  is  immediately 
a  product  of  social  constraint — largely  spontaneous,  imitative  and 
unconscious,  but  also  partly  conscious  and  deliberate — and  only  re¬ 
motely  and  indirectly  a  product  of  environmental  or  circumstantial 
constraint,  is  a  fact  too  familiar  to  call  for  demonstration.  By  the 


244 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


conscious  cooperation  of  elders  in  directing  the  rearing  of  children  by 
young  parents,  by  organized  initiation  ceremonies,  by  clan  and  tribal 
councils,  each  new  generation  is  remorselessly  trained  in  those  beliefs, 
habits  and  loyalties  which  the  group  regards  as  vital  to  its  existence. 
Carefully  analyzed,  the  entire  mass  of  inculcations  and  restrictions 
whereby  individual  behavior  is  controlled  in  uncivilized  society  may 
be  seen  to  be  a  means  of  enforcing  conformity  to  type,  of  recognizing 
and  maintaining  a  "kind,”  for  the  ulterior  purpose  of  ensuring  group 
cohesion  and  cooperative  efficiency. 

The  restraints,  the  inculcations,  the  obedience-compelling  devices 
of  civilized  society  are  so  varied  and  so  interlaced  that  they  easily 
mislead,  and  it  is  only  after  long  and  comprehensive  study  of  them 
that  one  begins  to  grasp  their  nature  and  function.  Stripped  of  all 
adventitious  features,  they  one  and  all  are  means  to  the  same  general 
end  which  is  served  by  social  constraint  in  barbarian  and  in  savage 
communities.  They  determine,  limit  and  control  variation  from  type, 
now  extending  its  range,  now  narrowing  it  and  compelling  a  closer 
conformity. 

A  word  must  here  be  added  regarding  the  consequences  of  social 
control.  Society  constrains.  What  are  the  effects  of  constraint? 

The  proximate  results  are  new  or  wider  uniformities  of  behavior 
and  ultimately  of  character.  Life  is  made  so  difficult  for  the  variates 
that  stray  too  far  from  type  that  they  go  down  in  the  struggle. 
Society,  in  a  word,  creates  artificial  conditions  of  existence  which  affect 
selection,  as  natural  conditions  do,  by  determining  a  selective  death- 
rate.  When,  for  example,  a  Christian  civilization  compels  a  savage 
population  to  wear  clothes,  it  kills  off  those  individuals  whose  viscera 
cannot  adapt  themselves  to  the  unaccustomed  burden.  When  society 
increases  its  educational  pressure,  it  eliminates  some  who  cannot  en¬ 
dure  further  nerve  strain  or  whose  reproductive  powers  fail  under  the 
increased  requirement  of  individuation.  Social  constraint,  then,  creates 
artificial  conditions,  which  act  selectively  upon  the  associated  units. 

From  a  human  point  of  view,  such  selective  action  may  be  good  or 
evil.  It  may  tend  to  produce  and  to  perpetuate  a  stock  of  which 
intelligent  minds  think  well,  or  one  of  which  they  think  ill.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  evolutionary  process,  the  selected  and  surviving 
stock  may  be  one  which  perpetuates  its  line  with  diminishing  or  with 
increasing  cost  to  the  individual.  Assuming  that  race  perpetuation 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


245 


with  diminishing  cost  to  the  individual,  or  with  actual  increase  of 
individual  opportunity  and  happiness,  is  worth  while  and  is,  sub¬ 
stantially,  the  thing  which  mankind  calls  progress,  we  may  say  that 
social  constraint  makes  for  progress  or  against  it. 

Summarizing  the  foregoing  observations,  we  note  that  the  uncon¬ 
scious  evolutionary  process  in  nature  creates  types.  Because  they 
conform  more  or  less  closely  to  type,  animate  organisms  of  the  same 
variety  or  kind  want  the  same  things  and  in  like  ways  try  to  obtain 
them.  The  various  primary  adaptations  to  environment,  therefore, 
are  inevitably  supplemented  by  adjustments  made  by  each  individual 
to  the  similar  adaptations  of  fellow-individuals.  Group  relations  in 
which  both  competitive  and  cooperative  activities  are  carried  on — 
unconsciously  and  only  accidentally  at  first,  but  presently,  in  the 
human  species,  deliberately — therefore  necessarily  appear.  Society 
comes  into  existence.  The  conscious  units  of  human  society  become 
increasingly  aware  of  differences  and  resemblances  among  themselves. 
They  apprehend  the  extent  of  their  conformity  to  type  or  kind.  The 
belief  arises  among  them  that  in  most  instances  marked  departure 
from  type  is  dangerous  to  the  safety  of  the  group  or  is  a  limitation 
of  cooperative  efficiency.  Conformity  to  type  is  regarded  as  con¬ 
tributing  both  to  the  safety  and  to  the  efficiency  of  the  group.  Out 
of  this  notion  grow  conscious  efforts  to  increase  conformity,  to  scruti¬ 
nize  the  "kinds”  and  to  limit  the  range  of  variation.  A  social  con¬ 
straint  is  consciously  evolved  which  exerts  its  pressure  upon  all 
component  units  of  the  group.  Like  environmental  constraints,  social 
constraint  affects  selection.  In  the  long  run  it  makes  itself  felt  in  the 
selective  death-rate.  The  kind  or  type  that  survives  under  social 
pressure  is  believed  by  the  conscious  units  of  society  to  be  relatively 
efficient  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  It  is  supposed  also  to  be  rela¬ 
tively  individualized.  A  group  or  community  in  which  increasing 
individuation  is  secured  without  imperiling  race  maintenance  thinks 
of  itself  as  progressive. 

The  means  of  constraint  that  society  uses,  as  we  learn  early  in  life 
by  individual  experience,  are  rewards  and  punishments.  By  praise 
and  blame,  by  avoidance  and  rebuke,  by  indulgence  and  license,  by 
penance  and  fine,  by  suspension  and  expulsion,  by  corporal  punish¬ 
ment  and  maiming,  by  imprisonment  and  execution,  men  are  forced 
to  desist,  to  obey,  to  help ;  their  conduct  is  educated  into  habits ;  their 


246 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


efforts  are  stimulated  or  goaded  to  acceptable  degrees  of  intensity  and 
persistence ;  their  characters  are  moulded  to  approved  types. 

For  all  these  processes  of  constraint  and  regulation  in  their  entirety, 
society  has  its  own  descriptive  names.  Collectively  they  constitute 
the  thing  familiarly  known  as  discipline,  and  their  objective  product, 
conformity  of  behavior,  is  morale. 

Upon  the  creation  and  perfecting  of  discipline,  and  upon  the  stand¬ 
ardizing  of  behavior  and  the  selection  of  character  by  means  of  dis¬ 
cipline,  society  has  directed  conscious  efforts  from  the  beginning.  At 
first  blunderingly,  afterwards  more  or  less  skillfully,  it  has  discovered, 
applied,  and  tested  disciplinary  measures.  The  larger  number  and  the 
best  of  them  have  been  folkways.  Stateways  have  been  cruder,  often 
cruel  and  often  disastrous,  but  sometimes  necessary  and  effective. 
But  whether  folkways  or  stateways  the  particular  methods  constitut¬ 
ing  discipline  have  been  employed  in  the  conviction  that  much  con¬ 
formity  to  kind  or  type  or  standard  is  essential  to  security  and  to 
cooperative  efficiency.  *  The  object  in  view  from  the  first  has  been  to 
diminish  the  failures  and  to  multiply  the  successes  of  associating 
human  beings,  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

If  then  we  say  in  the  language  of  every-day  life,  that  society  is  an 
organization  for  the  promotion  of  well-being  and  efficiency  by  means 
of  standardization  and  discipline,  we  say  the  same  thing  as  when  in 
evolutionist  terms  we  said  that  society  is  a  type,  controlling  variation 
from  itself  for  its  own  survival  and  further  evolution.  Discipline, 
from  the  evolutionist  point  of  view,  is  a  distinct  phenomenon,  differ¬ 
ing  in  kind,  rather  than  in  mere  degree,  from  all  others.  Motion,  the 
activity  of  all  matter,  inorganic  or  organic ;  metabolism,  the  activity 
of  organic  matter ;  response  to  stimulus,  the  activity  of  animate  or¬ 
ganic  matter ;  discipline,  the  activity  of  type-conforming  conscious 
groups — this  is  the  series  of  natural  phenomena.  Physics  and  chem¬ 
istry,  biology,  psychology  and  anthropology,  sociology — these  are  the 
corresponding  sciences. 

Material  for  the  descriptive  and  historical  study  of  the  evolution 
of  discipline  and  of  the  relations  of  discipline  to  efficiency,  to  individ¬ 
uation  and  to  survival,  is  abundant,  but  as  a  phenomenon  of  control, 
by  a  type,  of  variation  from  itself,  it  calls  for  quantitative  study  by 
the  statistical  method,  since  type  as  it  appears  among  natural  objects, 
including  forms  of  plant  and  animal  life,  as  it  appears  in  mental 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


247 


processes  and  in  conduct,  and  as  it  appears  in  the  groupings  and  the 
collective  activities  of  individuals  socially  organized,  can  always  be 
expressed  in  the  statistical  terms  of  "frequency”  and  "mode.”  In 
other  words,  a  type  or  norm  can  be  resolved  into  numerical  elements. 

The  question  may  naturally  and  properly  be  raised,  however, 
whether  numerical  measures  of  social  constraint  would  afford  us  any 
knowledge  that  we  could  not  more  directly  obtain  by  other  methods 
of  inquiry.  The  corresponding  question  was  raised  when  statistical 
methods  were  introduced  in  biology  and  in  psychology.  We  may  con¬ 
fidently  anticipate  that  the  conclusive  answer  which  trial  and  demon¬ 
stration  have  afforded  in  those  sciences  will  be  reached  and  accepted 
in  sociology  also. 

A  simple  illustration  may  help  to  make  the  point  clear.  The 
temperature  of  the  human  body  in  health  fluctuates  within  narrow 
limits  about  the  normal  of  98.5°  Fahrenheit.  Under  the  physiological 
disturbance  of  disease  or  of  shock,  the  range  of  variation  is  greatly 
widened,  and  every  one  acquainted  with  modern  medical  practice,  in 
hospitals  and  elsewhere,  knows  how  closely  the  temperature  curve  is 
watched  by  nurses  and  physicians.  In  most  cases  the  fact  of  illness 
or  of  shock  is  known  independently  of  any  scrutiny  of  the  chart.  But 
there  are  instances,  sometimes  critical  ones,  in  which  the  temperature 
fluctuation  affords  the  first  warning ;  and  in  all  cases  it  affords  the 
warning  that  possesses  the  qualities  of  exactness  and  degree,  and 
upon  precisely  these  qualities  the  issues  of  life  and  death  may  turn. 
In  other  cases  the  condition  of  the  system  is  made  known  by  a  blood 
test  that  is  statistical  in  form,  consisting  in  a  count  of  corpuscles 
exhibiting  certain  characteristics ;  in  yet  others  by  records  of  heart 
action  and  of  arterial  resistance. 

It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  social  constraint  which  in  any 
given  community  bears  upon  individuals  and  upon  component  or 
constituent  groups  is,  under  ordinary  conditions,  of  a  degree  and  an 
extent  that  may  properly  be  described  as  normal,  and  that  any  con¬ 
siderable  fluctuation  from  normal,  could  we  measure  it,  would  im¬ 
mediately  make  known  to  us  the  action  of  disturbing  forces.  The 
value  of  such  knowledge  can  hardly  be  overestimated.  The  question, 
how  much  restraint,  how  much  liberty,  how  much  conformity  to  type, 
how  much  variation  from  it,  are  conducive  to  the  general  welfare,  is 
the  supremely  important  question  in  all  issues  of  public  policy.  The 


248 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


right  answer  to  it  turns  upon  the  determination  of  a  previous  question, 
namely,  what  is  normal  social  constraint  in  a  given  community,  at  a 
given  stage  of  its  evolution,  and  what  at  a  given  moment  is  the  actual 
range  of  fluctuation  ? 

To  obtain,  then,  determinations  of  normal  social  constraint  for 
modern  communities,  including  municipalities,  commonwealths,  and 
nations,  and  to  perfect  the  methods  of  measuring  fluctuations  must,  I 
think,  be  regarded  as  an  important  object  of  sociological  effort  in  the 

immediate  future. 

<» 

32.  The  Means  and  Criteria  of  Social  Control1 

In  respect  to  their  fundamental  character,  it  is  possible  to  divide 
most  of  the  supports  of  order  into  two  groups.  Such  instruments  of 
control  as  public  opinion,  suggestion,  personal  ideal,  social  religion, 
art,  and  social  valuation  draw  much  of  their  strength  from  the  primal 
moral  feelings.  They  take  their  shape  from  sentiment  rather  than 
utility.  They  control  men  in  many  things  which  have  little  to  do  with 
the  welfare  of  society  regarded  as  a  corporation.  They  are  aimed  to 
realize  not  merely  a  social  order  but  what  one  might  term  a  moral 
order.  These  we  may  call  ethical. 

On  the  other  hand,  law,  belief,  ceremony,  education,  and  illusion 
need  not  spring  from  ethical  feelings  at  all.  They  are  frequently  the 
means  deliberately  chosen  in  order  to  reach  certain  ends.  They  are 
likely  to  come  under  the  control  of  the  organized  few,  and  be  used, 
whether  for  the  corporate  benefit  or  for  class  benefit,  as  the  tools  of 
policy.  They  may  be  termed  political,  using  the  word  "political”  in 
its  original  sense  of  "pertaining  to  policy.” 

Now,  the  prominence  of  the  one  group  or  the  other  in  the  regulative 
scheme  depends  upon  the  constitution  of  the  society.  The  political 
instruments  operating  through  prejudice  or  fear  will  be  preferred  : 

1.  In  proportion  as  the  population  elements  to  be  held  together  are 
antipathetic  and  jarring. 

2.  In  proportion  to  the  subordination  of  the  individual  will  and 
welfare  by  the  scheme  of  control. 

iBy  Edward  A.  Ross,  Ph.  D.,  LL.  D.,  Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University 
of  Wisconsin.  Adapted  from  Social  Control,  pp.  411-412,  41 7-431.  Copyright, 
1901,  by  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York.  Reprinted  by  permission. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


249 

3.  In  proportion  as  the  social  constitution  stereotypes  differences 
of  status. 

4.  In  proportion  as  the  differences  in  economic  condition  and  op¬ 
portunity  it  consecrates  are  great  and  cumulative. 

5.  In  proportion  as  the  parasitic  relation  is  maintained  between 
races,  classes,  or  sexes. 

In  confirmation  of  these  statements,  we  have  but  to  recall  that  the 
chief  influences  which  history  recognizes  as  stiffening  State,  Church, 
Hierarchy,  Tradition,,  are  conquest,  caste,  slavery,  serfdom,  gross 
inequalities  of  wealth,  military  discipline,  paternal  regimentation,  and 
race  antipathies  within  the  bosom  of  the  group.  The  disappearance 
of  any  one  of  these  conditions  permits  a  mellowing  and  liberalizing 
of  social  control. 

On  the  other  hand  the  ethical  instruments,  being  more  mild,  en¬ 
lightening,  and  suasive,  will  be  preferred : 

1.  In  proportion  as  the  population  is  homogeneous  in  race. 

2.  In  proportion  as  its  culture  is  uniform  and  diffused. 

3.  In  proportion  as  the  social  contacts  between  the  elements  in  the 
population  are  many  and  amicable. 

4.  In  proportion  as  the  total  burden  of  requirement  laid  upon  the 
individual  is  light. 

5.  In  proportion  as  the  social  constitution  does  not  consecrate  dis¬ 
tinctions  of  status  or  the  parasitic  relation,  but  conforms  to  common 
elementary  notions  of  justice. 

The  Limits  of  Social  Control 

Each  increment  of  social  interference  should  bring  more  benefit  to 
persons  as  members  of  society  than  it  entails  inconvenience  to  persons 
as  individuals. 

Social  interference  should  not  lightly  excite  against  itself  the  pas¬ 
sion  for  liberty. 

Social  interference  should  respect  the  sentiments  that  are  the  sup¬ 
port  of  natural  order. 

Social  interference  should  not  be  so  paternal  as  to  check  the  self¬ 
extinction  of  the  morally  ill-constituted. 

Social  interference  should  not  so  limit  the  struggle  for  existence  as 
to  nullify  the  selective  process. 


250 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


The  Criteria  of  Social  Control 1 

The  question  "How  should  society  impose  its  will?”  is  equivalent 
to  "How  can  society  tell  the  good  weapons  in  its  armory  from  those 
that  are  worn  out  or  obsolete  or  unserviceable  ?  ” 

This  summons  us  to  lay  down  criteria  for  judging  an  instrument  of 
control  as  good  or  bad. 

One  mark  of  a  good  disciplinary  agent  is  economy.  On  this  prin¬ 
ciple  a  method  that,  once  and  for  all,  moulds  character  is  supe¬ 
rior  to  one  that  deals  merely  with  conduct,  which  is  but  the  index 
of  character. 

Again,  the  superior  methods  of  control  are  inward.  An  external 
means,  such  as  punishment,  operates  only  so  long  as  it  is  inevitable. 

The  best  guarantee  of  a  stable  control  from  within  is  something 
that  reaches  at  once  feeling,  reason,  and  will.  To  be  widely  effective 
for  righteousness  a  religion  should  strike  the  chord  of  feeling,  but 
not  so  exclusively  as  Quakerism,  or  Shinto,  or  Neo-Catholicism,  or  the 
Religion  of  Humanity,  or  the  Salvationists. 

Simplicity  is  another  mark  of  the  great  agent  of  discipline.  Albeit 
beliefs  are  associated  with  many  of  the  means  of  control,  a  type  of 
restraint  when  it  gets  inextricably  entangled  with  a  particular  cos¬ 
mology  or  theology,  when  it  rests  squarely  upon  some  dogma  such  as 
the  Last  Judgment  or  the  Divine  Fatherhood  or  the  Unseen  Friend, 
must  be  regarded  askance,  however  transcendent  its  services. 

Still  another  test  of  good  control  is  spontaneity.  The  best  control 
is  that  which  rises  afresh  whenever  a  handful  of  persons  associate, 
which,  therefore,  cannot  be  cornered  and  monopolized  by  a  scheming 
class  or  profession. 

The  diffusion  of  control  is,  in  fact,  the  chief  security  against  its 
excess.  In  a  tribe  of  Kaffirs,  or  Bedouins,  if  the  rule  of  chief  or 
medicine  man  or  tribal  opinion  becomes  too  oppressive,  the  insub¬ 
ordinate  decamp,  and  join  some  other  tribe  or  form  a  band  of 
their  own. 

Accordingly  freedom  becomes  a  passion,  laissez  faire  a  dogma, 
skepticism  a  creed,  egoism  a  religion,  and  all  the  rills  of  opposition 
run  together  into  a  great  current  of  individualism  which  accompanies 
the  development  of  control  as  a  check  and  a  reminder. 

1  Admirably  vindicated  in  chapters  xxxi  and  xxxii  of  Ross,  Social  Control. — Ed. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


251 


33.  Intervention  of  the  State1 

The  last  century  has  witnessed'  a  process  of  change  in  the  social 
structure,  and  a  change  which  has  been  in  the  direction  of  growing 
complexity.  An  increasing  amount  of  work  has  been  thrown  on  the 
State  as  the  instrument  of  social  action  for  common  ends,  although 
the  political  theory  inherited  from  the  Eighteenth  Century  and  con¬ 
tinued  throughout  the  Nineteenth,  has  been  far  from  offering  any 
explanation  or  justification  for  this  tendency.  On  the  contrary,  the 
idea  of  the  age  has  been  to  leave  everything  so  far  as  possible  to  the 
control  of  private  enterprise.  Yet  in  spite  of  the  drag  of  a  laggard 
philosophy,  nothing  is  more  noticeable  in  the  history  of  the  last  two 
generations  than  the  repeated  extension  of  State  action  into  spheres 
which  had  been  regarded  as  properly  outside  of  its  interference,  if 
not  of  its  cognisance. 

The  intervention  of  the  State  gradually  changes  in  character,  partly 
in  response  to  forces  which  compel  government  action,  partly  by  the 
necessity  of  the  extended  action  itself.  But  the  change  in  character 
is  not  always  equal  to  the  change  in  function.  The  demand  for  State 
action  often  rests  on  foresight  of  what  the  State  will  become. 

But  side  by  side  with  a  process  of  increasing  complexity  in  the 
social  structure  has  come  also  a  deeper  view  of  society.  The  economic 
development  has  made  society  more  complicated  at  the  same  time 
that  the.  development  of  thought  has  prepared  men  to  understand 
the  complexity. 

I 

The  municipality  as  possible  instrument .  We  must  remember  that 
the  instrument  of  social  action  has  also  become  more  pliable.  State 
action  is  by  no  means  so  exclusively  action  of  a  central  executive  as 
it  used  to  be. 

We  find  also  that  the  municipality  ceases  to  be  regarded  merely  as 
an  instrument  for  doing  what  private  effort  cannot  do.  .  .  .  The 
creation  of  this  vigorous  instrument  of  public  administration  has  re¬ 
sulted  in  a  large  and  varied  demand  for  municipalisation,  for  munici¬ 
pal  trading,  and  for  municipal  medical  service. 

1  By  B.  Kirkman  Gray.  Adapted  from  Philanthropy  and  the  State,  or  Social 
Politics,  pp.  127-133.  P.  S.  King  &  Son,  London,  1908. 


252 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


The  development  of  civic  activity  may  be  regarded  in  another  light. 
It  is  not  only  a  matter  of  the  community  managing  its  own  affairs. 
The  city  is  also  a  centre  round  which  enthusiasm  rallies.  This  is  not 
a  thing  open  to  statistical  treatment,  nor  does  the  mood  of  loyal 
response  characterise  by  any  means  all  the  citizens.  Yet  it  is  a 
sociological  force  which  it  would  be  folly  to  overlook.  Where  this 
enthusiasm  is  evoked  it  prepares  the  way  for  a  new  attitude  towards 
all  those  problems  which  used  to  be  regarded  as  philanthropic.  The 
range  of  civic  action  tends  to  grow  wider  until  by  degrees  it  comes 
to  include  an  implicit  theory  of  communal  obligation  towards  the 
weaker  classes. 

This  is  a  process  which  is  bound  to  acquire  an  accelerating  momen¬ 
tum.  The  best  local  authorities  are  becoming  increasingly  capable ; 
they  are  proud  with  a  pride  which  often  goes  even  beyond  their 
merits.  They  do  not  mistrust  themselves  or  their  ability  to  undertake 
new  duties.  This  preparedness  is  matched  by  an  increasing  disposi¬ 
tion  to  use  this  instrument  for  all  it  is  worth.  People  come  to  doubt 
the  power  of  private  benevolence  to  deal  with  large  and  complicated 
evils,  such  as  sickness,  bodily  or  mental  defectiveness,  unemploy¬ 
ability,  and  the  other  forms  into  which  the  one  disease  of  exorbitant 
penury  breaks  forth.  Where  they  mistrust  the  private  purse  and  the 
fluctuating  efforts  of  charity,  they  put  confidence  in  the  power  of 
the  community,  and  in  the  possibility  of  a  transfigured  Department 
of  Health. 

These  are  among  the  forces  which  are  driving  the  State  to  extend 
its  sphere,  whether  through  Central  Government  or  Local  Authority. 

II 

When  we  consider  the  matter  more  closely  we  find  that  the  inter¬ 
vention  of  the  State  does  not  take  place  all  at  once,  nor  does  it  follow 
any  single  type.  We  may  indeed  distinguish  several  types.  Perhaps 
for  the  purpose  of  a  preliminary  analysis  it  will  be  sufficient  to  indi¬ 
cate  six  main  forms  into  which  one  or  other  kind  of  State  intervention 
will  pass. 

Annexation.  This  is  the  simplest  type  and  probably  the  one  which 
would  immediately  occur  to  most  people.  It  is  indeed  quite  possible 
that  some  think  of  this  and  nothing  else  when  they  hear  of  State  inter¬ 
vention.  The  public  authority  simply  steps  in  to  do  what  had  been 


SOCIAL  CONTROL 


253 


done  previously  by  private  persons,  if  indeed  it  had  been  done  at  all. 
Illustrations  may  be  found  in  the  cases  of  Lpnatic  Asylums  and  of 
Elementary  Education.  Neither  of  these  is  so  absolute  a  case  of  an¬ 
nexation  as  was  that  of  the  telegraph,1  to  turn  to  another  sphere,  that  of 
commercial  interests.  The  State  says,  "  I  will  send  telegrams  and  no  one 
else  shall  compete.”  That  is  annexation  in  its  most  complete  form. 

Partition.  Before  the  intervention  begins  the  whole  realm  is  occu¬ 
pied  by  private  enterprise,  so  far,  that  is,  as  it  is  occupied  at  all.  In 
time  voluntary  action  appears  inadequate  to  the  task,  usually  of 
course  because  the  work  is  seen  to  be  greater  than  was  supposed. 
Voluntary  action  is  left  to  act  in  one  part  of  the  field, — State  action 
is  resorted  to  in  another  part.  The  most  considerable  instance  of  what 
I  call  partition  is  found  in  connection  with  the  relief  of  sickness.  In 
1842  the  State  refused  subvention  to  a  fever  hospital ;  in  1906  society 
is  responsible  for  all  (notified)  infectious  disease,  and  through  its 
Poor  Law  Infirmaries  for  the  great  bulk  of  non-infectious  disease, 
leaving  to  private  benevolence  only  a  minor  share  in  the  whole  work. 

Co-operation.  The  relation  becomes  more  subtle.  The  State  takes 
account  of  the  whole  territory,  but  it  utilises  the  assistance  of  "philan¬ 
thropic  associations  or  benevolent  persons.”  Obviously  in  such  a  case 
the  dominant  power  will  be  official  and  public,  and  the  position  of 
the  individuals  will  be  restricted  and  subordinate.  One  good  in¬ 
stance  of  this  third  type  is  to  be  found  in  connection  with  the  prisons. 
Government  has,  though  only  recently,  assumed  full  responsibility  for 
all  prisoners,  while  they  are  in  prison ;  but  it  avails  itself  of  Prisoners’ 
Aid  Associations,  unofficial  visitors,  lecturers,  etc.  One  feature  of  our 
elementary  school  system  would  bring  it  under  this  head  of  co¬ 
operation,  that,  namely,  which  concerns  the  appointment  of  voluntary 
school  managers. 

Supervision.  This  type  has  features  in  common  with  the  last.  The 
State  controls  voluntary  work,  sets  the  task,  and  determines  the  con¬ 
ditions.  But  the  individuals  are  left  with  a  larger  amount  of  freedom. 
Certain  conditions  must  be  complied  with,  and  the  State  employs 
Inspectors  to  ensure  at  least  a  minimum  of  compliance.  The  Volun¬ 
tary  and  Denominational  School  was  an  instance  of  this  type  up  to 
the  time  of  the  Education  Act  of  1902.  The  Reformatory  movement 

1The  examples  cited  in  this  article  are  from  Great  Britain  unless  otherwise 
specified. —  Ed. 


254 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


is  also  a  case  in  point.  The  actual  executive  body  is  composed  of 
private  citizens  acting,  under  the  supervision  of  the  public  official. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  nothing  but  the  need  for 
financial  subsidies  would  reconcile  free-born  Englishmen  to  submit  to 
so  much  expert  direction  and  control  of  their  beneficent  activity. 

Co-ordination.  This  is  a  particularly  interesting  type  and  indicates 
the  complexity  of  some  of  our  modern  problems.  The  instance  in 
which  it  has  been  most  thoroughly  worked  out  is  that  of  the  Inebriate 
Homes.  Here  philanthropy  does  something  and  the  State  does  some¬ 
thing.  So  far  we  have  a  resemblance  to  the  previous  type  which  we 
called  partition,  which  should  be  distinguished  also  from  co-operative 
subordination.  In  that  case,  there  was  no  interdependence.  Volun¬ 
tary  hospitals  do  their  work  much  as  if  no  State  hospital  existed,  and 
the  State  in  its  turn  acts  pretty  much  as  if  there  were  no  Hospital 
Funds  and  Hospital  Collections.  It  is  not  so  with  inebriate  homes. 
There  are  three  kinds,  each  intended  for  a  particular  class  of  patients. 
One  .of  them  depends  on  private,  two  of  them  on  public,  action.  But 
each  of  them  is  regarded  as  essential  in  order  that  any  of  them  may 
function  successfully.  The  scheme  is  interesting  and  provides  the 
framework  for  a  really  valuable  work,  the  scheme,  I  say,  because  as 
everybody  knows,  the  actual  treatment  of  inebriates  needs  still  much 
extension  and  improvement. 

Delegation.  This  is  the  sixth  and  last  type.  The  State  so  far  recog¬ 
nises  the  claims  of  humanity  as  to  delegate  its  function.  That  it 
regards  the  work  as  properly  its  own  is  shown  by  its  nominating 
private  citizens  to  discharge  the  duty,  though  for  some  reason  or  other 
the  State  is  here  unwilling  to  be  its  own  executive,  it  may  be,  from  a 
lurking  remnant  of  the  older  philosophy  which  would  restrict  State 
action  within  the  narrowest  limits.  The  most  typical  illustration  of 
delegation  is  that  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Children.  The  Society  enjoys  a  Royal  Charter,  and  is  deputed  to  do 
work  which  is  properly  a  State  responsibility.  It  steps  in  to  do  the 
evaded  duty,  and  enjoys  a  modified  sanction  for  its  work.  It  thus 
occupies  an  ambiguous  position  between  a  public  and  a  private  body. 

The  Society  pleads  that  inasmuch  as  it  is  doing  public  work  at  an 
increasing  cost  it  should  receive  a  more  thorough  recognition,  and 
should  not  be  left  to  an  anxious  quest  for  subscriptions.  It  seems 
impossible  to  question  the  propriety  of  its  claim. 


CHAPTER  XI 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 

34.  Historic  Changes  of  Policy  and  the  Modern 
Concept  of  Social  Legislation1 

The  main  phases  of  evolution  which  are  summarized  in  the  cata¬ 
logue  of  changes  which  follows  are  perfectly  familiar ;  they  are  re¬ 
stated  simply  in  order  to  bring  out  pointedly  the  drift  of  modern 
legislative  thought  and  its  significance. 

They  arrange  themselves  naturally  under  a  few  principal  heads: 
the  recognition  of  the  right  of  personality ;  the  establishment  of  free¬ 
dom  of  thought ;  the  repression  of  unthrift  and  dissipation ;  the 
protection  of  public  health  and  safety ;  and  the  relief  from  social 
injustice. 

I.  The  Right  of  Personality 

t 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  legal  history  that  the  importance  of  status  as 
something  differentiated  from  personality  diminishes  as  we  proceed  from 
primitive  to  modern  law.  We  have  almost  attained  to  a  wiping  out  of 
personal  differences  in  relation  to  legal  rights ;  but  the  leveling  process 
is  in  many  respects  quite  recent,  and,  so  far  as  it  goes,  has  in  the  main 
been  fully  accomplished  only  in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Let  us  briefly  review  the  principal  phases  in  the  establishment  of 
free  and  equal  personal  status. 

i.  The  abrogation  of  personal  slavery  and  serfdom.  These  have 
practically  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  civilized  earth.  By  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  all  personal  unfreedom  had  ceased 
to  exist  in  Western  Europe,  and  Russian  serfdom  was  abolished  in 
the  early  sixties.  About  contemporaneous  was  the  fall  of  negro  slavery 
in'the  United  States,  which  was  made  legally  perfect  by  the  Thirteenth 

1  By  Ernst  Freund,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Jurisprudence  and  Public  Law  in  The 
University  of  Chicago  Law  School.  Adapted  from  Standards  of  American  Legis¬ 
lation,  pp.  7-33.  Copyright,  1917,  by  The  University  of  Chicago  Press. 

255 


256 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


Amendment,  proclaimed  in  December,  1865 ;  the  emancipation  of 
negro  slaves  held  by  whites  had  begun  in  1833  in  the  British  colonies, 
and  was  completed  by  the  act  of  Brazil  in  1888.  European  powers 
still  tolerate  customary  forms  of  domestic  slavery  within  their  spheres 
of  influence  in  Africa ;  but  even  here  the  slave  trade  is  suppressed  by 
the  Brussels  convention  of  1890. 

2.  The  disappearance  of  legal  class  distinctions..  If  we  ignore  the 
anomalous  and  rapidly  waning  status  of  our  own  tribal  Indians  as 
wards  of  the  nation,  Russia1  alone  of  the  Western  nations  continues  to 
divide  her  people  into  classes  having  different  legal  capacity  (nobility, 
clergy,  citizens,  peasants,  besides  Asiatics  and  Jews).  France  did 
away  with  class  disabilities  as  a  result  of  the  great  Revolution  in  1789, 
while  in  Germany  the  last  traces  of  peasants’  disabilities  did  not  dis¬ 
appear  until  1867.  Blackstone  gives  in  his  Commentaries  a  list  of 
classes  of  the  community  which  (barring  the  political  privileges  of  the 
peerage)  impresses  us  as  formal  and  practically  insignificant;  it  has 
indeed  been  one  of  the  chief  merits  of  the  common  law  that  for  many 
centuries  past  it  has  been  singularly  free  of  class  distinctions.  This 
rule  of  equality  was  inherited  by  the  American  law.  Because  the 
principle  of  equality  had  never  been  a  great  issue  in  the  constitutional 
history  of  the  English  people  it  received  only  a  perfunctory  recogni¬ 
tion  in  the  early  bills  of  rights ;  its  deliberate  and  distinct  formulation 
by  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  was  due  to  the  race  conflict  of  the 
South  and  came  only  after  the  Civil  War.  The  practical  acceptance 
of  the  principle  thus  long  preceded  its  formal  declaration.  The  prin¬ 
ciple  encounters  difficulty  only  in  its  application  to  the  colored  race ; 
and  in  the  legal  enforcement  of  reciprocal  discrimination  and  segrega¬ 
tion  in  marriage,  in  education,  and  in  transportation  in  public  con¬ 
veyances  denies  the  principle  in  substance,  while  claiming  to  respect 
it.  The  demand  for  legal  penalties  shows  that  the  social  sanction  is 
not  believed  to  be  sufficiently  strong  to  maintain  a  separation  strongly 
supported  by  the  sentiment  of  the  dominant  class. 

Apart  from  this  anomaly,  however,  in  the  modern  world  the  acci¬ 
dent  of  birth  as  a  member  of  a  social  class  neither  carries  privilege  nor 
entails  disability  in  the  capacity  to  acquire  or  hold  legal  rights. 

3.  The  recognition  of  the  legal  rights  of  aliens.  In  the  ancient 
Roman  law  alien  and  enemy  were,  alike,  covered  by  the  same  term — 

1This  statement  was  written  before  the  Russian  Revolution  of  1917. —  Ed. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


257 


hostis — and  were  entirely  without  legal  rights.  Today  by  comity  or 
treaty  the  alien  enjoys  practically  the  same  civil  capacity  as  the 
citizen.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  guaranties  of  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  apply  to  all  persons  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  states, 
and  not  merely  to  citizens. 

The  important  right  of  immigration  and  settlement  is  not  necessa¬ 
rily  included  in  the  civil  capacity  of  the  alien.  In  many  countries  the 
matter  is  not  of  sufficient  importance  to  have  called  for  special  regu¬ 
lation,  but  where  immigration  assumes  considerable  dimensions  the 
right  has  been  qualified  by  restrictive  legislation.  Our  own  legislation 
is  typical  in  that  respect.  In  the  absolute  exclusion  of  Chinese 
laborers  disabilities  of  race,  class,  and  alienage  are  combined,  and  this 
legislation  serves  as  a  warning  that  the  modern  principle  of  equality 
is  by  no  means  of  absolute  operation. 

4.  The  emancipation  from  domestic  subjection.  The  common  law 
of  England  practically  reproduced  for  the  wife  the  dependent  status 
which  the  older  Roman  law  assigned  to  all  the  members  of  the  family 
except  the  head.  It  even  aggravated  the  dependency  by  denying  to  the 
wife  the  capacity  to  perform  disposing  or  binding  acts  (coverture; 
feme  covert).  It  is  significant  that  the  old  law  of  serfdom  furnished 
to  English  lawyers  analogies  for  the  relation  of  husband  and  wife. 
The  courts  of  equity  managed,  however,  to  give  to  the  married  woman 
a  very  considerable  protection  in  the  enjoyment  of  her  property. 

The  law  of  coverture  was  taken  over  by  the  American  states,  to¬ 
gether  with  such  practical  modifications  as  the  system  of  equity  juris¬ 
prudence  had  developed  in  England. 

Legislative  reform  began  about  1840,  and  in  the  beginning  did  little 
more  than  adopt  and  enact  into  statute  law  the  doctrine  of  the  courts 
of  equity.  Gradually  it  made  the  wife  entirely  independent  of  the 
husband.  In  this  legislation  England  followed  America,  beginning  her 
reform  in  1870.  In  America  the  course  of  legislation  extended  over 
a  very  long  period ;  Tennessee,  as  the  last  state,  did  not  abandon  the 
system  of  coverture  until  1913.  In  those  states  which  have  on  the 
whole  adopted  the  Continental  system  of  marital  community  of  prop¬ 
erty  rights  the  peculiar  disabilities  of  coverture  are  likewise  unknown. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  coverture  applied  only  to  women 
living  in  marriage ;  that,  in  other  words,  the  common  law  recognized 
no  sex  disability  in  the  matter  of  civil  rights. 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


258 

In  considering  domestic  subjection  it  is  also  necessary  to  refer  to 
the  status  of  the  child,  that  is,  the  infant  child,  for  parent  and  adult 
child  are  in  law,  except  for  purposes  of  inheritance,  practically  alto¬ 
gether  strangers  to  each  other.  As  a  holder  of  property  the  infant 
child  occupies  a  position  of  peculiar  independence  in  the  common 
law,  for  the  father  has  neither  usufruct  nor  guardianship  (except  the 
"socage”  guardianship  with  regard  to  land  which  terminates  when 
the  infant  attains  the  age  of  fourteen)  j1  on  the  other  hand,  the  father 
is  entitled  to  the  earnings  of  the  child,  and  to  this  absolute  right  to 
the  earnings  corresponds  no  similarly  absolute  duty  to  support,  for 
from  this  the  father  may  relieve  himself  by  emancipating  the  child 
and  thereby  surrendering  the  right  to  earnings. 

The  personal  control  of  the  father  over  the  minor  child  is  at  com¬ 
mon  law  almost  unlimited ;  even  an  effectual  criminal  liability  prob¬ 
ably  did  not  exist  except  in  case  of  homicide,  the  policy  of  the  law 
being  very  decidedly  not  to  interfere  with  the  exercise  of  domestic 
authority.  There  was  thus  a  domestic  subjection  of  the  severest  and 
most  unqualified  kind.  This  has  been  broken  in  upon  only  by  very 
modern  legislation,  beginning  with  the  criminal  punishment  of  cruelty, 
and  more  recently  establishing  a  system  of  public  care  of  juvenile 
dependents.  The  development  of  this  phase  of  law,  which  may  be 
said  to  have  started  with  the  Illinois  law  of  1899,  is  in  its  very  begin¬ 
ning,  and  the  rights  of  the  parent  will  undoubtedly  more  and  more 
assume  the  character  of  a  trust. 

This  completes  the  series  of  legal  changes  through  which  personal 
status  has  gone.  Liberty  and  equality  have  received  practically  uni¬ 
versal  recognition,  but  this  has  come  only  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
Race  alone  remains  a  sinister  distinction  which  the  law  has  not  fully 
overcome,  and  which  in  some  respects  it  even  tends  to  emphasize, 
owing  to  the  greater  menace  of  foreign  race  invasion  in  modern 
times.  The  disability  of  the  child,  a  transitory  status,  must  of  course 
remain,  but  the  emancipation  from  the  abuse  of  domestic  power 
constitutes  perhaps  the  most  marked  triumph  of  the  right  of  human 
personality. 

1The  father  was  formerly  regarded  as  the  guardian  of  the  child’s  personal 
property;  see  Blackstone,  I,  461,  and  the  act  of  1670,  which  gave  him  the  right 
to  appoint  a  guardian  for  the  child  by  deed  or  will. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


259 


II.  Freedom  oj  Thought 

All  American  bills  of  rights  give  prominent  places  to  religious  liberty 
and  the  freedom  of  the  press.  The  guaranties  incorporated  both  the 
achievement  and  aims  of  constitutional  struggles  and  philosophical 
theories  of  natural  right.  They  represent  political  ideas  directly  con¬ 
trary  to  the  maxims  of  earlier  statecraft.  Until  far  into  the  seven¬ 
teenth  century  it  had  been  a  commonplace  of  public  policy  that  the 
safety  of  the  state  demands  the  control  of  opinion.  With  these  his¬ 
toric  facts  in  view  we  can  better  appreciate  the  step  in  advance  which 
religious  liberty  represents,  and  yet  in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth 
century  toleration,  if  not  religious  equality,  has  been  established  all 
over  the  civilized  world,  and  belief  and  worship  are  nowhere  any 
longer  the  subjects  of  penal  repression. 

As  regards  the  press,  Blackstone  tells  us  that  the  art  of  printing, 
soon  after  its  introduction,  was  looked  upon  in  England  as  well  as 
in  other  countries  as  "merely  a  matter  of  state”  ( Commentaries , 
IV,  152,  note).  Its  control  was  part  of  the  freely  conceded  juris¬ 
diction  of  the  Star  Chamber.  After  the  fall  of  the  latter,  its  control 
simply  passed  to  Parliament,  which  exercised  it  on  similar  principles. 
The  essence  of  this  control  was  that  nothing  was  to  be  printed 
without  previous  license,  and  by  the  removal  of  this  requirement  in 
1694  the  liberty  of  the  press  was  supposed  to  be  established.  In 
the  course  of  the  eighteenth  century,  however,  a  further  struggle 
took  place  for  greater  freedom  from  responsibility,  which  resulted  in 
the  liberalization  of  the  law  of  libel.  Our  bills  of  rights  reflect  this 
stage  of  development :  they  guarantee  impunity  for  true  matter  pub¬ 
lished,  but  only  if  published  with  good  motives.  Here  most  of  our 
constitutional  guaranties  stop ;  but  the  practice  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  proceeded  far  beyond  this,  and  now,  generally  speaking, 
not  only  is  truth  an  absolute  justification,  but  the  defense  of  privilege 
is  recognized  to  the  widest  extent  in  every  kind  and  form  of  public 
criticism.1  The  free  expression  of  opinion  on  political  subjects  is 
guarded  with  possibly  even  greater  jealousy  than  the  freedom  of  art, 
literature,  and  science  and  of  social  thought  and  agitation. 

1See  Schofield,  "Freedom  of  the  Press  in  the  United  States,”  Publications  of 
the  American  Sociological  Society ,  Vol.  IX,  p.  67. 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


260 

In  view  of  the  wide  toleration  of  freedom  of  political  agitation  which 
public  opinion  demands,  the  law  of  sedition,  even  where  not  formally 
abrogated,  has  lost  much  of  its  practical  importance;  when  in  1886 
in  England,  in  consequence  of  strong  public  labor  demonstrations, 
prosecutions  were  instituted  against  prominent  leaders,  the  instruc¬ 
tions  as  to  the  constituent  elements  of  sedition  were  so  qualified  that 
the  jury  could  hardly  do  otherwise  than  render  a  verdict  of  not  guilty 
{Reg.  v.  Burns,  16  Cox,  355;  Reg.  v.  Cunningham,  16  Cox,  420; 
Russell  on  Crimes,  I,  557-565).  The  law  is  equally  obscure  in  Amer¬ 
ica,  where,  as  in  England,  the  conditions  under  which  government  has 
been  carried  on  for  the  last  hundred  years  have  rendered  political 
repression  unnecessary  or  inexpedient. 

We  have  here  a  complete  reversal  of  the  public  policies  of  former 
times,  which  yet  had  a  show  of  plausibility  in  their  favor ;  the  experi¬ 
ence  of  a  great  war  shows  how  effectually  after  all  for  a  time  at  least 
public  opinion  can  be  controlled  by  authority,  and  how  much  the  action 
of  the  state  in  a  certain  direction  can  be  strengthened  thereby.  That 
immediate  political  advantage  is  so  readily  sacrificed  to  the  conviction 
that  free  expression  of  opinion  is  in  the  long  run  more  wholesome  to 
the  constitution  of  the  body  politic  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
achievements  of  democracy  and  of  education  in  public  affairs.  That 
the  achievement  is  not  altogether  safe  from  attack  and  impairment  is 
shown  by  the  public  attitude  toward  anarchistic  agitation,  as  evidenced 
by  the  short-lived  red-flag  law  of  Massachusetts,  an  attitude  compar¬ 
able  to  that  of  those  of  our  state  constitutions  which  temper  their  tol¬ 
eration  of  religious  dissent  by  creating  certain  disabilities  for  atheists. 

The  establishment  of  the  right  of  personality  and  of  freedom  of 
personality  and  of  freedom  of  thought  are  accomplished  in  the  main 
by  the  removal  of  legal  and  other  restraints,  and  the  positive  function 
of  legislation  is  relatively  slight ;  the  advances  in  the  protection  of 
human  interests  which  follow  involve,  on  the  other  hand,  a  constant 
enlargement  of  the  field  of  legislative  activity  and  control. 

III.  The  Repression  of  Unthrift  and  Dissipation 

Certain  phases  of  this  legislative  policy  are  old  or  even  antiquated ; 
thus  the  formerly  prevailing  type  of  sumptuary  legislation  has  dis¬ 
appeared.  On  the  whole,  however,  the  activity  of  the  state  against 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


261 


the  three  great  forms  of  un thrift — gambling,  drink,  and  vice — has 
gained  in  incisiveness  and  extent,  and  its  greatest  development  has 
taken  place  in  the  American  democracy. 

The  relation  of  the  state  and  the  law  to  moral  ideals  is  complex  and 
peculiar.  The  main  motive  power  of  every  political  organization  is  self- 
preservation,  which  produces  the  type  of  the  state  best  fitted  for  the 
maintenance  of  communal  integrity.  After  some  type  has  once  success¬ 
fully  established  itself  and  led  to  the  predominance  of  one  element  of 
the  body  politic,  the  instinct  for  self-preservation  again  makes  the  in¬ 
terest  of  that  element  the  ruling  factor  of  state  policy.  Morality  as 
represented  in  law  thus  becomes  subordinate  to,  and  an  instrument  of, 
the  established  order  of  things ;  and  in  all  communities  it  tends  to  be 
identified  with  authority,  the  family,  and  property.  The  canons  of 
justice  and  equity  presuppose  respect  for  these  institutions,  and  purely 
ethical  standards  of  conduct  lie  outside  of  the  range  of  civil  obligations. 

In  European  systems  of  polity  the  place  of  morality  was  further 
determined  by  the  position  and  the  claims  of  the  church.  The  Chris¬ 
tian  religion  was  based  on  ethical  ideals ;  ethical  thought  and  ethical 
aspiration  were  in  consequence  entirely  dominated  by  religion,  and 
the  state  considered  that  the  preservation  of  public  morals  was  not  a 
secular  function,  but  belonged  to  the  church. 

The  common  forms  of  moral  laxity  and  dissipation  were  thus  re¬ 
garded  as  sins  to  be  visited  by  spiritual  penalties,  and  almost  the  en¬ 
tire  law  of  sex  relations,  including  marriage,  fell  in  England  to  the 
province  of  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  and  the  marriage  law  has  to  the 
present  day  not  been  entirely  secularized.  It  is  also  to  be  noted  that 
non-forcible  injuries  were  only  gradually  drawn  within  the  cognizance 
of  the  King’s  courts;  defamation  (which  was  first  an  ecclesiastical 
offense)  not  until  the  seventeenth  century,  while  fraud  became  a  tort 
only  toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

It  was  only  after  the  Reformation  and  the  attendant  relaxation  of 
church  discipline  that  evil  practices  not  directly  invading  other  per¬ 
sons’  rights  or  public  authority  were  drawn  within  the  range  of  legis¬ 
lative  policy ;  the  first  attempts  to  repress  gambling  and  prostitution 
date  from  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII,  and  from  the  reign  of  Edward  VI 
on  the  liquor  trade  is  subjected  to  the  regime  of  the  licensing  system. 

The  attitude  of  the  English  law  (and  that  of  Continental  countries 
is  similar)  toward  gambling,  drink,  and  vice  has  remained  tolerably 


262 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


fixed  for  centuries;  the  liquor  business  has  been  the  subject  of  con¬ 
stant  restrictive  regulation,  while  gambling  and  vice  were  placed 
beyond  the  pale  of  legal  protection,  but  otherwise  tolerated  as  long 
as  outwardly  disorderly  practices  were  avoided.  An  attitude  of  in¬ 
dulgence  toward  the  common  human  weaknesses  became  part  of  the 
established  order  of  things. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  how  with  the  advance  of  democracy  the 
legislative  policy  toward  these  evils  becomes  gradually  more  aggres¬ 
sive.  The  mass  of  the  people  struggling  for  material  prosperity  prize 
the  ''middle-class”  virtues  of  habits  of  industry  and  domestic  regu¬ 
larity,  and  they  seek  to  impress  their  ideals  upon  the  legislation  which 
they  control.  Thus  liquor  becomes  a  conspicuous  issue  in  politics; 
absolute  prohibition,  a  radical  interference  with  personal  liberty,  is 
first  introduced  as  a  legislative  policy ;  the  same  policy  is  applied  to 
gambling,  and  particularly  to  lotteries,  previously  used  freely  as  a 
means  of  raising  funds  for  public  purposes,  and  in  many  states  the 
prohibition  is  made  part  of  the  fundamental  law;  and  for  the  first 
time  a  determined  crusade  is  instituted  to  suppress  prostitution. 

The  standards  of  this  "morals”  legislation  are  perhaps  all  the  more 
advanced,  as  the  standards  of  enforcement  are  not  equally  high.  This 
may  be  due  to  our  peculiar  governmental  organization,  which  divorces 
legislative  power  entirely  from  administrative  responsibility.  The 
formal  declaration  of  policies  is  insisted  upon  irrespective  of  whether 
they  can  be  carried  out  faithfully  or  even  with  tolerable  success ;  in¬ 
deed,  the  advanced  policy  is  sometimes  consented  to  only  upon  the 
tacit  understanding  that  in  actual  administration  it  will  be  somewhat 
relaxed.  The  result  is  inevitably  a  certain  demoralization  of  govern¬ 
mental  standards,  but  the  system  makes  possible  an  insistence  upon 
high  abstract  moral  ideas,  which  in  other  countries  is  deemed  im¬ 
practicable,  and  which  all  the  time  operates  as  an  educative  influence.1 

1  Under  the  German  ideal  of  scrupulously  correct  statutes  strictly  enforced 
legislation  is  likewise  an  educating  influence,  but  of  a  different  type;  it  is  not 
meant  to  represent  an  ideal  to  be  ultimately  attained,  but  a  practical  norm  of 
conduct;  just  and  fixed  rules,  the  most  powerful  and  insistent  expression  of  the 
social  conscience,  are  to  operate  as  a  sort  of  secular  catechism,  and  the  sense  of 
formulated  boundaries  is  relied  upon  to  check  the  impulses  of  unsettled  character 
— -an  education  that  consists  in  the  subordination  of  individual  tendencies  to 
general  standards.  This  point  of  view  is  admirably  developed  in  a  recent  Ger¬ 
man  treatise  (F.  W.  Forster,  Schuld  &  Stihne,  1911). 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


263 


Even  with  its  imperfect  operation,  however,  this  phase  of  legislative 
policy  carries  with  it  encroachments  upon  personal  liberty  which 
would  not  have  been  ventured  upon  by  less  democratic  systems  of 

t 

government. 

IV.  The  Protection  of  Public  Health  and  Safety 

The  large  amount  of  health  and  safety  legislation  which  fills  modern 
statute  books  represents  less  a  change  of  legislative  policy  than  a 
change  of  conditions  that  had  to  be  met  by  an  extension  of  state  con¬ 
trol.  In  principle  the  exercise  of  public  power  for  the  protection  of 
life  and  limb  is  old-established,  but  prior  to  the  nineteenth  century 
there  was  relatively  little  occasion  for  its  practical  application.  The 
nineteenth  century  brought  two  conditions  which  revolutionized  the 
need  for  public  control :  the  pressing  of  newly  invented  mechanical 
forces  into  the  service  of  industry  and  the  progress  of  science  in  dis¬ 
covering  the  causes  of  disease  and  their  remedies.  The  imperative 
necessity  of  developing  economic  resources  retarded  adequate  pro¬ 
tection  against  mechanical  dangers  until  it  was  possible  to  combine 
safety  with  the  effective  carrying  on  of  industry ;  the  former  had  to 
yield  to  the  latter;  this  is  well  illustrated  by  the  history  of  mining 
legislation.1  Sanitary  legislation  encountered  resistance  on  the  part 
of  personal  and  property  rights  as  well  as  of  business  interests  by 
reason  of  the  widespread  skepticism  regarding  the  reality  of  the 
alleged  dangers  or  the  efficacy  of  the  proposed  remedies,  but  the  Eng¬ 
lish  law  of  1848  and  the  New  York  law  of  1857  firmly  established  the 
principle  of  an  elastic  administrative  control,  and  the  recent  American 
so-called  eugenics  legislation  indicates  the  long  distance  that  we  have 
traveled  in  the  direction  of  state  interference  with  private  affairs. 
Living  under  free  institutions  we  submit  to  public  regulation  and 
control  in  ways  that  would  appear  inconceivable  to  the  spirit  of  orien¬ 
tal  despotism ;  it  is  well  known  what  deep-seated  repugnance  and 
resistance  of  the  native  population  to  the  invasion  of  their  domestic 
privacy  and  personal  habits  English  health  officers  in  India  have 
to  overcome  in  order  to  enforce  the  sanitary  measures  necessary  to 
prevent  the  spread  of  infectious  or  contagious  disease.  Oriental  sys¬ 
tems  of  polity  act  more  powerfully  upon  the  habits  of  individual  life 


1R.  G.  Galloway,  History  of  Coal  Mining  in  Great  Britain ,  1882. 


264 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


than  modern  governments  do ;  the  primal  need  of  the  community  for 
the  perpetuation  of  its  own  existence  through  marriage  and  offspring 

is  more  effectually  secured  in  India  and  China  than  in  Western 

« 

Europe;  but  the  sanction  is  custom  and  not  law;  and  in  the  same 
way  the  sanitary  regime  of  the  Old  Testament  seems  to  have  been 
enforced  by  spiritual  threats  and  not  by  secular  penalties.  Modern 
policy  makes  legislative  compulsion  coextensive  with  the  reciprocal 
dependence  of  men  upon  each  other’s  standards  of  conduct  for  the 
preservation  of  the  health  and  safety  of  all,  and  with  the  progress  of 
invention  and  of  science  there  seems  to  be  hardly  any  limit  to  that 
independence.  Our  modern  sanitary  laws  are  laws  in  the  real  sense 
of  the  term,  enforced  by  the  power  of  the  state.  As  such  they  rep¬ 
resent,  if  not  a  new  policy,  yet  a  new  legislative  activity  and  function. 

V.  T he  Growth  of  Social  Legislation 

The  development  of  phases  of  legislative  policy  thus  far  traced 
shows  two  main  tendencies :  the  steady  growth  in  the  value  placed 
upon  individual  human  personality  and  the  shifting  of  the  idea  of  the 
public  good  from  the  security  of  the  state  and  established  order  to 
the  welfare  of  the  mass  of  the  people.  The  growth  of  social  legislation 
combines  those  two  tendencies.  By  the  term  social  legislation  we 
understand  those  measures  which  are  intended  for  the  relief  and 
elevation  of  the  less  favored  classes  of  the  community ;  it  would  thus 
be  held  to  include  factory  laws,  but  hardly  legislation  for  the  safety  of 
passengers  on  railroads. 

The  lower  classes  (as  the  term  was  formerly  commonly  used)  became 
the  object  of  special  legislation  in  England  after  the  Great  Plague ;  but 
the  policy  of  this  early  legislation  was  repression  and  not  relief.  The 
first  great  systematic  relief  measure  was  the  English  Poor  Law  of  1601 
(43  Elizabeth,  chap.  2)  ;  it  is  worth  noting  that  the  principle  of  taxa¬ 
tion  by  state  authority  for  the  relief  of  the  poor  was  not  introduced 
into  France  until  three  hundred  years  later,  in  1905,  antecedent  to  the 
separation  of  church  and  state.  In  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  England  inaugurated  a  new  phase  of  social  legislation  by  her 
child-labor  law  of  1802,  followed  by  a  series  of  other  factory  laws. 

Yet  until  about  twenty  years  ago  the  term  social  legislation  was 
generally  unfamiliar  and  conveyed  little  meaning  even  to  students  of 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION  265 

reform  movements.  The  word  came  from  Germany,  and  there  origi¬ 
nated  about  the  beginning  of  the  eighties. 

More  particularly  the  new  term  social  legislation  was  associated 
with  the  workmen’s  insurance  measures  announced  by  the  message  of 
November  17,  1881,  submitted  by  the  German  Emperor  to  the  Reichs¬ 
tag,  which  provided  relief  in  form  of  pensions  for  sickness  (1883), 
accident  (1884),  and  invalidity  and  old  age  (1889). 

The  purpose  of  these  measures  as  proclaimed  by  the  imperial  mes¬ 
sage  was  to  counteract  social  democratic  agitation  and  to  supplement 
the  repressive  law  of  1878  by  positive  and  constructive  state  action. 
Other  European  countries  gradually  enacted  similar  legislation;  in 
England  compensation  for  industrial  accident  was  introduced  in  1897, 
old-age  pensions  in  1908,  and  insurance  against  sickness  and  unem¬ 
ployment  in  1912.  The  American  states  have  so  far  approached  only 
the  problem  of  compensation  for  industrial  accident ;  since  1910  about 
three-fourths  of  the  states  have  enacted  measures  of  that  kind. 

What  was  the  special  feature  of  this  new  legislation  that  marked  it 
as  a  new  departure  in  legislative  policy  ?  It  was  that  relief  changed 
its  character.  Poor  relief  had  been  a  matter  apart  from  industry; 
it  had  stigmatized  the  recipient  and  placed  him  under  disabilities ;  the 
policy  of  the  English  poor-law  reform  of  1834  had  been  to  make  it  in 
addition  distasteful  and  repellent  (indoor  relief).  The  new  pension 
or  compensation  system  carried  no  stigma  or  disability,  and  by  its 
conditions  or  terms  rather  seemed  to  be  in  the  nature  of  the  discharge 
of  a  debt  that  the  community  owed  to  its  members,  a  deferred  pay¬ 
ment  for  previous  inadequately  rewarded  services,  or  a  compensation 
for  some  kind  of  injustice  suffered.  It  realized  the  idea  of  a  "respect¬ 
able  provision  unattended  with  degradation”  first  put  forward  in 
18371  and  again  advocated  in  the  Minority  Report  on  poor-law 
reform  under  the  name  of  an  "honorable  and  universal  provision.” 
In  Germany  the  entire  legislation,  moreover,  incorporated  important 
features  of  insurance.  The  recipient  of  pensions  or  other  allowances 
upon  an  insurance  basis  takes  them,  morally  as  well  as  legally,  as  a 
matter  of  right,  and  would  be  beholden  to  the  community  merely  for 
setting  the  plan  in  operation  and  administering  it.  Every  contribution 
from  the  employer  or  from  the  community  alters  the  nature  of  the 
allowance,  and  the  tendency  in  England  and  America  has  been  to 

xSee  Rose,  Rise  of  Democracy ,  p.  100. 


2  66 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


relieve  the  beneficiary  from  any  contribution  and  to  throw  the  entire 
burden  either  upon  the  community  (old-age  pensions)  or  upon  the 
employer  (workmen’s  compensation).  However  free  from  stigma, 
the  provision  is  thus  yet  in  the  nature  of  relief. 

In  Europe  relief  legislation  of  the  advanced  type  is  at  present  as 
firmly  established  as  sanitary  or  safety  legislation,  the  defects  of  which 
it  in  part  supplies,  while  America  is  only  just  beginning  to  develop 
that  part  of  the  system  which  connects  most  closely  with  the  remedial 
methods  of  the  common  law. 

Even  in  Europe  a  sharp  line  is  still  drawn  between  relief  and  the 
larger  policy  of  using  the  power  of  the  state  to  alter  the  economic 
terms  of  the  labor  contract.  An  entire  readjustment  or  reconstruction 
of  the  economic  relation  between  the  classes  is  not  as  yet,  generally 
speaking,  considered  as  part  of  a  practical  legislative  program. 

Not  so  very  long  ago  this  larger  program  would  have  been  suf¬ 
ficiently  condemned  by  being  characterized  as  socialistic,  and  even 
at  the  present  time  there  is  an  instinctive  perception  that  the  most 
liberal  policy  of  relief  is  in  principle  still  very  far  removed  from  an 
attempt  to  control  economic  relations  under  normal  conditions. 

We  are,  however,  quite  accustomed  to  one  form  of  relief  which  is 
really  undistinguishable  from  social  reconstruction,  and  that  is  the 
legislation  dealing  with  children.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  factory 
laws  began  everywhere  with  the  regulation  of  child  labor,  and  that 
that  regulation  always  went  hand  in  hand  with  efforts  to  secure  to  the 
child  some  measure  of  education  and  instruction.  And  with  regard 
to  education,  the  American  states,  at  a  period  when  they  represented 
the  most  individualistic  type  of  political  and  economic  organization, 
pursued  a  progressively  socialistic  policy,  shifting  more  and  more  the 
financial  burden  of  education  from  the  family  to  the  community. 
While  the  existence  of  universal  suffrage  has  given  to  this  form  of 
communism  a  political  justification,  the  present  movement  for  voca¬ 
tional  instruction  is  significant  in  frankly  abandoning  this  basis  and 
embarking  upon  schemes  of  economic  reconstruction,  the  consequence 
of  which  can  hardly  be  foreseen. 

As  factory  legislation  in  England  began  with  the  regulation  of  the 
employment  of  children,  so  it  advanced  farther  along  the  line  of  least 
resistance  by  restricting  the  hours  of  labor  of  women.  When  the  bill 
which  resulted  in  the  act  of  1844  was  agitated,  the  men  desired  the 


'  SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


267 


like  reduction  for  themselves,  but  were  satisfied  that  the  legislation 
should  be  confined  to  women  in  the  hope,  which  events  justified,  that 
the  legal  reduction  of  women’s  work  would  accomplish  without  legis¬ 
lation  the  same  purpose  for  men.1  The  act  of  1844  had  been  preceded 
by  a  report  calling  attention  to  the  special  physical  considerations 
which  made  the  restriction  desirable  for  female  employees.2  Whether 
exclusively  on  this  ground  or  not,  the  state  from  now  on  extended  its 
guardianship  in  the  matter  of  industrial  labor  over  both  women  and 
young  persons.  A  similar  development  took  place  in  Germany,  where 
a  maximum  work-day  for  women  in  factories  was  established  in  1892. 

In  the  United  States  the  regulation  of  women’s  hours  of  labor  has 
furnished  the  main  battle  ground  for  conflicting  theories  of  constitu¬ 
tional  right  and  power.  The  course  of  decisions  proved  on  the  whole 
favorable  to  state  control.  .  .  . 

As  legislation  for  women  advances  from  the  ten-hour  day  to  the 
Saturday  half-holiday,  to  the  eight-hour  day  (established  for  the  Dis¬ 
trict  of  Columbia  in  1915),  to  the  total  prohibition  of  night  work, 
and  to  the  regulation  of  wages,  the  narrow  foundation  of  the  old- 
established  grounds  of  the  police  power  will  become  more  and  more 
untenable,  and  courts  will  be  forced  to  recognize  in  such  laws  measures 
of  social  and  economic  advancement,  and  not  merely  measures  for  the 
protection  of  health  or  morals.  It  will  then  become  necessary  to 
scrutinize  the  ground  of  differentiation  between  men  and  women,  and 
particularly  to  examine  whether  such  differentiation  implies  inferior¬ 
ity,  as  the  words  used  by  Justice  Brewer  may  seem  to  indicate.  At  a 
time  when  women  are  demanding  equal  political  rights  it  does  seem 
incongruous  to  insist  unduly  upon  infirmities  inherent  in  sex,  and  it 
will  be  fairer  to  support  legislative  discrimination  for  their  protection 
by  arguments  not  derogatory  to  other  claims.  Such  arguments  can 
well  be  brought  forward  without  specious  pleading. 

Both  from  an  economic  and  from  the  historical  point  of  view  the 
status  of  women  is  constitutionally  different  from  that  of  men : 
economically,  because  the  temporary  and  adventitious  character  of 
women’s  industrial  work,  due  to  the  effect  of  marriage  upon  their 
industrial  status,  handicaps  their  capacity  for  combination,  and  hence 
their  capacity  for  efficient  self-help,  and  further  because  the  state  has 
a  distinct  interest  in  conserving  part  of  a  woman’s  time  and  strength 

1  Hutchins  and  Harrison,  History  of  Factory  Legislation ,  p.  186.  2  Ibid.  p.  84. 


268 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


to  enable  her  more  adequately  to  perform  her  non-industrial  func¬ 
tions,  her  duties  to  the  home  and  the  family,  and  to  render  her  in¬ 
dispensable  aid  in  the  furtherance  of  the  state’s  child-welfare  policies ; 
historically,  because  centuries  of  economic  dependence  and  the  uni¬ 
versal  conventional  discouragement  of  habits  of  self-assertion  neces¬ 
sarily  removed  women  from  those  ideals  of  individualism  which  were 
in  America  supposed  to  have  crystallized  into  constitutional  rights 
and  limitations  upon  the  legislative  power.  It  is  true  that  these 
conventions  with  regard  to  women  have  partly  been  altered ;  but 
coincident  with  their  advance  toward  greater  independence  has  been 
a  general  modification  of  the  ideals  of  individualism.  Nothing  could 
be  more  characteristic  of  that  coincidence  than  the  fact  that  the  legis¬ 
lature  of  Illinois,  on  March  22,  1872,  passed  an  act  declaring  that 
sex  should  not  be  a  bar  to  any  occupation  or  employment,  and  five 
days  thereafter,  on  March  27,  1872,  passed  another  act  forbidding 
the  employment  of  women  in  mines — enactments  opposed  to  each 
other  upon  a  mechanical  view  of  liberty,  and  yet  quite  harmonious  in 
spirit  as  making  for  a  larger  freedom  of  women.  It  is  obvious  that 
upon  any  large  view  women  stand  on  a  different  footing  from  men  as 
regards  the  exercise  of  legislative  protection.  In  all  European  coun¬ 
tries  and  by  the  international  conventions  regarding  industrial  labor 
this  has  been  recognized.  It  follows  that  a  very  much  farther  reaching 
control  over  women  than  we  have  at  present  would  leave  unprejudiced 
the  problem  of  legislative  policy  with  reference  to  adult  men.  .  .  . 

The  state  has  thus  far  departed  very  little  from  its  attitude  of 
neutrality  in  the  struggle  between  capital  and  labor.  Of  the  things 
that  labor  most  desires,  naming  them  in  the  order  of  the  strength  of 
the  desire — chance  of  employment,  security  of  employment,  better 
remuneration,  lessened  toil,  fairness  of  methods,  safe  and  sanitary 
conditions,  and  relief  in  distress — it  appears  that  even  the  most  ad¬ 
vanced  type  of  European  social  legislation  undertakes  to  secure  less 
than  one-half,  being  the  half  less  prized  by  labor.  If  the  reason  for 
this  is  that  the  conditions  for  radical  improvement  are  or  are  believed 
to  be  beyond  legislative  control,  or  that  the  effectual  remedy  is  un¬ 
known,  legislative  inactivity  cannot  be  said  to  be  a  matter  of  deliber¬ 
ate  policy  of  self-imposed  limitation,  but  merely  the  consequence  of 
imperfect  power  and  knowledge,  and  advance  in  legislation  would 
merely  wait  upon  advance  in  knowledge  and  efficiency.  At  any  rate, 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


269 


the  possibility  of  embarking  upon  new  policies  seems  to  be  fore¬ 
shadowed  both  by  the  growing  insistence  of  what  is  called  the  new 
social  conscience  and  by  the  fact  that  the  widest  possible  scope  of 
state  control  is  the  avowed  demand  of  a  political  party  which  is 
constantly  growing  in  strength. 

If  this  brief  outline  has  correctly  characterized  the  various  aspects 
of  social  legislation  and  the  stages  in  its  progress,  it  is  also  easier  to 
understand  the  position  of  American  courts.  In  their  hostile  or  sus¬ 
picious  attitude  toward  legislation  regulating  hours  of  labor  and  pay¬ 
ment  of  wages  which  they  regarded  as  involving  merely  economic  issues 
they  resisted  the  beginnings  of  a  novel  function  of  state  control,  and  if 
they  nullified  even  reasonable  and  necessary  measures  it  was  perhaps 
because  they  were  unwilling  to  concede  the  first  steps  in  a  development 
the  scope  of  which  they  could  neither  define  nor  foresee,  and  the  full 
course  of  which  must  justly  have  appeared  to  them  as  revolutionary. 

But  a  larger  view  of  changes  and  developments  than  courts  are  in 
the  habit  of  taking  must  also  make  us  extremely  skeptical  with  regard 
to  the  fundamental  assumption  underlying  their  method  of  approach¬ 
ing  legislation.  Into  the  general  clauses  of  the  constitutions  they  have 
read  a  purpose  of  fixing  economic  policies  which,  however  firmly 
rooted  in  habits  of  thought  or  structure  of  society,  are  by  their  very 
nature  unfit  to  be  identified  with  the  relatively  immutable  concept 
of  due  process.  Where  the  makers  of  constitutions  did  intend  to 
establish  policies,  they  did  so  in  express  terms:  freedom  of  speech 
and  press,  religious  liberty,  the  favor  to  the  accused  in  criminal  pro¬ 
ceedings — these  we  find  guaranteed  in  specific  clauses ;  and  nothing 
was  guaranteed  that  had  not  at  some  time  been  a  live  issue.  It  was 
foreign  to  their  minds  to  foreclose  issues  that  no  one  could  foresee. 
Due  process  was  an  idea  centuries  old  and  meant  to  last  for  centuries ; 
the  idea  that  it  should  be  subject  to  amendments,  qualifications,  or 
exceptions  is  utterly  incongruous.  That  the  clause  should  have  been 
seized  upon  to  protect  policies  which  to  the  courts  seemed  essential 
to  the  social  structure  they  were  used  to  was  perhaps  not  unnatural. 
In  any  event,  the  attempt  of  the  courts  to  check  modern  social  legisla¬ 
tion  by  constitutional  principles  can  be  properly  estimated  only  if  we 
recognize  in  it  the  exercise  of  a  political,  and  not  a  strictly  judicial, 
function.1 

1See  Francis  B.  Sayre,  Cases  on  Labor  Law.  Cambridge,  1922. —  Ed. 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


270 


35.  The  Meaning  of  Principle  in  Legislation1 

By  contrast  with  the  common  law,  every  proposition  of  which 
claims  to  be  a  dictate  of  reason  and  logic,  statute  law  is  conventional 
in  the  sense  that  in  many  cases  it  merely  represents  the  legislator’s 
free  choice  between  a  number  of  different  possible  and  perhaps 
equally  reasonable  provisions.  The  natural  desire  to  avoid  the  charge 
of  arbitrariness  in  legislation  produces  a  strong  tendency  to  follow 
precedents,  and,  in  consequence,  a  certain  uniformity  of  provision  with 
regard  to  relatively  indifferent  matters  which  has  nothing  to  do  with 
principle,  and  which  is  yet  likely  to  impose  itself  upon  legislation 
with  more  than  the  force  of  principle.  In  every  jurisdiction  it  is  pos¬ 
sible  to  cite  instances  of  this  kind  in  which  the  mere  force  of  habit  sup¬ 
ports  practices  which  have  nothing  else  to  recommend  them ;  witness 
the  usual  clause  at  the  end  of  a  New  York  statute :  "this  act  shall  take 
effect  immediately,”  or  the  requirement  which  is  common  in  Illinois 
that  the  governor  approve  vouchers  for  expenses  which  are  charges 
against  appropriations.  Such  practices  offer  little  general  interest. 

So  long  as  legislation  claims  to  produce  law  it  must  also  strive  to 
realize  in  its  product  that  conformity  to  principle  from  which  law  de¬ 
rives  its  main  sanction  and  authority.  The  difference  between  common 
law  and  statute  law  in  this  respect,  however,  is  that  while  the  data  of 
the  common  law  are  fixed  and  beyond  conscious  and  deliberate  trans¬ 
mutation,  those  of  legislation  vary  with  varying  purposes  and  condi¬ 
tions.  While  principle  in  common  law  simply  stands  for  logic,  reason, 
and  established  policy,  its  meaning  in  legislation  is  far  more  complex. 
We  can  hardly  say  more  to  begin  with  than  that  it  means  a  settled 
point  of  view,  and  any  closer  analysis  requires  careful  differentiation. 

At  the  opposite  ends  of  the  various  classes  of  considerations  that 
move  the  legislator  we  should  place  constitutional  requirement  and 
policy.  The  constitutional  rule  must  be  obeyed  no  matter  what  opin¬ 
ion  may  be  entertained  of  its  wisdom,  and  is  thus  withdrawn  from 
argument  except  for  the  purpose  of  interpretation.  It  may  be  abso¬ 
lutely  conventional,  as,  e.g.,  in  the  requirement  and  wording  of  an 
enacting  clause,  or  convention  and  principle  may  be  mixed,  as  in 
specifying  brief  terms  of  office,  or  it  may  state  a  principle  pure  and 

1By  Ernst  Freund.  Adapted  from  Standards  of  American  Legislation ,  pp.  215- 
221,  248-256,  260,  270-273. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


271 


simple,  as  in  the  rule  against  ex  post  facto  laws  or  against  double 
jeopardy.  The  mandatory  character  of  the  rule  is  affected  by  these 
differences  only  in  the  varying  latitude  of  constitutional  construction. 

Policy,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  the  freedom  of  legislative 
discretion.  No  matter  what  array  of  facts  and  arguments  we  may 
bring  to  bear  upon  certain  problems,  we  must  recognize  that  in  the 
present  state  of  human  thought  and  knowledge  their  determination  is 
controlled  by  considerations  which  lie  beyond  the  forum  of  compell¬ 
ing  reason,  and  depends  upon  fundamental  differences  in  habits  and 
ideals.  Strict  or  liberal  divorce  laws,  high  license  or  prohibition,1 
free  trade  or  protection,  free  or  regulated  business,  the  limits  of  com¬ 
bination  and  of  competition,  form  or  informality  in  legal  acts — these 
constitute  issues  with  regard  to  which  opinions  of  men  will  continue 
to  differ,  and  which  for  the  present  must  therefore  be  left  to  the 
domain  of  policy. 

Contrast  with  these  the  legislative  attitude  toward  polygamy, 
toward  monopoly,  toward  gambling,  or  toward  vice,  and  we  shall  find 
these  latter  policies  as  firmly  established  as  any  common-law  principle. 
The  common  law  embodies,  in  addition  to  reason  and  logic,  also  a 
great  deal  of  policy,  as,  e.g.,  the  pronounced  favor  to  the  accused  in 
criminal  procedure.  That  policy  has  in  America  been  transformed 
into  a  constitutional  rule,  as  has  been  the  more  modern  policy  of  free¬ 
dom  of  thought  and  of  religion;  there  are  even  instances  in  which 
highly  controversial  policies  have  been  enacted  into  constitutional  pro¬ 
visions  in  order  to  withdraw  them  from  legislative  change ;  witness  the 
prohibition1  clauses  in  the  constitutions  of  Kansas  and  Oklahoma. 

Where  this  is  done,  it  is  not  inaccurate  to  say  that  policy  has  been 
changed  into  principle;  we  then  simply  attribute  to  principle  the 
meaning  of  settled  policy.  In  this  sense  any  policy  adopted  by  the 
legislature  becomes  the  principle  of  the  statute  enacted  to  effectuate 
that  policy — principle  to  the  extent  that  it  controls  or  should  control 
the  details  of  provisions  and  their  application  and  interpretation. 
Considering  the  statute  without  reference  to  these  details,  we  should 
of  course  realize  that  we  deal  with  legislative  policies  and  not  with 
principles  of  legislation  in  the  more  specific  sense.  The  legislative 
determination  of  policies  is  generally,  and  in  a  sense  justly,  regarded 

1  These  references  to  state  prohibition  policies  were  written  prior  to  the  passing 
of  the  eighteenth  Federal  Constitutional  Amendment. —  Ed. 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


272 

as  a  matter  of  free  discretion  ;  in  any  event  the  considerations  guiding 
that  discretion  are  ordinarily  not  counted  as  falling  within  the  prov¬ 
ince  of  jurisprudence. 

Principle  as  applied  to  legislation,  in  the  jurisprudential  sense  of 
the  term,  thus  does  not  form  a  sharp  contrast  to  either  constitutional 
requirement  or  policy,  for  it  may  be  found  in  both ;  but  it  rises  above 
both  as  being  an  ideal  attribute  demanded  by  the  claim  of  statute  law 
to  be  respected  as  a  rational  ordering  of  human  affairs ;  it  may  be  a 
proposition  of  logic,  of  justice,  or  of  compelling  expediency;  in  any 
event  it  is  something  that  in  the  long  run  will  tend  to  enforce  itself 
by  reason  of  its  inherent  fitness,  or,  if  ignored,  will  produce  irrita¬ 
tion,  disturbance,  and  failure  of  policy.  It  cannot,  in  other  words,  be 
violated  with  impunity,  which  does  not  mean  that  it  cannot  be  or 
never  is  violated  in  fact.  Perhaps  the  best  criterion  of  principle  is 
that  reasonable  persons  can  be  brought  to  agree  upon  the  correctness 
of  a  proposition,  though  when  they  are  called  upon  to  apply  it  their 
inclinations  or  prejudices  may  be  stronger  than  their  reason. 

The  question  is  whether  our  legal  science  has  developed  an  ade¬ 
quate  system  of  principles  of  legislation  in  this  sense. 

Now  and  then  our  constitutions  specifically  express  a  principle,  so 
particularly  with  regard  to  criminal  legislation,  the  rule  against  double 
jeopardy,  and  the  rule  against  retroactive  operation  (ex  post  facto 
laws)  ;  but  the  bulk  of  constitutional  provisions  crystallize  historic  or 
modern  policies  and  not  permanent  principles. 

Where  legislation  is  attacked  in  courts  as  violating  fundamental 
principle,  reliance  is  always  placed  upon  the  Fourteenth  Amendment, 
less  commonly  upon  the  equal-protection  clause  than  upon  the  due- 
process  clause.  So  far  as  equality  means  absence  of  arbitrary  dis¬ 
crimination,  it  is  almost  undistinguishable  from  due  process.  So  far 
as  it  is  opposed  to  class  legislation,  a  distinction  should  be  made: 
equal  justice  between  classes  is  of  the  essence  of  justice,  and  if  in 
practice  justice  is  not  the  same  for  rich  and  poor  this  is  merely  an 
inevitable  effect  of  economic  conditions  which  it  is  beyond  the  power 
of  the  law  to  remedy ;  equal  legislation  for  all  classes,  however,  so  far 
as  a  definite  meaning  can  be  attached  to  the  idea,  is  more  in  the 
nature  of  a  policy  than  of  a  principle,  and  cannot  be  said  to  be  firmly 
established.  There  remains,  then,  due  process  of  law  as  the  main,  if 
not  the  sole,  guaranty  of  principle  in  legislation. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


2  73 

Due  process  is  so  general  a  phrase  that  for  its  content  we  turn  to 
judicial  interpretation.  The  Supreme  Court  refers  us  to  a  gradual 
process  of  judicial  inclusion  and  exclusion  ( Davidson  v.  New  Orleans , 
96  U.S.  97),  and  declines  a  compendious  definition,  which,  indeed, 
if  it  were  to  claim  authoritative  value,  would  be  worse  than  no  defini¬ 
tion  at  all.  In  the  enorfnous  number  of  decisions,  however,  that  have 
applied  the  test  of  due  process  to  legislation  we  might  justly  expect, 
after  a  lapse  of  forty  years,  some  beginning  in  the  working  out  of  a 
system  of  principles.  Unfortunately,  opinions  in  constitutional  cases 
rarely  go  beyond  rhetoric  and  generalities ;  and  quotations  from  simi¬ 
larly  elusive  pronouncements  take  the  place  of  searching  analysis. 
We  are  referred  to  reasonableness  as  a  criterion  of  validity,  as  if 
"reasonable”  were  not  the  very  negation  of  scientific  precision.  What¬ 
ever  may  be  the  merit  or  demerit  of  the  actual  decisions  upon  the 
validity  of  legislation,  the  theory  of  constitutional  law  as  found  in 
the  opinions  interpreting  due  process  of  law  is  perhaps  the  least  satis¬ 
factory  department  of  American  jurisprudence.  We  ought  to  know 
to  what  extent  due  process  means  definite  principles,  and  to  that  ex¬ 
tent  these  principles  should  be  judicially  stated ;  and  we  ought  to 
know,  on  the  other  hand,  to  what  extent  principles  are  beyond  judicial 
enforcement  and  must  be  left  to  legislative  method  and  practice. 

Prohibition.  It  is  a  true  principle  of  legislation  that  a  remote  or 
conjectural  danger,  or  the  danger  of  fraud  or  abuse,  does  not  justify 
the  entire  suppression  of  a  legitimate  and  valuable  interest.  That  in¬ 
terests  of  no  intrinsic  economic  utility  may  be  sacrificed  in  the  exercise 
of  the  police  power  is  demonstrated  by  the  course  of  prohibition  legis¬ 
lation  ;  the  consumption  of  intoxicating  liquor  represents  normally 
only  pleasure,  indulgence,  and  license,  which  are  not  generally  counted 
as  assets  of  positive  value.  Where  intoxicating  liquor  serves  me¬ 
chanical,  medicinal,  or  sacramental  purposes,  it  represents  an  essen¬ 
tial  interest  which  is  respected  in  legislative  practice. 

The  Principle  of  Standardization 

Common-law  rules  carry  their  justification  in  the  reasoning  upon 
which  they  are  based,  but  legislation  generally  involves  a  choice  be¬ 
tween  a  number  of  rules  of  equal  or  of  equally  doubtful  equity,  and 
thus  presents  the  problem  of  avoiding  the  appearance  of  arbitrariness 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


274 

in  fixing  upon  some  particular  provision.  It  is  therefore  desirable  that 
conclusions  be  reached  as  far  as  possible  upon  an  objective  and  in¬ 
telligible  basis,  and  that  this  basis  be  not  needlessly  varied  from 
statute  to  statute.  Standardization  thus  represents  a  definite,  if  com¬ 
prehensive  and  far-reaching,  ideal  in  legislation,  and  while  it  enters, 
into  every  other  principle,  it  does  so  as  a  distinct  and  additional 
attribute.  If  liability  needs  correlation,  any  system  of  correlation  will 
gain  by  being  standardized,  and  so  with  regard  to  classification,  the 
protection  of  vested  rights,  and  so  forth. 

The  principle  of  standardization  has  four  main  applications  or 
phases  in  the  making  of  statute  law :  conformity  to  undisputed  scien¬ 
tific  data  and  conclusions,  the  working  out  of  juristic  principles,  the 
observance  of  an  intelligible  method  in  making  determinations,  and 
the  avoidance  of  excessive  or  purposeless  instability  of  policy. 

1.  Conformity  to  scientific  laws.  The  bulk  of  modern  legislation 
deals  with  social,  economic,  or  political  problems.  These  problems 
are  not  amenable  to  the  same  methods  of  treatment  as  the  problems 
of  physical  science,  and  few  of  the  conclusions  offered  in  the  name  of 
the  social  sciences  can  claim  finality  or  acceptance  as  absolute  truths. 
Those  who  insist  that  the  legislature  is  bound  to  defer  to  experts  do 
well  to  remember  that,  of  the  great  social  measures  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  factory  acts  were  carried  against  the  protests  of  econo¬ 
mists,  while  the  public-health  laws  were  largely  based  on  theories  of 
the  spread  of  disease  which  are  now  rejected.  So  far  as  undisputed 
conclusions  are  available,  they  ought  to  be  accepted  as  a  basis  for 
legislation,  but  even  this  modest  demand  represents  an  ideal  rather 
than  an  actuality,  for  even  if  skepticism,  prejudice,  and  selfish  interest 
did  not  count  as  factors,  the  limitation  of  available  resources  must 
often  stand  in  the  way  of  the  realization  of  policies  conceded  to  rest 
on  an  indisputable  foundation.  It  is  sufficient  to  refer  to  laws  con¬ 
cerning  taxation,  financial  administration,  and  charity  and  correction, 
which  admittedly  at  best  approximate  the  recognized  scientific  stand¬ 
ards.  Where  legislation  involves  the  operation  of  the  physical  sciences 
(health,  safety),  there  is  a  greater  readiness  to  submit  to  authority, 
and  a  failure  in  this  respect  will  usually  be  due  to  inadequate  means. 

These  are  commonplaces ;  no  one  speaking  of  scientific  legislation 
could  possibly  ignore  standardization  in  this  sense.  In  mapping  out 
a  science  of  legislation,  however,  it  would  hardly  do  to  claim  as  be- 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


275 


longing  to  its  province  all  the  social  any  more  than  all  the  physical 
sciences  that  have  to  be  considered  in  carrying  out  legislative  policies. 
It  is  true  that  legislation  in  a  sense  controls  and  fashions  the  former, 
while  it  merely  applies  the  latter,  and  the  legislator  is  therefore  likely 
to  feel  with  regard  to  the  former  a  responsibility  which  easily  trans¬ 
lates  itself  into  a  sense  of  duty  to  form  independent  opinions,  while 
in  matters  of  sanitation  or  engineering  he  would  defer  to  expert 
authority. 

Nevertheless,  a  science  of  legislation  desirous  of  establishing  a 
status  of  its  own  would  treat  the  data  of  the  social  sciences  as  lying 
outside  of  its  own  sphere  and  consider  that  its  task  begins  only  when 
their  conclusions  have  been  reached  and  formulated.  The  task  would 
then  be  the  technical  one  of  translating  a  policy  into  the  terms  of  a 
statute  and  judging  as  a  preliminary  matter  whether  such  translation 
is  practicable.  The  first  of  the  four  phases  of  the  principle  of  stand¬ 
ardization  would  therefore  mean  chiefly  a  draft  upon  other  sciences, 
and,  as  part  of  the  science  of  legislation,  would  express  itself  only  in 
methods  of  organization  and  operation  calculated  to  make  sure  that 
legislation  is  not  enacted  in  ignorance  of  relevant  data  that  are  capable 
of  being  authoritatively  established.  To  illustrate :  the  valuable  work 
which  is  being  done  at  present  to  find  rational  and  "scientific”  bases 
for  rate-making,  for  tax  valuations,  for  public-service  requirements, 
and  generally  for  terms  of  franchise  grants  is  not  the  work  of  legal 
experts,  but  of  economists,  accountants,  and  engineers ;  but  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  standardization  demands  at  the  very  least  the  adoption  of 
legislative  methods  which  give  an  opportunity  for  this  kind  of  work 
and  information  and  bring  its  results  to  the  notice  of  the  legislators. 

2.  Standardization  oj  juristic  data.  The  division  of  sciences  is  a 
practical  matter,  and  it  is  for  practical  purposes  that  we  should  refuse 
to  encumber  the  science  of  legislation  with  the  tasks  of  social,  economic, 
or  political  science.  The  problems  of  jurisprudence  are,  however,  so 
closely  related  to  the  technical  problem  of  legislation  that,  in  so  far 
as  legal  science  has  established  or  is  capable  of  establishing  settled 
conclusions,  they  are  properly  treated  as  part  of  the  science  of  legis¬ 
lation  and  should  contribute  to  its  standardization.  Unfortunately, 
hardly  any  systematic  thought  has  been  given  to  problems  of  juris¬ 
prudence  in  their  constructive  aspect ;  the  law  of  evidence  furnishes 
perhaps  the  only  conspicuous  exception.  Littleton’s  Tenures  has  been 


276 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


extravagantly  praised  as  the  most  perfect  work  written  in  any  science ; 
but  in  treating  the  law  as  purely  static  it  has  set  a  model  to  all 
subsequent  legal  literature.  Where  Blackstone  wanders  off  into  criti¬ 
cal  estimate  he  becomes  absurd,  as  where  he  speaks  of  the  woman 
laboring  under  the  disabilities  of  coverture  as  a  favorite  of  the  laws 
of  England.  Professor  Gray’s  Rule  against  Perpetuities  has  no  supe¬ 
rior,  if  any  equal,  among  American  legal  writings,  but  his  treatment 
of  the  problem  of  how  to  deal  constructively  with  settled  property  is 
negligible  and,  so  far  as  it  goes,  superficial;  his  condemnation  of 
spendthrift  trusts  in  his  essay  on  Restraints  on  Alienation  manifests 
a  fine  virility  of  legal  philosophy,  but  is  hardly  an  objective  estimate 
of  a  difficult  and  delicate  legislative  problem.  It  is  only  in  recent 
years  that  technical  questions  of  land  legislation  have  been  discussed 
critically  and  constructively  in  English  legal  reviews  and  parliamen¬ 
tary  papers  or  reports ;  the  reforms  of  the  nineteenth  century  passed 
almost  without  literary  comment.  In  America  the  critical  treatment 
of  technical  legislative  problems  is  even  more  meager  and  unsystematic. 

It  must  be  conceded  that  some  of  the  most  fundamental  problems 
of  jurisprudence  seem  as  yet  incapable  of  any  other  than  a  purely 
empirical  or  conventional  solution.  Which  is  preferable  in  legal  acts, 
form  or  informality?  What  should  be  the  extent  of  the  protection 
of  bona  fide  purchasers?  What  limitations  and  restraints  upon  the 
freedom  of  property  should  be  conceded  ?  Should  a  consideration  be 
required  to  make  a  promise  binding?  Should  the  right  of  corporate 
organization  be  conceded  for  all  legal  or  only  for  specified  purposes? 
No  answer  can  be  given  to  any  of  these  questions  that  is  "scien¬ 
tifically”  or  even  empirically  indisputable;  in  the  construction  of 
civil  codes  they  are  treated  as  questions  of  policy,  determined  by  a 
mutual  balancing  of  conflicting  considerations. 

On  the  other  hand,  practically  undisputed  conclusions  have  been 
reached  with  regard  to  other  subjects,  perhaps  mainly  on  the  adjec¬ 
tive  side  of  the  law  (penalties,  methods  of  enforcement,  etc.),  where- 
ever  any  serious  thought  has  been  given  to  these  subjects.  Thus 
informers’  shares  and  multiple  damages  survive  only  where  legislation 
is  in  amateur  hands.  The  range  of  these  settled  conclusions  will  be 
greatly  extended  when  once  systematic  study  shall  be  devoted  to  the 
technique  of  statute  law.  In  many  cases  it  can  be  demonstrated  that 
the  preference  of  one  formulation  to  another  will  without  alteration 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


277 


of  substance  make  a  provision  practically  more  available  for  its  in¬ 
tended  purposes.  The  acceptance  of  the  better  form  should  then  be 
a  matter  of  course. 

In  discussing  the  terms  of  a  statute  there  can  ordinarily  be  no 
difficulty  in  distinguishing  juristic  considerations  from  other  consid¬ 
erations  of  expediency,  which  belong  to  political  science  rather  than 
to  jurisprudence.  Suppose  some  legislative  policy  or  object  is  ac¬ 
cepted  as  intrinsically  desirable,  it  is  still  necessary  to  take  into 
account  the  operation  of  adverse  factors :  the  likelihood  of  public  re¬ 
sistance  due  to  widespread  hostile  sentiment  (class,  sectional,  re¬ 
ligious,  national  sentiment),  the  likelihood  of  private  resistance  and 
consequent  difficulties  of  enforcement  (inquisitorial  methods  of  tax 
assessment),  the  likelihood  of  administrative  resistance,  where  there 
is  a  disharmony  between  legislative  and  administrative  standards.  It 
is  also  necessary  to  have  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  unintended 
reactions  of*  the  proposed  legislation  resulting  either  from  its  nor¬ 
mal  operation  (housing  legislation  and  increased  rents),  or  from  the 
conditions  of  enforcement  (white-slave  legislation  and  blackmailing; 
declaring  common-law  marriages  void  and  thereby  rendering  issue 
illegitimate),  or  from  attempts  at  lawful  evasion  (marriage  or  divorce 
outside  of  the  state  ;  factory  laws  increasing  tenement  labor),  or  from 
illegal  evasion  (prohibition  leading  to  increased  consumption  of  the 
more  easily  concealed  but  also  more  harmful  kind  of  liquor;  closing 
of  houses  of  prostitution  and  scattering  of  vice ;  more  stringent  mar¬ 
riage  laws  and  increase  of  illegitimate  births). 

Under  careful  methods  of  legislation  these  considerations  are  not 
likely  to  be  overlooked,  but  it  is  not  easy  to  standardize  the  weight 
which  should  be  given  to  them  respectively,  and  in  any  event  they  do 
not  (except  as  they  bear  upon  technical  conditions  of  enforcement)  fall 
within  the  province  of  the  jurist.  There  is,  however,  one  consideration 
which,  while  not  technically  juristic,  has  such  an  intimate  relation  to 
the  entire  nature  and  purpose  of  law  that  in  discussing  the  principle 
of  standardization  it  cannot  be  ignored :  that  is,  the  observance  of  a 
certain  order  of  transition  in  advancing  to  new  policies  or  standards. 

American  legislation  has  sometimes  violated  this  principle,  but  the 
very  violations  have  served  to  illustrate  its  correctness.  In  the  fifties 
of  the  last  century  the  country  was  not  prepared  to  accept  entire  pro¬ 
hibition  as  a  method  of  dealing  with  the  evils  of  intoxicating  liquor; 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


278 

its  establishment  by  statute  necessarily  produced  lawlessness.  In 
1893  a  general  eight-hour  law  for  women  (had  it  not  been  declared 
unconstitutional)  would  have  been  as  unenforceable  as  an  eight-hour 
law  for  all  persons  employed  in  any  kind  of  service  would  be  today. 
The  status  of  unmatured  and  precocious  standards  in  our  legislation 
has  been  explained  before,  and  it  has  been  pointed  out  that  it  is, 
generally  speaking,  the  function  of  legislation  to  remedy  grievances 
and  correct  abuses,  and  not  to  reconstruct  society  de  novo  or  to  force 
standards  for  which  the  community  is  not  prepared.  In  practice  the 
observance  of  this  principle  is  ordinarily  a  matter  of  course,  but  it 
should  be  emphasized  that  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  idea  of  law 
that  progress  should  be  gradual  and  orderly,  and  that  violent  and 
extreme  change,  even  if  in  the  right  direction,  must  produce  disturb¬ 
ance  and  a  sense  of  insecurity. 

3.  The  observance  of  a  definite  method  in  reaching  determinations. 
In  matters  not  susceptible  of  scientific  demonstration,  when  either  of 
two  different  solutions  of  a  problem  can  equally  claim  to  be  reasonable, 
arbitrariness  in  reaching  conclusions  can  be  best  avoided  by  adherence 
to  intelligible  and  settled  methods  which  insure  a  reasonably  constant 
relation  between  determinations  on  cognate  matters,  each  of  which 
taken  by  itself  must  be  the  result  of  compromise  or  of  free  choice. 
This  satisfies  at  least  the  strong  and  universal  demand  for  order  and 
proportion ;  and  the  danger  of  overlooking  this  requirement  would 
hardly  arise  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  legislature  deals  with 
related  problems  by  distinct  and  disconnected  measures.1 

4.  Stability  of  policy.  Standardization  should  mean  finally  the 
avoidance  of  instability  of  policy.  Where  policies  are  really  conten¬ 
tious,  an  abstractly  undesirable  degree  of  variability  is  perhaps  an 
inevitable  result  of  democratic  institutions.  Moreover,  the  American 
practice  of  introducing  new  legislative  ideas  in  the  form  of  tentative 
statutes  which  will  be  amended  repeatedly  until  satisfaction  is  ob¬ 
tained  leads  to  an  appearance  of  unsteadiness  and  lack  of  purpose 
when  in  reality  there  is  merely  experimentation.  But  apart  from  this, 
European  standards  cannot  be  applied  to  American  legislation  so 
long  as  we  deliberately  prefer  an  unconcentrated  system  of  legislative 
initiative  to  a  practical  government  monopoly  in  that  respect.2 

1For  examples  see  Freund,  Standards  of  American  Legislation ,  pp.  256  ff. —  Ed. 

2  Ibid.  pp.  260  ff. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


279 


Constitutional  Principles 

The  principles  so  far  discussed  are  not  recognized  by  our  constitu¬ 
tions,  except  that  legislation  grossly  violating  them  may,  in  extreme 
cases,  be  held  to  fall  short  of  due  process  of  law.  On  the  other  hand, 
our  constitutions  do  recognize  two  other  fundamental  principles  of 
legislation :  the  protection  of  vested  rights  and  equality.  The  consti¬ 
tutional  protection  of  vested  rights  has  not  been  adjusted  in  a  satis¬ 
factory  manner  to  the  supposed  overriding  claims  of  the  police  power, 
but  is  generally  respected  in  legislative  practice.  The  principle  of 
equality  has,  on  the  other  hand,  to  contend  against  the  unceasing  de¬ 
mand  for  legislation  confined  to  special  classes  and  subjects. 

Where  peculiar  conditions  demand  specific  remedies,  or  where  the 
public  interest  is  involved  in  varying  degrees,  or  where  there  are 
special  problems  of  administration  and  enforcement,  discrimination  or 
differentiation  may  more  nearly  approximate  the  demands  of  justice 
than  a  mere  mechanical  equality,  and  class  legislation  may  then  be  in 
perfect  harmony  with  the  equal  protection  of  the  law.  Very  often, 
however,  the  restriction  of  legislation  to  a  particular  group  merely 
means  the  following  of  the  line  of  least  resistance :  there  is  a  strong 
demand  for  relief  on  the  part  of,  or  with  reference  to,  one  particular 
calling,  industry,  or  business,  and  while  the  same  measure  is  capable 
of  more^general  application,  it  has  not  sufficient  strength  or  support 
to  carry  as  a  general  polity,  or  the  general  policy  meets  determined 
opposition  on  the  part  of  one  or  more  groups  claiming  exemption, 
which  is  granted.  It  is  this  kind  of  class  legislation  which  is  opposed 
to  the  spirit  of  constitutional  equality  and  against  which  some  Ameri¬ 
can  courts,  particularly  the  Supreme  Court  of  Illinois,  have  set  them¬ 
selves.  The  attitude  of  these  courts  has  put  some  check  upon  loose 
practices  of  special  legislation  which  are  liable  to  great  abuse.  At  the 
same  time  it  makes  the  framing  of  legislation  a  difficult  and  hazardous 
undertaking.  The  standardization  of  all  relevant  elements  of  differ¬ 
entiation  would  afford  an  ideal  solution  of  the  difficulty ;  but  neither 
legislative  practice  nor  judicial  control  has  been  so  far  able  to  stand¬ 
ardize.  And  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  scientific  standard  could  main¬ 
tain  itself  against  the  strong  political  pressure  for  special  legislation 
which  will  always  find  a  plausible  plea  for  which  it  may  hope  to  gain 
judicial  approval.  The  tendency  will  be  encouraged  by  the  tolerant 


28o 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


attitude  of  the  Federal  Supreme  Court:  the  solitary  condemnation  of 
the  anti-  trust  law  of  Illinois,  by  reason  of  its  exemptions  (184  U.S. 
540),  has  been  followed  by  an  unvarying  deference  to  superior  local 
knowledge  of  local  conditions.  Such  recent  measures,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  the  workmen’s  compensation  acts,  the  minimum-wage  laws, 
and  the  latest  types  of  factory  and  child-labor  laws  show  a  careful 
survey  of  the  entire  field  and  correspondingly  careful  discrimination ; 
and  it  is  from  systematic  legislation  of  this  kind  that  we  may  expect 
superior  standards  of  differentiation. 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  identify  the  term  " constitutional”  as  ap¬ 
plied  to  legislation  with  "judicially  enforceable”  that  it  would  be  un¬ 
wise  to  give  the  term  any  other  meaning.  A  system  of  principles  of 
legislation  as  above  outlined  should  not  therefore  aim  to  receive  in 
its  entirety  the  status  of  constitutional  law.  Nor  could  anyone  under¬ 
take  a  priori  to  state  which  principles  are  fit  to  be  accepted  as  manda¬ 
tory  rules.  The  principle  of  conserving  values,  of  making  criminal 
offenses  specific,  of  joining  essentially  correlative  rights  and  obliga¬ 
tions,  might  advantageously  be  enforced  by  the  courts,  while  the  more 
remote  phases  of  correlation  as  well  as  most  of  the  desiderata  covered 
by  the  term  "standardization”  represent  ideals  rather  than  imperative 
essentials  of  legislation.  The  injustice  which  results  from  their  viola¬ 
tion  is  of  the  kind  which  we  associate  with  the  imperfection  of  human 
institutions.  An  attempt  to  formulate  specific  propositions  would 
readily  indicate  to  what  extent  principle  i£  capable  of  being  raised  to 
rule,  but  there  is  no  present  prospect  of  so  comprehensive  an  under¬ 
taking.  If  courts  could  be  persuaded  of  the  existence  of  more  specific 
principles  than  those  with  which  they  operate,  their  decisions  would 
speedily  reflect  the  effect  of  those  principles  which  are  capable  of 
judicial  enforcement. 

From  a  wider,  and  particularly  from  a  constructive  point  of  view, 
judicial  enforceability  is,  however,  by  no  means  a  necessary  attribute 
of  principles;  on  the  contrary,  many  principles  would  lose  much  of 
their  force  if  applied  inflexibly.  The  life  of  the  state  cannot  well  be 
bound  in  rigid  formulas,  and  it  is  in  a  sense  an  advantage  of  extra- 
constitutional  over  constitutional  principles  that  they  may  yield  in 
an  emergency.  The  safeguard  of  the  principle  in  normal  conditions 
must  be  found  in  methods  that  operate  antecedently,  and  the  experi¬ 
ence  of  other  nations  shows  that  such  methods  can  on  the  whole  be 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


281 


made  reliable  and  effective.  Even  the  operation  of  constitutional 
rules,  while  sufficiently  binding  to  create  at  times  inconvenience,  will 
yield  under  the  stress  of  circumstances,  and  is  therefore  not  as  abso¬ 
lute  in  practice  as  in  theory. 

36.  Constructive  Factors1 

The  Courts  as  Constructive  Factors 

The  function  of  the  courts  is  to  test  and  judge  legislation ;  not  to 
frame  it.  We  can  no  more  expect  that  the  courts  will  give  us  an  entire 
system  of  principles  of  legislation  than  that  they  will  give  us  a  code  of 
private  conduct.  If  then  we  think  of  the  courts  at  all  as  constructive  . 
factors,  we  must  bear  in  mind  their  limited  opportunities.  Where  the 
legislative  standard  is  not  intolerably  defective,  they  are,  generally 
speaking,  powerless  to  raise  it,  and  in  the  absence  of  a  corrective 
jurisdiction  a  court  will  feel  neither  under  any  duty  nor  at  liberty  to 
volunteer  suggestions  for  improvement.  Constitutional  limitations 
enforced  by  the  courts  will  therefore  never  produce  any  but  the  most 
rudimentary  principles  of  legislation. 

The  great  opportunity  of  courts  lies  in  construction,  both  statutory 
and  constitutional.  Construction  is  essentially  supplementary  legisla¬ 
tion,  and  it  was  the  recognition  of  this  fact  that  has  made  codifiers 
jealous  of  the  judicial  power  to  interpret,  which  they  sought  to  super¬ 
sede  by  prescribing  a  recourse  to  the  source  of  legislative  authority  in 
cases  of  ambiguity  or  doubt.  Statutory  construction  is,  however,  in¬ 
separable  from  adjudication,  and  ultimately  the  courts  are  sure  to 
regain  and  retain  it ;  in  Anglo-American  jurisprudence  no  attempt  has 
ever  been  made  to  deprive  them  of  it,  and  in  America  the  power  of 
constitutional  construction  has  been  added.  The  ambiguities  of  lan¬ 
guage  afford  constant  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  a  praetorian  power 
of  supplementing  the  letter  of  the  law,  and  the  spirit  of  construction 
will  frequently  determine  the  living  principle  of  statute  or  constitution. 

Legislative  Practice  as  a  Constructive  Factor 

In  European  countries  in  which  legislation  is  entirely  uncontrolled 
by  the  courts,  its  quality  is,  generally  speaking,  higher  than  it  is  in 
America.  This  is  undoubtedly  the  judgment  of  all  who  have  had 

1  By  Ernst  Freund.  Adapted  from  Standards  of  American  Legislation ,  pp.  274- 
275,  287-290,  300-309. 


282 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


occasion  to  institute  comparisons.  Such  a  comparison  should  not  have 
primary  reference  to  the  social,  economic,  or  political  content  of 
laws.  There  may  be  ground  for  believing  that  our  election  laws,  our 
married  women’s  acts,  our  juvenile  court  laws,  and  perhaps  others  are 
more  advanced  than  those  of  France  or  Germany,  and  if  our  social 
legislation  may  seem  backward,  that  fact  is  due  to  reasons  which  have 
very  little  to  do  with  the  problems  here  discussed.  Nor  should  attention 
be  directed  merely  to  matters  of  style  which,  even  if  we  give  them  all 
the  importance  they  deserve,  are  after  all  a  secondary  consideration. 
But  we  should  take  as  a  standard  of  comparison  those  juristic  and 
technical  features  of  legislation  which  in  France  and  Germany  form 
the  subject-matter  of  what  is  called  administrative  law,  taking  the 
term  in  the  wide  sense  of  covering  all  matters  upon  which  officials 
have  to  act  in  carrying  out  and  enforcing  the  law.  We  should,  in 
other  words,  apply  the  principles  which  have  been  stated  (in  the  fore¬ 
going  section)  and  others  of  the  same  nature,  to  modern  statutes 
abroad  and  to  our  own  statutes  and  determine  where  they  are  better 
observed,  where  there  is  better  correlation  or  standardization,  where 
there  is  a  more  scrupulous  regard  for  vested  rights  or  for  procedural 
protection. 

It  would  not  be  a  difficult  matter  to  demonstrate  the  superiority  in 
these  respects  of  European  legislation  to  our  own,  nor  would  there  be 
much  doubt  as  to  the  reasons  for  this  superiority.  The  striking  dif¬ 
ference  between  legislation  abroad  and  in  this  country  is  that  under 
every  system  except  the  American  the  executive  government  has  a 
practical  monopoly  of  the  legislative  initiative.  In  consequence,  the 
preparation  of  bills  becomes  the  business  of  government  officials  re¬ 
sponsible  to  ministers,  these  government  officials  being  mainly,  if  not 
exclusively,  employed  in  constructive  legislative  work.  In  France  and 
Germany  the  government  initiative  of  legislation  has  been  established 
for  a  long  time  and  the  right  of  members  to  introduce  bills  is  hedged 
about  and  practically  negligible. 

There  are  two  main  reasons  why  executive  initiative  should  lead  to 
a  superior  legislative  product.  The  one  is  that  it  is  the  inevitable 
effect  of  professionalizing  a  function  that  its  standards  are  raised. 
The  draftsman  will  take  a  pride  in  his  business  and  in  course  of 
time  will  become  an  expert  in  it.  He  learns  from  experience,  and 
traditions  will  be  formed.  This,  of  course,  presupposes  that  he  is  a 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


283 


permanent  official.  In  addition,  he  will  be  responsible  to  his  chief,  who 
naturally  resents  drafting  defects  that  expose  him  to  parliamentary 
non-partisan  criticism.  In  Germany  the  best  juristic  talent  that  goes 
into  the  government  service  is  utilized  for  the  preparation  of  legisla¬ 
tive  projects,  and  these  are  regularly  accompanied  by  exhaustive 
statements  of  reasons  which  enjoy  considerable  authority.  Drafts  of 
important  measures  are  almost  invariably  published  long  before  they 
go  to  the  legislature,  in  order  to  receive  the  widest  criticism,  and,  as 
the  result  of  criticism,  are  often  revised  and  sometimes  entirely  with¬ 
drawn.  The  individual  author  often  remains  unknown  and  the  credit 
of  the  government  stands  behind  the  work. 

The  second  reason  is  that  when  the  government  introduces  a  bill 
the  parliamentary  debate  is  somewhat  in  the  nature  of  an  adversary 
procedure,  or  at  least  there  is,  as  it  were,  a  petitoner  and  a  judge.  The 
minister  or  his  representative  (in  Germany  and  France  the  experts 
appear  in  parliament  as  commissioners,  while  in  England  only  parlia¬ 
mentary  secretaries  may  speak — much  to  the  disadvantage  of  the 
English  debate)  has  to  defend  the  measure  against  criticism,  and  legal 
imperfections  or  inequities  would  be  legitimate  grounds  of  attack. 
The  liability  to  criticism  insures  proper  care  in  advance.  Together 
with  the  executive  initiative  goes  a  practical  limitation  of  the  num¬ 
ber  of  bills  introduced,  an  increased  relative  importance  of  each 
measure,  and  proportionately  greater  attention  bestowed  on  it.  Where 
this  form  of  legislative  preparation  and  procedure  has  been  observed, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  seek  further  reasons  for  a  good  quality  of 
the  product. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  hope  for  establishing  constructive  principles 
of  legislation  lies  in  the  further  development  of  plans  that  have 
already  been  tried,  and  of  these  four  deserve  particular  notice : 
(1)  the  preparation  of  bills  by  special  commissions;  (2)  the  dele¬ 
gation  of  power  to  administrative  commissions;  (3)  the  organization 
of  drafting  bureaus,  and  (4)  the  codification  of  standing  clauses. 

1.  Legislative  commissions  for  the  preparation  of  important  meas¬ 
ures  :  Commissions  for  revising  and  codifying  laws  have  been  familiar 
in  American  legislation  from  an  early  period,  but  the  practice  of 
creating  commissions  for  particular  measures  seems  to  be  of  recent 
date,  while  in  England  it  has  been  established  for  many  years.  It 
might  be  interesting  to  ascertain  which  of  the  principal  reform  statutes 


284 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


of  England  since  1830  have  been  originated  by  royal  commission. 
In  America  a  similar  inquiry  would  probably  show  very  few  instances 
during  the  nineteenth  century ;  to  judge  from  the  Carnegie  Institution 
indexes  of  economic  material,  neither  in  New  York  nor  in  Massa¬ 
chusetts  were  any  of  the  important  legislative  measures  before  1900 
(married  women,  liquor,  civil  service,  ballot  reform)  preceded  by 
commission  study  or  report. 

The  most  conspicuous  instance  of  the  employment  of  commissions 
for  the  preparation  of  legislation  has  been  in  connection  with  the 
workmen’s  compensation  acts;  less  generally  the  same  method  has 
been  pursued  for  mining  and  factory  laws  and  for  land-title  registra¬ 
tion.  The  commission  generally  holds  public  hearings,  gets  opinions 
in  writing,  informs  itself  as  to  similar  laws  in  other  jurisdictions, 
summarizes  its  conclusions,  and  submits  a  bill.  The  result  is  gener¬ 
ally  a  measure  well  thought  out  and  well  formulated.  Even  where 
the  subject  is  very  controversial,  the  unity  of  the  original  draft  secures 
a  consistent  and  co-ordinated  statute. 

2.  The  delegation  of  power  to  administrative  commissions:  The 
grant  of  rule-making  powers  to  industrial  commissions,  public-service 
commissions,  boards  of  health,  civil-service  commissions,  etc.,  is  often 
advocated  mainly  for  the  greater  flexibility  in  enactment  or  change. 
From  this  point  of  view  much  may  also  be  said  against  the  practice, 
since  an  unstable  policy  in  requirements  of  any  kind  is  undesirable, 
and  it  is  doubtful  whether  powers  are  likely  to  be  exercised  in  that 
spirit.  The  real  advantage,  however,  of  such  powers  is  that  the  bodies 
in  which  they  are  vested  are  likely  to  be  better  trained  and  informed 
and  more  professional  in  their  attitude  than  legislative  bodies,  and 
that  the  powers  being  subordinate  in  character  are  more  readily  con¬ 
trollable  by  reference  to  general  principles,  whether  laid  down  by 
statute  or  by  the  common  law.  The  body  will  be  sufficiently  judicial 
in  character  to  have  respect  for  precedent,  and  its  policy  is  therefore 
likely  to  be  less  variable  than  that  of  the  legislature.  These  factors 
will  tend  to  make  rule-making  more  scientific  than  statute-making. 
There  has  been  too  little  experience  with  the  working  of  rule-making 
bodies  in  this  country  to  warrant  conclusions  of  much  value ;  the  pre¬ 
cise  line  of  demarcation  between  matter  to  be  determined  by  statute 
and  matter  to  be  left  to  regulation  has  not  yet  been  satisfactorily 
settled,  and  procedural  safeguards  for  the  making  of  rules  have  hardly 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


285 


•yet  been  developed.  The  method  of  procedure  of  the  Federal  Trade 
Commission  is  novel,  and  is  perhaps  especially  adapted  to  the  delicate 
and  controversial  problems  with  which  it  is  called  upon  to  deal,  but  its 
working  will  be  watched  with  interest,  and  it  may  become  a  valuable 
precedent  for  delegating  quasi-legislative  powers  in  order  that  rules 
may  be  gradually  developed  upon  the  basis  of  particular  cases  after 
the  analogy  of  the  common  law.  If  common-law  methods  can  be  made 
applicable  to  the  development  of  statutory  rules,  so  much  the  better. 
There  is  much  reason  to  believe  that  many  phases  of  standardization 
(rates,  methods  of  assessment,  safety  requirements,  classification) 
can  be  much  more  readily  secured  through  the  constant  thought  and 
ruling  of  an  administrative  commission  than  through  the  necessarily 
sporadic  acts  of  a  legislative  assembly.  Legislative  power  can,  in 
other  words,  be  exercised  more  effectually  and  more  in  accordance  with 
the  spirit  of  the  Constitution  through  delegation  than  directly.  This 
consideration  should  weigh  against  abstract  theories  regarding  the 
non-delegability  of  legislative  power. 

3.  The  organization  of  drafting  bureaus:  This  phase  of  the  prepa¬ 
ration  of  statutes  is  fully  described  in  a  report  of  the  Special  Commit¬ 
tee  on  Legislative  Drafting  of  the  American  Bar  Association  submitted 
in  1913.  It  appears  that  there  are  now  at  least  fifteen  states  that 
have  some  provision  for  assistance  to  legislators  in  the  technical 
work  of  drafting,  apart  from,  or  in  connection  with,  the  supply  of 
reference  material.  The  following  is  quoted  from  the  report  of  1913  : 

‘The  Legislative  Reference  Service,  now  actually  carried  on  in  several 
states,  demonstrates  that  it  is  entirely  practicable  to  collect,  classify,  digest, 
and  index,  prior  to  a  session  of  a  legislature,  all  kinds  of  material  bearing 
on  practically  all  subjects  likely  to  become  subjects  of  actual  legislation  at 
the  session.  This  material,  where  the  bureau  is  well  run,  includes  not  only 
books  and  pamphlets,  such  as  might  be  found  in  an  ordinary  library,  but 
also  copies  of  bills  introduced  into  the  various  *state  legislatures  and  laws 
which  have  been  enacted  in  this  and  foreign  countries,  and  other  printed 
material  relating  to  the  operation  of  such  laws  or  the  conditions  creating  a 
need  for  them.  Indeed,  on  most  subjects  of  possible  legislation  the  difficulty 
is  not  to  find  material,  but  to  arrange  the  large  mass  of  available  material 
so  as  to  make  its  efficient  use  practical.  That  such  service  has  great  possi¬ 
bilities  of  usefulness  is  evident,  especially  where  the  service  is  directly  con¬ 
tributory  to  the  drafting  service,  a  matter  to  be  presently  explained.  The 
increasing  complication  of  our  industrial,  social,  and  governmental  adminis- 


286 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


trative  problems  renders  it  necessary,  if  the  discussion  of  matters  pertaining 
to  legislation  is  to  proceed  in  a  reasonably  intelligent  manner,  that  systematic 
effort  be  expended  on  the  collection  and  arrangement  of  material  bearing  on 
current  matters  of  public  discussion  likely  to  become  the  subject  of  legisla¬ 
tive  comment.  A  central  agency  to  furnish  such  service  does  not  take  the 
place  of  special  commissions  or  committees  created  to  investigate  particular 
subjects  and  recommend  legislation.  The  object  of  the  central  reference  serv¬ 
ice  should  be  to  assist  such  bodies  as  well  as  individual  members  of  the  leg¬ 
islature  and  others  desiring  information  pertaining  to  subjects  of  legislation. 

Existing  agencies  also  demonstrate  that  it  is  possible  to  provide  expert 
drafting  service  for  the  more  important  measures  and  some  assistance  in 
the  drafting  of  all  bills  introduced.  The  number  of  bills,  for  which  expert 
drafting  assistance  can  be  furnished,  would  appear  to  be  merely  a  question 
of  the  size  of  the  force  and  the  amount  of  the  appropriation  for  its  support. 
Your  committee,  therefore,  believes  that  it  is  entirely  practicable  to  estab¬ 
lish,  in  connection  with  any  legislature,  a  permanent  agency  capable  of 
giving  expert  drafting  assistance  for  all  bills  introduced,  and  they  urge  the 
Association  to  place  itself  on  record  as  favoring  such  an  agency  as  the  most 
practical  means  of  bringing  about  scientific  methods  of  legislation,  that  is  to 
say,  methods  of  drafting  statutes  which  will  secure:  (i)  conformity  to  con¬ 
stitutional  requirements;  (2)  adequacy  of  the  provisions  of  the  law  to  its 
purpose;  (3)  co-ordination  with  the  existing  law;  and  (4)  the  utmost  sim¬ 
plicity  of  form  consistent  with  certainty. 

The  organization  of  the  two  services,  legislative  reference  and  legislative 
drafting,  and  their  relation  to  each  other  are  important  factors  in  the  use¬ 
fulness  of  the  results  obtained  from  the  establishment  of  the  service.  The 
agencies  now  existing,  considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  organization, 
fall  into  two  classes :  those  in  which  the  legislative  reference  work  and  the 
bill  drafting  are  provided  for  in  a  single  permanent  bureau,  as  in  Wisconsin, 
Indiana,  and  Pennsylvania,  and  those  in  which  the  legislative  work  is  carried 
on  by  the  state  library  or  one  of  its  divisions,  the  drafting  work  being  done 
by  persons  appointed  by  and  operating  under  the  direct  control  of  the  legis¬ 
lature,  as  in  New  York,  Connecticut,  and  Massachusetts.  Your  committee 
does  not  feel  that  they  are  as  yet  in  a  position  to  express  an  opinion  on  the 
relative  merits  of  either  form  of  organization.  They  are,  however,  of  the 
opinion  that  the  reference  service  should  be  so  organized  and  operated  as  to 
be  directly  contributory  to  the  drafting  service,  and  that  all  questions  of 
organization  of  the  two  services,  their  physical  location  and  the  relation  of 
the  reference  work  to  other  ends  than  the  drafting  of  bills,  as,  for  instance, 
supplying  to  legislators  and  others  material  for  the  discussion  of  pending  or 
possible  legislation,  should  be  decided  with  this  fundamental  principle  in 
mind.  Where,  as  in  New  York,  the  reference  service  is  not  used  by  the 
drafting  department,  comparatively  little  use  of  the  reference  service  is 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


287 


made  by  members  of  the  legislature.  Again,  if  the  drafting  service  makes 
no  use  of  the  reference  service,  the  drafting  service  is  necessarily  confined 
to  minor  matters  of  form. 

It  is,  of  course,  essential  that  the  member,  administrative  officer,  com¬ 
mittee,  or  commission  employing  the  drafting  service  shall  be  the  final 
judge  of  the  policy  to  be  expressed  in  legislative  form.  Anyone  entitled 
to  use  the  service  should  be  entitled  to  it  without  regard  to  the  effect 
of  the  bill  which  he  desires  to  have  drawn.  It  is,  however,  not  only 
proper  but  vital,  if  the  drafting  service  is  to  do  more  than  correct  obvious 
clerical  and  formal  errors,  for  those  in  charge  of  the  work  to  be  able, 
through  their  access  to  the  reference  material,  to  indicate,  if  desired,  to 
the  sponsors  of  the  legislation  the  statutes  of  other  states  or  countries 
dealing  with  the  same  subject  or  direct  their  attention  to  any  other 
material  collected  by  the  reference  service.  Theoretically  the  member  of 
a  legislature  desiring  assistance  in  the  preparation  of  bills,  if  there  is  no  co¬ 
operation  between  the  reference  and  the  drafting  service,  can  go  first  to  the 
reference  service  for  material  and  then  to  the  drafting  service.  Practically, 
however,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  the  member  seeks  the  aid,  not  of 
the  reference,  but  of  the  drafting  service.  That  service  should  be  in  a 
position  to  place  the  member  in  possession  of  all  pertinent  matter  in  rela¬ 
tion  to  the  subject.  Furthermore,  the  draftsman  himself  should  be  in  a 
position  to  ask  the  person,  commission,  or  committee  intelligent  questions 
as  to  the  details  of  the  measure  desired.  This  he  cannot  do  unless  he  him¬ 
self  has  some  familiarity  with  the  subject-matter.  Where  the  draftsman  is 
not  in  a  position  to  refer  the  person  or  persons  desiring  the  legislation  to 
material  bearing  on  the  subject,  and  where  he  is  not  in  a  position  to  ask  in¬ 
telligent  questions  as  to  details,  his  assistance  is  necessarily  confined  to  minor 
questions  of  form,  and,  consequently,  the  effectiveness  of  drafting  service 
is  reduced  to  a  minimum.  The  valuable  results  obtained  in  Wisconsin  are 
due  to  a  combination  of  causes,  not  the  least  of  which  is  the  personality 
and  ability  of  Dr.  Charles  McCarthy,  the  well-known  head  of  the  service. 
Another  contributory  cause,  however,  is  the  fact  that  that  service  has  gone 
beyond  mere  form,  without  any  attempt  to  control  matters  of  policy,  and 
this  would  have  been  impossible  if  the  reference  work  had  not  been  organ¬ 
ized  so  as  to  be  contributory  to  the  drafting  service. 

Clearly  an  experiment  that  has  so  much  promise  in  it  deserves 
every  encouragement,  and  no  effort  should  be  spared  to  direct  the 
movement  into  scientific  lines. 

4.  Codification  of  standing  clauses:  The  value  of  standardizing 
constantly  recurring  terms  and  provisions,  which  enter  into  or  are 
subsidiary  to  the  main  provisions  of  statutes,  has  been  discussed  be- 


288 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


fore.  Such  standardization  economizes  legislative  work,  helps  to 
avoid  duplication  and  inconsistency,  and  makes  for  more  perfect 
equality  in  the  administration  of  the  laws.  If  effected  by  separate 
statutes,  it  insures  a  degree  of  care  in  the  consideration  of  technical 
detail  which  is  otherwise  hardly  possible.  For  subsidiary  clauses  form¬ 
ing  part  of  statutes  dealing  with  contentious  policies  are  often  regarded 
as  mere  technicalities  and  escape  proper  scrutiny.  As  separate  acts 
their  preparation  is  likely  to  be  committed  to  lawyers  specially  familiar 
with,  or  interested  in,  the  particular  subject,  and  they  will  receive  the 
benefit  of  their  knowledge  and  experience. 

We  have  this  standardization  in  our  codes  of  procedure  which  con¬ 
trol  the  criminal  and  civil  enforcement  of  statutes  from  the  point  where 
the  aid  of  the  courts  is  invoked;  we  have  it  in  the  provisions  of 
general  city  acts  which  govern  the  operation  of  municipal  ordinances, 
since  the  creation  of  new  administrative  powers  and  remedies  is  not 
as  a  rule  within  the  scope  of  delegated  authority ;  we  have  it  in  inter¬ 
pretation  acts,  in  acts  relating  to  the  exercise  of  eminent  domain,  in 
acts  relating  to  public  officers  and  official  bonds,  in  civil-service  acts, 
and  perhaps  in  others.  The  practice  is  thus  obviously  not  a  new  one, 
but  it  is  capable  of  much  more  extensive  application. 

The  report  of  the  American  Bar  Association  Committee,  above  re¬ 
ferred  to,  submitted  a  list  of  topics  the  standardization  of  which  was 
thought  desirable,  if  practicable,  and  suggested  the  preparation  of  a 
drafting  manual  of  instructions  and  model  clauses.  The  Bar  Associa¬ 
tion  authorized  the  committee  to  proceed  with  the  work,  and  the 
Reports  of  1914,  1915,  and  1916  brought  some  instalments  of  such  a 
manual.  There  was  thus  drafted  an  act  providing  the  procedure  for 
the  adoption  of  statutes  or  ordinances  submitted  to  popular  vote  in 
municipalities.  The  enactment  of  such  a  statute  would  make  it  pos¬ 
sible  to  provide  very  simply  in  any  adoptive  act  that  the  act  shall 
not  take  effect  in  any  city  until  adopted  by  popular  vote  therein. 
Clearly  the  existence  of  such  a  statute  could  not  be  otherwise  than 
beneficial.  Desirable  legislation  has  been  defeated  repeatedly  by 
defective  submission  clauses. 

The  result  of  a  series  of  such  "clauses  acts”  would  be  the  codifica¬ 
tion  of  an  important  section  of  administrative  law.  It  would  give 
occasion  to  consider  systematically  certain  phases  of  legislation  upon 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


289 


which  neither  lawyers  nor  legislators  appear  to  have  settled  convic¬ 
tions.  The  discussion  of  penalty  clauses  in  the  report  of  1915  will 
serve  as  an  illustration  of  this;  no  similar  discussion  of  this  ever- 
recurring  subject  can  be  found  anywhere  in  our  entire  legal  literature. 
In  our  present  legislative  practice  the  matter  is  left  to  the  discretion 
or  whim  of  the  draftsman,  and  unless  he  offers  some  extreme  or 
unusual  clause  his  propositions  will  arouse  only  the  slightest  interest. 

Should  the  Committee  of  the  American  Bar  Association  succeed 
in  completing  the  outlined  manual  or  a  substantial  portion  thereof, 
the  indorsement  of  the  Association  would  add  considerable  weight  to 
whatever  intrinsic  merit  the  work  might  possess.  Care  would  have 
to  be  taken,  however,  not  to  misrepresent  the  meaning  of  such  in¬ 
dorsement.  For  in  the  nature  of  things  it  is  impossible  that  a  large 
body  can  properly  scrutinize  such  work,  and  it  is  compelled  to  take 
much  of  it  on  faith  and  credit.  No  legislative  measure,  however,  can 
safely  dispense  with  searching  and  even  unfriendly  criticism. 

There  is  one  body  pre-eminently  fitted  to  give  this  criticism — the 
National  Conference  of  Commissioners  on  Uniform  State  Laws.  Its 
indorsement  of  an  act  is  nearly  always  the  result  of  protracted  discus¬ 
sion  extending  over  a  number  of  annual  sessions,  and  the  value  of  the 
indorsement  is  proportionately  high.  In  such  a  body  the  question 
would  of  course  arise  whether  uniformity  in  standing  clauses  is  pos¬ 
sible.  The  impression  may  exist  that  local  peculiarities  enter  largely 
into  the  subsidiary  phases  of  legislation.  Careful  examination  and 
still  more  a  practical  attempt  at  unification  will  probably  show  this 
impression  to  be  unfounded. 

Clauses  acts  operate  by  incorporation  into  other  statutes  which 
tacitly  or  expressly  refer  to  them.  Their  mere  enactment  gives  them 
no  mandatory  character ;  that  comes  only  from  voluntary  acceptance 
by  the  legislature  in  connection  with  subsequent  legislation.  The 
legislature  may  at  any  time  override  them  and  insert  different  provi¬ 
sions  in  a  particular  act.  This  may  result  even  from  habit,  and  if 
possible  such  abrogation  should  be  avoided  by  construction.  How¬ 
ever,  in  view  of  this  precarious  status,  a  general  subsidiary  act  would 
have  to  win  favor  by  its  own  merits.  All  the  more  readily  should  it 
be  given  a  chance  to  prove  its  merits,  and  its  non-mandatory  character 
should  be  an  argument  in  favor  of  its  adoption. 


290 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


37.  Limitations  on  Legislative  Activity1 

Legislatures  may  often  promote  the  welfare  of  society  by  active 
measures,  either  in  the  way  of  restricting  acts  that  in  themselves 
would  be  injurious  to  society,  or  in  the  way  of  promoting  directly  or 
indirectly  acts  that  will  tend  to  make  men  better  citizens  or  to  further 
the  good  of  society.  It  is  perhaps  no  less  important  to  consider  the 
limitations  of  legislative  activity,  for  in  very  many  instances,  however 
inclined  we  are  toward  sensible  action  and  wise  judgment,  through 
our  lack  of  information  we  may  at  times  attempt  to  seek  the  impos¬ 
sible,  thus  wasting  energy.  Or,  again,  if  our  energies  are  misdirected, 
the  result  may  be  the  accomplishment  of  harm  rather  than  of  good. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  many  of  the  reform  movements  that 
are  strongly  advocated  by  our  best-meaning  citizens  are  at  times 
ill  advised. 

Members  of  legislatures  say  that  advocates  of  social  reform  are 
often  unwise  in  the  specific  plans  which  they  advocate,  even  though 
the  end  which  they  desire  is  good. 

Again,  reforms  cannot  go  far  beyond  the  active  wish  of  the  people. 
Many  subjects  are  taken  up  regarding  which  the  people  care  very 
little,  either  one  way  or  the  other.  They  have  little  active  interest  in 
either  pushing  or  opposing  them.  In  consequence,  such  measures  may 
readily  enough  be  carried  by  the  efforts  of  some  legislators  who  take 
an  interest ;  but  if  anything  of  prime  importance  to  the  people  is  to 
be  passed  and  opposition  is  met,  there  must  be  a  strong  popular  senti¬ 
ment  back  of  the  project.  Most  of  the  members  of  the  legislature, 
under  ordinary  circumstances,  wish  to  be  reelected,  and  perhaps  in 
consequence  they  heed  clearly  the  wishes  of  their  constituents. 

As  has  been  suggested  in  preceding  chapters,2  the  people  are  nor¬ 
mally  conservative,  and  every  legislator  wishes  to  avoid  the  reputation 
of  being  a  radical  or  an  extremist,  because  in  the  minds  of  most 
constituents  radicalism  is  opposed  to  good  sense,  as  in  many  instances 
a  man’s  reputation  as  a  humorist  is  likely  to  weaken  people’s  belief 

aBy  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks,  Ph.  D.,  LL.  D.,  Research  Professor  of  Government 
and  Public  Administration  in  New  York  University.  Adapted  from  Governmental 
Action  for  Social  Welfare,  pp.  107-125,  134-138.  Copyright,  1910,  by  The  Mac¬ 
millan  Company.  Reprinted  by  permission. 

2 Ibid,  chaps,  i  and  ii. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


291- 


in  his  good  judgment.  Moreover,  the  people  test  radicalism  in  a  way 
that  while  perhaps  not  always  fair,  is  nevertheless  understood  by  the 
members  of  the  legislatures.  Anything  that  is  out  of  the  common, 
anything  that  goes  far  beyond  present  custom,  is  with  rare  excep¬ 
tions  felt  to  be  tending  toward  radicalism;  and  this  the  legislator 
will  usually  avoid. 

On  the  other  hand,  occasionally  there  sweeps  over  a  country  a 
wave  of  popular  excitement  on  some  question,  and  the  people  them¬ 
selves  become  extremely  radical  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  legisla¬ 
tors.  Under  certain  conditions  in  Switzerland,  the  people,  by  petition 
of  a  certain  proportion  of  the  voters,  may  demand  that  a  bill  be 
prepared  by  the  legislature,  considered,  and  submitted  to  the  people 
for  their  approval.  Under  this  provision  certain  extremists  succeeded 
in  arousing  popular  hostility  and  pushing  through  a  measure  abolish¬ 
ing  compulsory  vaccination.1  An  even  more  extreme  action  was  taken 
under  the  federal  initiative  and  referendum  in  Switzerland.  A  com¬ 
paratively  few  people,  strongly  anti-Semitic  in  their  beliefs,  put  them¬ 
selves  actively  to  work  to  make  living  in  Switzerland  uncomfortable 
for  the  Jews.  With  this  purpose  they  introduced  in  1893  an  amend¬ 
ment  to  the  constitution  forbidding  the  slaughter  of  animals  for  food 
purposes  by  bleeding.  Their  open  argument  was  that  they  wished 
to  prevent  cruelty  to  animals.  In  fact  they  succeeded  in  awakening 
much  public  excitement  on  that  question  and  in  passing  a  law  for¬ 
bidding  the  method  of  slaughtering  animals  employed  by  the  Jews, 
so  that  those  Jews  who  were  in  the  habit  of  living  up  to  their  religious 
customs  had  difficulty  in  securing  meat.2 

There  is,  therefore,  a  possibility  that  the  people’s  wishes  may  be 
swayed  back  and  forth  to  extremes,  and  under  such  circumstances 
they  are  likely  to  push  through  legislation  that  would  be  considered 
unreasonable  by  people  of  judgment,  with  ordinarily  conservative 
habits.  The  more  intelligent  reformers,  therefore,  ought,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  recognize  the  fact  that  legislators  ordinarily  will  not  favor 
radical  measures  on  account  of  the  conservatism  of  the  people,  but 
that  in  certain  instances  the  people  themselves  may  be  roused  to  the 
advocacy  of  measures  which  will  be  more  radical  than  an  ordinary 
legislature  would  willingly  pass.  If,  however,  the  people  pass  extreme 

1  A.  L.  Lowell,  Governments  and  Parties  in  Continental  Europe ,  Vol.  I  p.  287. 

2  Ibid.  Vol.  II,  p.  284. 


2Q2 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


measures,  after  the  wave  of  excitement  is  over  and  their  reason  has 
returned,  the  laws  are  likely  either  to  fall  into  disuse  or  be  repealed. 
There  arises  the  question  whether  the  executive  ought  to  enforce  a 
law  found  on  the  statute  books  which  he  considers  bad ;  but  we^ill 
know  as  a  matter  of  experience  and  from  our  knowledge  of  human 
nature  that  laws  on  the  statute  books  that  are  opposed  to  the  wishes 
of  a  majority  of  the  people  will  rarely  be  enforced.  Such  neglect  of 
laws,  especially  of  those  lately  passed,  tends  to  inculcate  among  the 
people  a  disrespect  for  law  and  order.  Moreover,  securing  the  pas¬ 
sage  of  a  law  of  this  type,  which  will  soon  fall  into  disuse,  is  a  waste 
of  energy  and  a  discouragement  to  people  who  are  striving  for  legis¬ 
lation  steadily  progressive  in  its  nature.  It  is,  therefore,  an  unwise 
policy  to  attempt  to  move  much  faster  than  public  opinion  will  follow, 
when  we  wish  to  secure  the  passage  of  measures  looking  toward  the 
improvement  of  society. 

This  does  not  mean,  however,  that  legislators  should  merely  at¬ 
tempt  to  follow  public  opinion.  A  legislator  who  does  only  that  has 
not  much  originality  and  certainly  not  the  right  public  spirit.  In 
many  cases  he  is  a  moral  coward;  in  others  he  is  a  demagogue. 
Members  of  the  legislature  should  attempt  to  lead  public  sentiment 
and  should  attempt  to  secure  the  passage  of  laws  that  are  as  far  in 
advance  of  public  sentiment  as  they  can  get  the  people  to  follow; 
but  they  ought  not  to  proceed  more  rapidly  than  that.  The  process 
should  be  first  the  education  of  public  sentiment,  then  the  passage  of 
legislation  ‘slightly  in  advance  of  it,  in  order  that  the  legislation  itself 
may  be  the  means  for  a  still  further  advance  in  the  right  direction. 

Reform  movements  are  also  limited  by  the  character  of  the  legisla¬ 
tors.  This  is  a  somewhat  different  way  of  stating  a  proposition  quite 
similar  to  that  just  discussed.  In  many  instances  a  person  who  is  a 
student  of  public  questions,  a  specialist  in  legislation,  will  understand 
the  people ;  and  he  will  be  prepared  to  introduce  and  advocate  meas¬ 
ures  that  seem  radical  in  their  nature — measures  which  most  members 
of  a  legislature  might  disapprove,  but  which  in  reality  are  in  accord 
with  public  sentiment.  The  legislators  oppose  either  because  they 
are  corrupt  or  weak  or  misunderstand  the  people,  or  because  some 
few  of  their  constituents  oppose. 

In  one  of  the  decisions  handed  down  by  the  United  States  court  in 
Minnesota  regarding  certain  railroad  legislation  in  that  state,  Dis- 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


2  93 


trict  Judge  Lochren,  rendering  the  decision,  after  calling  attention  to 
some  of  the  unjust  characteristics  of  the  legislation  in  question,  added : 

And  it  seems  to  me,  in  view  of  the  severe  penalties  denounced  by  these 
acts  of  the  legislature,  that  the  officers  of  the  corporations  could  not  have 
done  otherwise  than  to  have  refused  to  act  under  those  circumstances,  .  .  . 
There  is  no  question  but  that  such  legislation  is  vicious,  almost  a  disgrace 
to  the  civilization  of  the  age,  and  a  reproach  upon  the  intelligence  and  sense 
of  justice  of  any  legislature  which  could  enact  provisions  of  that  kind. 

In  this  instance  the  judge  seemed  to  consider  the  members  of  the 
legislature  either  vicious  or  so  weak  that  they  were  unwilling  to  with¬ 
stand  popular  clamor  when  the  people  were  being  swept  away  by  a 
sudden  wave  of  popular  excitement. 

When,  some  ten  or  fifteen  years  ago,  ballot  reform  acts  were  in¬ 
troduced  into  the  legislatures  of  many  of  our  states,  corruption  of  the 
ballot  was  very  general  in  the  cities  and  even  throughout  the  states. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  public  sentiment  was  very  strongly 
against  corruption,  and  that  in  most  states  the  people  were  prepared 
to  accept  any  measure  of  ballot  reform  that  seemed  reasonable  and 
that  they  thought  would  really  check  vote-buying.  When,  however, 
the  reformers  prepared  their  bills  and  brought  them  before  the  legis¬ 
latures,  many  members  opposed  them,  although  usually  the  opposi¬ 
tion  was  not  direct.  Generally,  objection  was  to  the  form  of  law 
proposed.  Most  members  wished  to  keep  party  organization  intact 
and  asked  to  have  a  ballot  of  such  a  form  that  it  would  enable  the 
ignorant  man  to  vote  a  straight  party  ticket,  and  that  would  encour¬ 
age,  so  far  as  possible,  the  voting  of  straight  tickets  instead  of  en¬ 
couraging  independence.  By  thus  providing  for  party  regularity, 
through  amendments  to  the  reformers’  bills,  they  in  many  instances 
succeeded  in  defeating  in  part  the  real  purpose  of  the  legislation, 
although  they  did  not  dare  directly  to  throw  out  the  bills.  In  other 
instances  the  managers  of  the  political  parties  that  had  depended  the 
most  upon  corruption  for  carrying  elections  and  that  had  the  largest 
campaign  funds  to  use  for  those  purposes  were  opposed  to  any  reform 
measure.  Not  daring,  however,  to  oppose  the  reform  directly,  they 
added  amendments  which  would  still  enable  them  to  use  money  cor¬ 
ruptly.  We  need  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  members  of  legislatures  are 
not  merely  human  beings  but  human  beings  with  very  strong  interests, 


294 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


sometimes  with  strong  prejudices,  and  that  in  consequence  we  shall 
find  that  strict  limitations  will  be  often  placed  by  the  legislators  upon 
measures  intended  to  reform  society. 

In  the  study  of  individual  legislatures  or  of  the  individual  members 
of  various  legislatures,  we  should  recognize  that  bills  suitable  for  one 
state  might  be  entirely  unsuitable  for  another.  A  bill  might  well 
succeed  in  New  York  when  it  would  fail  in  Kentucky,  or  vice  versa. 
The  promoter  of  social  welfare  by  legislative  means  must  first  con¬ 
sider  the  end  that  he  will  attain,  then  introduce  the  bill  that  will,  as 
far  as  possible,  meet  the  prejudices  and  wishes  of  the  legislators  with 
whom  he  has  to  deal,  and  in  that  way  accomplish  his  results.  The  end 
should  be  kept  in  mind  and  not  the  particular  form  of  the  bill. 
Students  of  politics  are  likely  often  to  feel  that  our  somewhat  extreme 
reformers,  often  spoken  of  as  "professional”  reformers,  seem  to  care 
more  for  the  form  than  for  the  substance. 

People  often  complain  that  members  of  the  legislature  are  at¬ 
tempting  to  block  a  reform  or  to  put  obstacles  in  the  way  for  selfish 
reasons,  when  the  fact  is  that  the  members  of  the  legislature  know 
that  it  often  is  much  easier  to  bring  about  a  reform  somewhat  slowly, 
in  order  that  the  measure  may  not  be  so  far  in  advance  of  public 
opinion  that  it  will  not  be  properly  enforced.  In  consequence,  they 
advocate  the  adoption  of  the  reform  by  successive  steps,  so  that 
through  a  partial  measure  the  public  may  be  gradually  informed, 
and  that  thus  with  the  development  of  public  sentiment  the  reform 
may  be  safely  and  certainly  carried  through. 

In  many  instances,  where  it  has  been  impossible  to  persuade  a 
state  legislature  to  adopt  a  law  restricting  the  hours  of  labor  for 
women  and  children,  it  has  been  possible  to  make  provision  for  an 
investigation.  This  has  been  so  at  times,  because  there  has  been  some 
corrupt  interest  opposing  the  legislation,  often  merely  because  the 
legislators  were  convinced  that  the  people  were  not  yet  ready  for  a 
complete  measure,  and  that  in  no  other  way  could  popular  sentiment 
be  so  wisely  developed  as  through  a  careful  investigation  which  should 
make  the  real  facts  known  to  the  public.  After  the  people’s  sentiment 
had  been  properly  developed  by  an  investigation,  they  would  be  ready 
then  to  accept  the  legislative  measure  that  should  prove  wisest. 

Generally  speaking,  the  labor  unions  have  been  very  practical  in 
their  ways  of  securing  shorter  hours  of  labor  by  legislative  means. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


295 


They  have  often  been  willing  to  take  what  they  could  get.  For 
example,  if  they  can  secure  an  eight-hour  law  for  state  work,  with  the 
provision  that  all  contracts  for  state  work  must  be  done  on  an  eight-  • 
hour  basis,  they  have  been  content  with  that,  thinking  that  with  this 
step  and  with  the  experience  thus  gained,  it  will  in  the  future  be  much 
less  difficult  to  secure  an  eight-hour  law  for  all  kinds  of  work.  With¬ 
out  expressing  any  opinion  as  to  the  wisdom  of  legislation  concerning 
the  hours  of  labor,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  frequently  is  wiser 
to  attempt  to  move  slowly  in  the  adoption  of  reforms  than  to  insist 
upon  securing  everything  at  once. 

Another  method  of  testing  public  sentiment  and  of  securing  the 
ready  adoption  of  reform  measures  is  by  permissive  rather  than  com¬ 
pulsory  legislation.  When,  for  example,  it  was  first  proposed  that  a 
federal  incorporation  act  be  passed  under  which  the  great  corpora¬ 
tions,  especially  those  engaged  in  interstate  commerce,  might  be 
organized  under  federal  law,  it  was  suggested  by  many  that  there  be 
passed  an  excellent  law,  on  the  whole  favorable  to  the  best  corporations 
that  were  doing  an  honest  business,  and  that  it  should  be  permissive 
in  its  nature.  If,  then,  a  considerable  number  of  the  largest,  the  best, 
and  the  most  influential  corporations  should  organize  under  that  law, 
because  they  wished  to  let  the  public  know  that  they  had  nothing  to 
conceal  and  because  their  interests  would  thus  be  furthered,  other 
corporations  not  coming  under  the  law  when  it  was  offered  them 
would  be  discredited.  They  must  then  either  change  their  methods 
of  doing  business  or  the  value  of  their  stock  would  probably  fall.  It 
was  thought  that  under  those  circumstances  even  the  worst  of  the 
corporations  would  eventually  be  forced  either  to  organize  under  the 
new  law  or  to  adopt  measures  of  publicity  which  would  enable 
the  public  to  see  that  their  business  was  being  conducted  along  right 
lines.  In  this  way,  after  a  time,  the  law  which  was  at  first  permissive 
in  its  nature,  might  gradually  come  to  have  upon  its  side  so  strong  a 
pressure  of  public  sentiment  that  it  could  be  made  compulsory  and 
applicable  to  all  corporations  that  it  was  desirable  to  have  thus 
affected. 

The  whole  question  of  compromise  in  legislation,  which  has  awak¬ 
ened  much  controversy  at  times  among  moralists  as  well  as  among 
students  of  politics,  may  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words.  In  promoting 
legislation  one  should  always  be  sure  that  his  aim  and  his  principles 


296  SOCIAL  METHOD 

i 

are  right.  Then  as  a  compromise  he  may  choose  the  time  and  the 
place  and  within  reason  the  means  and  the  methods  for  bringing 
.  about  immediate  results,  and  he  should  be  cautious  not  to  attempt  to 
go  too  fast. 

But  aside  from  the  limitations  upon  legislative  activity  to  be  found 
in  the  active  wishes  of  the  people  and  in  the  character  of  the  legisla¬ 
tors,  still  others  are  to  be  found  in  human  nature  and  the  ways  in 
which  it  must  be  influenced.  It  has  often  been  found  that  it  is  unwise 
to  attack  too  directly  and  too  sternly  some  of  the  weaknesses  and 
passions  of  men  and  women,  because  frequently  more  harm  than 
good  will  result.  The  attacks  upon  the  vices  and  evils  of  society  must 
be  adapted  to  the  time  and  place,  and  the  wisest  means  must  be 
chosen.  While  beyond  doubt  there  has  been  a  steady  progress  in 
society  toward  lessening  the  ill  results  coming  from  the  liquor  traffic, 
from  the  social  evil,  and  from  other  curses  of  society,  direct  attacks 
have  often  failed  of  serious  accomplishment.  The  aim  of  all  legisla¬ 
tion  on  such  questions,  of  course,  is  to  elevate  society  by  putting  a 
control  over  human  weaknesses,  especially  by  getting  the  different 
individuals  in  the  community  to  control  themselves.  Unfortunately, 
many  people  do  not  control  themselves.  Legislation  should  therefore 
bring  influence  to  bear  so  as  gradually  to  develop  the  habit  of  self- 
control.  In  some  instances  this  can  best  be  done  by  removing  tempta¬ 
tions  or  by  putting  individuals  under  such  circumstances  that  they 
can  more  readily  resist  temptation,  at  times  perhaps  by  the  substitu¬ 
tion  of  some  innocent  habit  or  custom  to  take  the  place  of  the  in¬ 
jurious  one.  Human  needs  and  desires  are  likely  to  secure  some 
satisfaction.  It  is  wise  to  secure  this  satisfaction  with  the  least  injury 
to  society.  In  the  attempt  to  solve  such  questions  we  need  to  be 
especially  guarded  against  our  prejudices,  and  it  is  usually  found 
wise  to  pay  close  heed  to  the  opinion  and  judgment  of  people  who 
have  had  so  direct  experience  that  they  may  speak  with  authority. 

If  the  social  conditions  are  not  kept  well  in  mind,  we  are  likely  to 
act  not  merely  unwisely,  but  often  unjustly.  In  every  crime,  of 
course,  there  must  be  an  evil  intent.  Now,  if  a  social  custom  has  in 
any  country  been  generally  recognized  and  a  person  without  wrong 
intention  follows  that  custom,  it  would  be  grossly  unjust  to  punish 
him  for  his  act  until  he  is  educated  to  see  that  his  act  is  wrong, — 
then  it  may  be  forbidden. 


SOCIAL  LEGISLATION 


297 


It  is  desirable  also  to  avoid  too  much  legislation.  Probably  Her¬ 
bert  Spencer  goes  too  far  in  decrying  over-legislation,  but  most  of  us 
are  too  ready  to  assume  that,  if  there  is  any  evil,  the  best  remedy  is  to 
get  a  law  passed.  In  very  many  instances  it  is  better  to  let  the  evils 
work  out  their  own  cure.  For  example,  over-capitalization  of  our 
great  corporations  has  doubtless  been  a  serious  evil  in  this  country, 
but  any  man  who  has  followed  the  conditions  of  business  for  the  last 
ten  years  would  doubtless  say  that  probably  three-fourths  of  the 
evils  that  followed  from  over-capitalization  in  the  years  1890-1892 
have  already  been  overcome.  In.  most  instances,  as  soon  as  the  evil 
was  clearly  recognized,  business  men  set  to  work  to  prevent  its  recur¬ 
rence  ;  and  while  in  all  probability  some  legislation  would  now  be  wise 
and  would  have  been  wise  several  years  ago,  the  need  was  not  so  great 
as  was  at  times  assumed.  The  legislation  needed  is  rather  regulation 
through  publicity  than  an  attempt  directly  to  forbid  over-capitalization. 

One  can  hardly  avoid  in  this  connection  a  brief  reference  to  social¬ 
ism.  While  there  are  many  classes  of  socialists,  they  practically  all 
believe  that  the  power  of  the  state  should  be  increased  until  it  would 
take  very  active  control  of  the  productive  industries  of  the  country. 
This  seems  to  me  most  emphatically  over-legislation.  My  objection 
to  over-legislation  in  many  cases  is  that  it  checks  individual  develop¬ 
ment  and  takes  away  from  our  citizens  the  power  of  self-reliance. 
Unless  a  country  is  entirely  different  from  most  democracies,  the 
care  of  individuals  by  a  government  far  removed  from  them,  as  has 
already  been  said,  is  likely  to  check  individual  initiative.  So  far  as 
I  know,  the  socialists,  and  I  have  many  friends  among  them,  have 
frequently  assumed  that  the  nature  of  industrial  activity  is  the  same 
in  all  states.  In  my  judgment,  human  nature  is  such  that  there  never 
can  be  uniformity  in  all  states  in  all  industries.  Some  industries  are 
probably  adapted  to  control  by  the  state.  Others  never  will  be 
adapted  to  control  by  the  state,  because  they  depend  largely  on  in¬ 
dividual  initiative  and  genius.  For  such  industries  there  ought  not 
to  be  a  common  central  control.  On  the  other  hand,  we  can  best  per¬ 
haps  get  cooperative  control  of  many  great  industries,  especially 
those  that  are  public  in  their  nature,  through  a  city  government ;  but 
it  may  well  be  that  while  one  city  would  control  and  operate  a  street 
railway  to  excellent  advantage,  another  city  with  differing  conditions 
or  with  a  different  policy  would  fail  utterly. 


298 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


We  should  not  think  that  human  character,  human  motives,  human 
ways  of  looking  at  questions,  can  be  changed  much  by  legislation. 
A  man  who  is  selfish,  grasping,  dominating,  in  our  present  industrial 
society  would  be  the  same  type  in  a  socialistic  state.  It  is  in  his  rela¬ 
tions  to  other  people  that  he  is  really  anti-social,  and  if  you  change  the 
form  of  our  social  institutions  without  changing  the  nature  of  the  man, 
he  will  still  be  anti-social.  If  he  is  a  man  of  ability,  of  strong  person¬ 
ality,  born  to  rule,  instead  of  being  a  captain  of  industry,  he  might  well 
become  a  governor  of  a  socialistic  state ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that  in 
that  capacity  his  selfish  anti-social  characteristics  would  still  remain, 
and  the  welfare  of  society  would  be  sacrificed  to  further  his  own 
selfish  purposes. 

The  usefulness  of  legislation,  finally,  to  sum  the  whole  matter  up 
in  brief,  is  strictly  limited.  Relativity  is  the  key-word  to  legislative 
action.  Laws  must  be  fitted  to  the  place,  to  the  time,  to  the  people, 
and  extravagances  and  over-legislation  must  be  avoided. 


CHAPTER  XII 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 
38.  Fundamental  Facts  of  Heredity1 

1.  Heredity  is  a  flesh  and  blood  linkage,  a  germinal  continuity, 
binding  generation  to  generation.  It  is  a  term  for  a  biological  rela¬ 
tion  of  offspring  to  ancestry.  It  has  nothing  directly  to  do  with  tradi¬ 
tion  or  with  culture-legacies  handed  on  outside  the  organism. 

2.  The  natural  inheritance  is  carried,  we  cannot  picture  how,  in 
the  form  of  initiatives,  or  factors,  or  determinants  in  the  egg-cell  (the 
ovum)  and  the  sperm-cell  (the  spermatozoon)  which  unite  at  the 
beginning  of  each  new  life. 

3.  The  inheritance,  contained  implicitly  in  the  fertilised  egg-cell, 
requires  an  appropriate  nurture  if  it  is  to  develop  aright.  Develop¬ 
ment  is  the  making  visible  or  actual  of  what  has  lain  in  the  germ-cell 
in  an  invisible  or  potential  state. 

4.  In  mammals,  and  in  some  other  cases,  e.g.  flowering  plants,  the 
developing  embryo  may  be  influenced  very  early  by  its  immediate 
surroundings  within  the  mother,  but  that  influence  is  part  of  nurture, 
not  part  of  the  hereditary  nature. 

5.  Apart  from  a  few  exceptional  cases,  e.g.  virgin  birth  (partheno¬ 
genesis),  which  is  restricted  in  natural  conditions  to  backboneless 
animals,  every  inheritance  is  dual,  partly  paternal  and  partly  maternal. 
The  mother  certainly  contributes  in  the  cytoplasm  or  the  extra- 
nuclear  substance  of  the  egg-cell  the  greater  part  of  the  initial  build¬ 
ing  material,  the  sperm-cell  being  very  much  more  minute.  It  is 
highly  probable  that  many  old-established  generic  characters  have 
their  vehicle  in  the  cytoplasm  of  the  ovum.  As  regards  those  heredi¬ 
tary  items  which  are  carried  in  the  nuclei  of  the  sex-cells,  it  is 
interesting  to  notice  that  the  nuclear-bodies  (chromosomes)  are  usu¬ 
ally  equal  or  nearly  equal  in  number  in  sperm  and  ovum.  Each  kind 

0 

1  By  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  Regius  Professor  of  Natural  History 
in  Aberdeen  University.  Adapted  from  The  Control  of  Life,  pp.  5 7— 62 ,  130-131. 
Copyright,  1921,  by  Henry  Holt  and  Company,  New  York. 

299 


300 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


of  organism  has  a  definite  number  of  chromosomes  which  is  usually 
the  same  in  all  the  cells,  except  the  unripe  ova  and  sperms,  which  have 
double  the  normal  number.  There  is  nothing  in  the  number  itself, 
which  is  the  same  in  quite  unrelated  organisms,  e.g.  white  man  and 
slug ;  the  point  is  the  constancy  of  the  number. 

6.  The  paternal  and  maternal  contributions  form  the  warp  and  woof 
of  the  web  which  composes  the  organism,  and  each  sex-cell  carries  a 
complete  set  of  the  essential  hereditary  qualities.  In  the  course  of 
development,  however,  the  offspring  may  '  take  after  ’  one  side  of  the 
house  as  regards  one  character,  and  may  '  favour  ’  the  other  side  of  the 
house  as  regards  some  other  character.  It  may  be  like  the  father  in  its 
hands,  like  its  mother  in  its  hair.  Thus  we  have  to  distinguish  between 
the  inheritance  or  'genetic  composition’  which  the  organism  has  to 
start  with,  and  the  expression  of  that  inheritance  in  development. 

7.  Strictly  speaking,  an  inheritance  is  multiple  as  well  as  dual,  for 
there  may  be  demonstrable  ancestral  contributions  which  did  not  find 
expression  in  the  parent.  Resemblance  to  a  grandparent  is  a  com¬ 
mon  and,  as  we  shall  see,  readily  explicable  phenomenon.  Characters 
sometimes  lie  latent  for  a  generation,  or  for  several  generations,  which 
again  brings  out  the  difference  between  the  implicit  inheritance  and 
the  developmental  expression  of  it. 

8.  The  largest  fact  of  heredity  is  that  like  tends  to  beget  like.  The 
hereditary  relation  between  successive  generations  is  such  that  a 
general  resemblance  is  sustained.  A  particular  kind  of  organisation, 
associated  with  a  particular  kind  of  activity,  persists  from  generation 
to  generation.  These  are  simply  different  ways  of  saying  the  same 
thing;  that  all  inborn  characters  (except  sterility)  are  heritable  and 
may  be  handed  on.  But  "may”  cannot  be  changed  into  "must,”  for 
the  unexpected  often  happens. 

Recent  Advances  in  the  Study  of  Heredity 

There  are  three  modern  ideas  that  have  profoundly  influenced  our 
views  of  heredity.  (1)  The  first  is  the  idea  of  germinal  continuity, 
which  we  owe  especially  to  Sir  Francis  Galton  and  Professor  August 
Weismann.  The  reason  for  like  .begetting  like  is  to  be  found  in  the 
persistence  of  a  specific  organisation  through  a  lineage  of  unspecialised 
germ-cells.  The  germinal  material  of  the  fertilised  ovum  forms  the 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


301 


basis  of  the  building  material  out  of  which  the  body  of  the  offspring 
is  built  up,  undergoing,  in  a  puzzling  way,  not  only  a  huge  increase  in 
quantity  but  a  qualitative  differentiation  into  nerve  and  muscle,  blood 
and  bone.  But  while  this  is  going  on,  a  residue  of  the  germinal 
material  is  kept  intact  and  unspecialised  to  form  the  beginning  of 
the  reproductive  organs  of  the  offspring,  whence  may  be  launched  in 
due  time  another  similar  vessel  on  the  adventurous  voyage  of  life. 
The  sex-cells  produced  in  the  reproductive  organs  are  the  descendants 
of  unspecialised  embryonic  cells,  which  did  not  share  in  body-making, 
which  did  not  become  specialised.  In  short,  these  germ-cells  remain 
like  the  fertilised  egg-cell  from  which  the  organism  started ;  they  con¬ 
tinue  the  specific  tradition  intact.  As  it  has  been  put,  instead  of  say¬ 
ing  that  the  hen  gives  rise  to  the  egg,  we  should  say  the  egg  gives 
rise  to  the  hen  and  to  the  eggs  which  the  hen’s  body  contains.  So  we 
see  that  the  parent  is  rather  the  trustee  of  the  germ-plasm  (the  ger¬ 
minal  basis  of  the  specific  organisation)  than  the  producer  of  the 
child.  In  a  new  sense  the  child  is  a  chip  of  the  old  block.  Or  as 
Professor  Bergson  puts  it  in  less  static  metaphor,  "Life  is  like  a  cur¬ 
rent  passing  from  germ  to  germ  through  the  medium  of  a  developed 
organism.”  This  continuity  of  the  germ-plasm,  by  cell-division  after 
cell-division,  along  a  lineage  of  unspecialised  cells,  explains  the  inertia 
of  the  main  mass  of  the  inheritance,  which  is  carried  on,  as  we  have 
seen,  with  little  change,  as  it  were  en  bloc,  from  generation  to  genera¬ 
tion.  Men  do  not  gather  grapes  off  thorns,  or  figs  off  thistles.  Similar 
material  to  start  with ;  similar  conditions  in  which  to  develop ;  there¬ 
fore  like  begets  like. 

(2)  The  second  very  important  modern  idea,  which  we  owe  to 
Mendel  and  Professor  de  Vries,  is  that  of  unit-characters.  Some  have 
compared  its  importance  to  that  of  the  Atomic  Theory  in  chemistry. 
An  inheritance  is,  in  part,  built  up  of  numerous,  more  or  less  clear- 
cut,  crisply*  defined,  non-blending  characters,  which  are  continued  in 
some  of  the  descendants  as  discrete  wholes,  neither  merging  nor  divid¬ 
ing.  A  definite  type  of  very  intelligent  dwarf  has  been  known  to 
reappear  for  four  or  five  generations.  The  persistence  of  the  Haps- 
burg  lip  is  a  well-known  instance  of  a  trivial  unit-character  that  came 
and  stayed.  An  abnormal  peculiarity  like  having  six  fingers  may  defy 
dislodgment  for  six  generations.  These  unit-characters  or  Mendelian 
characters  behave  as  if  they  were  discrete  entities  which  can  be 


302 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


shuffled  about  and  distributed  to  the  offspring  in  some  degree  inde¬ 
pendently  of  one  another  and  which  can  be  re-united  in  new  combi¬ 
nations.  They  must  be  represented  in  the  germ-cell  by  'factors’  or 
'determinants’  or  organisational  peculiarities  of  some  sort.  One  of 
the  latest  names  for  a  hereditary  'factor’  is  'gene.’ 

(3)  The  third  very  important  idea  that  has  been  brought  into 
prominence  in  modern  times  is  that  bodily  modifications — dints  and 
imprints — acquired  by  an  individual  as  the  direct  result  of  peculiari¬ 
ties  in  nurture,  are  not  readily  transmissible,  if  at  all,  and,  in  any 
case,  are  not  usually  transmitted.  Every  care  must  be  taken  to  avoid 
dogmatism,  but  it  is  certain  that  individually  acquired  modifications 
(in  the  technical  sense)  are  not  commonly  transmitted  to  any  observ¬ 
able  extent.  We  must  go  further  and  say  that  it  is  exceedingly  dif¬ 
ficult  to  find  incontrovertible  evidence  showing  that  they  may  be  even 
occasionally  transmitted. 

For  the  individual  there  is  great  plasticity,  as  the  result  of  changes 
in  environment  and  function.  Man  is  very  modifiable  and  educable. 
And  though  the  resulting  modifications  do  not  seem  to  be  transmissible 
as  such,  they  can  be  reimpressed  if  desirable,  on  generation  after 
generation.  In  her  interesting  study,  Environment  and  Efficiency 
(1912),  Miss  Mary  Horner  Thomson  tells  of  her  study  of  265  chil¬ 
dren,  mostly  of  "the  lowest  class”  (Class  A,  fourth  below  the  poverty 
level ! )  who  had  been  sent  to  institutions  and  trained.  She  found  that 
192  (72  per  cent.)  turned  out  well ;  that  44  (16  per  cent.)  were  doubt¬ 
ful  ;  and  that  only  29  (less  than  n  per  cent.)  were  unsatisfactory,  and 
of  these  13  were  defectives.  One  would  like  to  know,  of  course,  that  the 
turning-out-well  lasted,  and  one  would  like  to  have  a  hundred  similar 
sets  of  figures.  But  the  suggestion  is  that  nurture  means  much  to 
the  individual.1 

39.  The  Mendelian  Theory2 

The  total  inheritance  of  an  individual  is  divisible  into  unit  characters, 
each  of  which  is,  as  a  general  rule,  inherited  independently  of  all  other 
characters  and  may  therefore  be  studied  without  reference  to  them. 

1  Compare  infra ,  Chapter  XIV,  Title  48,  "The  Jukes  in  1915,”  pp.  384-385. 

2  From  "A  Study  of  Heredity  in  Insanity  in  the  Light  of  the  Mendelian  Theory” 
(pp.  222-225),  by  A.  J.  Rosanoff,  M.D.,  and  Florence  I.  Orr,  B.S.  Bulletin 
No.  5,  Eugenics  Record  Office,  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  New  York,  October,  1911. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


303 


The  inheritance  of  any  such  character  is  believed  to  be  dependent 
upon  the  presence  in  the  germ  plasm  of  a  unit  of  substance  called  a 
determiner. 

With  reference  to  any  given  character  the  condition  in  an  individual 
may  be  dominant  or  recessive  :  the  character  is  dominant  when,  depend¬ 
ing  upon  the  presence  of  its  determiner  in  the  germ  plasm,  it  is  plainly 
manifest ;  and  it  is  recessive  when,  owing  to  the  lack  of  its  determiner 
in  the  germ  plasm  it  is  not  present  in  the  individual  under  consideration. 

The  dominant  and  recessive  conditions  of  a  character  are  designated 
by  the  symbols  D  and  R  respectively. 

Thus  in  the  case  of  eye  color  the  brown  color  is  the  dominant  con¬ 
dition  and  the  blue  color  is  the  recessive  condition.  In  other  words, 
the  inheritance  of  brown'eyes  is  due  to  the  presence  in  the  germ  plasm 
of  a  determiner  upon  which  the  formation  of  brown  pigment  in  the 
anterior  layers  of  the  irides  depends,  while  the  inheritance  of  blue 
eyes  is  due  to  the  lack  of  determiner  for  brown  pigment  in  the  germ 
plasm,  for  the  blue  color  of  eyes  is  due  merely  to  the  absence  of 
brown  pigment,  the  effect  of  blue  being  produced  by  the  choroid  coat 
shining  through  the  opalescent  but  pigment-free  anterior  layers  of 
the  irides  in  such  cases. 

It  is  obvious  that  as  regards  any  character  an  individual  may  in¬ 
herit  from  both  parents — duplex  inheritance,  designated  by  the  sym¬ 
bol  DD, — or  from  one  parent  only — simplex  inheritance,  designated 
by  the  symbol  DR, — or  he  may  fail  to  inherit  from  either  parent — 
nulliplex  inheritance,  designated  by  the  symbol  RR ;  in  the  last  case 
the  individual  will  exhibit  the  recessive  condition. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  estimate  the  relative  number  of  each 
type  of  offspring  according  to  theoretical  expectation  in  the  case  of 
any  combination  of  mates. 

There  are  but  six  theoretically  possible  combinations  of  mates. 
Continuing  to  make  use  of  eye  color  as  an  instance  of  a  Mendelian 
character,  let  us  consider  in  turn  each  theoretical  possibility. 

1.  Both  parents  blue-eyed  (nulliplex)  :  all  the  children  will  be 
blue-eyed,  as  may  be  shown  by  the  following  biological  formula : 

RR  X  RR  cc  RR. 

2.  One  parent  brown-eyed  and  simplex  (that  is  to  say  inheriting 
the  determiner  for  brown-eye  pigment  from  one  grandparent  only), 


304 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  other  blue-eyed :  one-half  of  the  children  will  be  brown-eyed  and 
simplex  and  the  other  half  blue-eyed : 

DR  X  RR  go  DR  4-  RR. 

3.  One  parent  brown-eyed  and  duplex,  the  other  blue-eyed:  all 
the  children  will  be  brown-eyed  and  simplex : 

DD  X  RR  co  DR. 

4.  Both  parents  brown-eyed  and  simplex:  one-fourth  of  the  chil¬ 
dren  will  be  brown-eyed  and  duplex,  one-half  will  be  brown-eyed  and 
simplex,  and  the  remaining  one-fourth  will  be  blue-eyed  (nulliplex)  : 

DR  X  DR  co  DD  +  2DR  +  RR. 

5.  Both  parents  brown-eyed,  one  duplex  the  other  simplex:  all  the 
children  will  be  brown-eyed,  half  duplex  and  half  simplex : 

DD  X  DR  oo  DD  -f  DR. 

6.  Both  parents  brown-eyed  and  duplex:  all  the  children  will  be 
brown-eyed  and  duplex : 

DD  X  DD  co  DD. 

It  will  be  seen  from  these  formulae  that  in  attempting  to  predict  the 
various  types  of  offspring  that  may  result  from  a  given  mating  it  is 
necessary  to  know  not  only  whether  the  character  is  in  each  parent 
dominant  or  recessive,  but  in  the  case  of  the  dominant  condition  also 
whether  it  is  duplex  or  simplex. 

Turning  again  to  the  example  of  eye  color,  a  blue-eyed  individual 
we  know  to  be  nulliplex,  as  he  has  no  brown  pigment  in  his  eyes  and 
therefore  could  not  have  inherited  the  determiner  for  brown-eye  pig¬ 
ment  from  either  parent.  But  how  are  we  to  judge  in  the  case  of  a 
brown-eyed  person  whether  he  has  inherited  the  determiner  for  that 
character  from  both  parents  or  only  from  one?  We  can  judge  this 
only  by  considering  the  ancestry  and  offspring  of  the  individual. 

To  put  the  whole  matter  in  a  nutshell,  the  essential  difference  be¬ 
tween  the  dominant  and  the  recessive  conditions  of  a  character  lies 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


305 


in  the  fact  that  in  a  case  of  simplex  inheritance  the  dominant  condition 
is  plainly  manifest,  while  the  recessive  condition  is  not  apparent  and 
can  be  known  to  exist  only  through  a  study  of  ancestry  and  offspring. 

This  is  important  because  it  constitutes  the  criterion  which  enables 
us  to  determine  whether  any  given  inherited  peculiarity  or  abnormal¬ 
ity  is,  as  compared  with  the  average  or  normal  condition,  dominant 
or  recessive. 

x 

40.  Mendelian  Principles  and  Human  Inheritance1 

Since  the  rediscovery  in  1900  of  MendeFs  work  many  investigators 
have  carried  out  similar  experiments  on  many  species  of  animals  and 
plants  and  have  greatly  extended  our  knowledge  of  the  principles  of 
inheritance  discovered  by  Mendel,  but  in  the  main  MendeFs  conclu¬ 
sions  have  been  confirmed  again  and  again,  so  that  there  is  no  doubt 
that  they  constitute  an  important  rule  of  inheritance  among  all  sexu¬ 
ally  produced  organisms. 

In  brief  the  "Mendelian  Law  of  Alternative  Inheritance7’  or  of 
hereditary  "splitting”  consists  of  the  following  principles: 

1.  The  principle  of  unit  characters.  The  heritage  of  an  organism 
may  be  analyzed  into  a  number  of  characters  which  are  inherited  as  a 
whole  and  are  not  further  divisible;  these  are  the  so-called  "unit 
characters”  (deVries). 

2.  The  principle  of  dominance.  When  contrasting  unit  characters 
are  present  in  the  parents  they  do  not  as  a  rule  blend  in  the  offspring, 
but  one  is  dominant  and  usually  appears  fully  developed,  while  the 
other  is  recessive  and  temporarily  drops  out  of  sight. 

3.  The  principle  of  segregation.  Every  individual  germ  cell  is 
"pure”  with  respect  to  any  given  unit  character,  even  though  it  come 
from  an  "impure”  or  hybrid  parent.  In  the  germ  cells  of  hybrids 
there  is  a  separation  of  the  determiners  of  contrasting  characters  so 
that  different  kinds  of  germ  cells  are  produced,  each  of  which  is  pure 
with  regard  to  any  given  unit  character.  This  is  the  principle  of 
segregation  of  unit  characters,  or  of  the  "purity”  of  the  germ  cells. 
Every  sexually  produced  individual  is  a  double  being,  double  in  every 

1From  Heredity  and  Environment  (pp.  98-99,  116-121),  by  Edwin  G.  Conk¬ 
lin,  Ph.D.,  Sc.D.,  Professor  of  Biology  in  Princeton  University.  Revised  fourth 
edition.  Copyright,  1922,  by  the  Princeton  University  Press. 


3°6 


•SOCIAL  METHOD 


cell,  one-half  of  its  determiners  having  been  derived  from  the  male 
and  the  other  half  from  the  female  sex  cell.  This  double  set  of  deter¬ 
miners  again  becomes  single  in  the  formation  of  the  germ  cells  only 
once  more  to  become  double  when  the  germ  cells  unite  in  fertilization. 

Mendelian  Inheritance  in  Man 

The  study  of  inheritance  in  man  must  always  be  less  satisfactory 
and  the  results  less  secure  than  in  the  case  of  lower  animals  and  for 
the  following  reasons:  In  the  first  place  there  are  no  "pure  lines” 
but  the  most  complicated  intermixture  of  different  lines.  In  the 
second  place  experiments  are  out  of  the  question  and  one  must  rely 
upon  observation  and  statistics.  In  the  third  place  man  is  a  slow 
breeding  animal;  there  have  been  less  than  sixty  generations  of  men 
since  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  whereas  Jennings  gets  as 
many  generations  of  Paramecium 1  within  two  months  and  Morgan 
almost  as  many  generations  of  Drosophila 2  within  two  years.  Finally 
the  number  of  offspring  are  so  few  in  human  families  that  it  is  im¬ 
possible  to  determine  what  all  the  hereditary  possibilities  of  a  family 
may  be.  Bearing  in  mind  these  serious  handicaps  to  an  exact  study 
of  inheritance  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  method  of  inheritance  of 
many  human  characters  is  still  uncertain. 

Davenport  and  Plate  have  catalogued  more  than  sixty  human  traits 
which  seem  to  be  inherited  in  Mendelian  fashion.  About  fifty  of 
these  represent  pathological  or  teratological  conditions  while  only  a 
relatively  small  number  are  normal  characters.  This  does  not  signify 
that  the  method  of  inheritance  differs  in  the  case  of  normal  and 
abnormal  characters,  but  rather  that  abnormal  characters  are  more 
striking,  more  easily  followed  from  generation  to  generation,  and 
consequently  statistics  are  more  complete  with  regard  to  them  than 
in  the  case  of  normal  characters.  In  many  cases  statistics  are  not 
sufficiently  complete  to  determine  with  certainty  whether  the  charac¬ 
ter  in  question  is  dominant  or  recessive,  and  it  must  be  understood 
that  in  some  instances  the  classification  in  this  respect  is  tentative. 
A  partial  list  of  these  characters  is  given  herewith  : 


ciliated  protozoan. 


2  A  genus  of  fruit-flies. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


307 


Mendelian  Inheritance  in  Man 
NORMAL  CHARACTERS 

Dominant  Recessive 

Hair: 


Curly 

Straight 

Dark 

Light  to  red 

Eye  Color: 

Brown 

Blue 

Skin  Color: 

Dark 

Light 

Normal  Pigmentation 

Albinism 

Countenance: 

Hapsburg  Type  (Thick  lower  lip 

Normal 

and  prominent  chin) 

Temperament: 

Nervous 

Phlegmatic 

Intellectual  Capacity: 

Average 

Very  great 

Average 

Very  small 

TERATOLOGICAL  AND  PATHOLOGICAL  CHARACTERS 


General  Size: 

Achondroplasy  (Dwarfs  with 
short  stout  limbs  but  with 
bodies  and  heads  of  normal 
size) 

Normal  size 

Hands  and  Feet: 

Brachydactyly  (Short  fingers  and 
toes) 

Syndactyly  (Webbed  fingers  and 
toes) 

Polydactyly  (Supernumerary 
digits) 

Skin: 

Keratosis  (Thickening  of  Epi¬ 
dermis) 

Epidermolysis  (Excessive  for¬ 
mation  of  blisters) 

Hypotrichosis  (Hairlessness  as¬ 
sociated  with  lack  of  teeth) 


Normal 

True  Dwarfs  (With  all  parts  of  the 
body  reduced  in  proportion) 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 


3°8 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


TERATOLOGICAL  AND  PATHOLOGICAL  CHARACTERS 


Dominant 

Kidneys: 

Diabetes  insipidus 
Diabetes  mellitus 
Normal 

Nervous  System: 
Normal  Condition 


Nervous  System: 
Normal 

Normal 


Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Huntington’s  Chorea 
Muscular  Atrophy 
Eyes: 

Hereditary  Cataract 
Pigmentary  Degeneration  of 
Retina 

Glaucoma  (Internal  pressure  and 
swelling  of  eyeball) 

Coloboma  (Open  suture  in  iris) 
Displaced  Lens 
Ears: 

Normal 

Normal 


Recessive 

Normal 

Normal 

Alkaptonuria  (Urine  dark  after 
oxidation) 

General  Neuropathy,  e.g. 

Hereditary  Epilepsy 
Hereditary  Feeble-mindedness 
Hereditary  Insanity 
Hereditary  Alcoholism 
Hereditary  Criminality 
Hereditary  Hysteria 

Multiple  Sclerosis  (Diffuse  de¬ 
generation  of  nerve  tissue) 
Friedrich’s  Disease  (Degenera¬ 
tion  of  upper  part  of  spinal 
cord) 

Meniere’s  Disease  (Dizziness 
and  roaring  in  ears) 

Chorea  (St.  Vitus  Dance) 
Thomsen’s  Disease  (Lack  of 
muscular  tone) 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Normal 

Deaf-mutism 

Otosclerosis  (Rigidity  of  tym¬ 
panum,  etc.,  with  hardness  of 
hearing) 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


309 


SEX-LINKED  CHARACTERS 

Recessive  characters,  appearing  in  male  when  simplex,  in  female  when 
duplex. 

Normal  Gower’s  Muscular  Atrophy 

Normal  Haemophilia  (Slow  clotting  of 

blood) 

Normal  Color  Blindness  (Daltonism;  in¬ 

ability  to  distinguish  red  from 
green) 

Normal  Night  Blindness  (Inability  to  see 

by  faint  light) 

Normal  Neuritis  Optica  (Progressive  atro¬ 

phy  of  optic  nerve) 

The  principles  of  heredity  established  by  Mendel  are  almost  as 
important  for  biology  as  the  atomic  theory  of  Dalton  is  for  chemistry. 
By  means  of  these  principles  particular  dissociations  and  recombi¬ 
nations  of  characters  can  be  made  with  almost  the  same  certainty  as 
particular  dissociations  and  recombinations  of  atoms  can  be  made  in 
chemical  reactions.  By  means  of  these  principles  the  hereditary  con¬ 
stitution  of  organisms  can  be  analyzed  and  the  real  resemblances  and 
differences  of  various  organisms  determined.  By  means  of  these  prin¬ 
ciples  the  once  mysterious  and  apparently  capricious  phenomena  of 
prepotency,  atavism,  and  reversion  find  a  satisfactory  explanation. 

Before  the  establishment  of  Mendel’s  principles,  heredity  was,  as 
Balzac  said,  "a  maze  in  which  science  loses  itself.”  Much  still  re¬ 
mains  to  be  discovered  about  inheritance,  but  the  principles  of  Men¬ 
del  have  served  as  an  Ariadne  thread  to  guide  science  through  this 
maze  of  apparent  contradictions  and  exceptions  in  which  it  was 
formerly  lost. 

41.  Can  Human  Evolution  Be  Controlled?1 

Almost  all  that  man  now  is  he  has  come  to  be  without  conscious 
human  guidance.  If  evolution  has  progressed  from  the  amoeba  to 
man  without  human  interference,  if  the  great  progress  from  ape-like 
men  to  the  most  highly  civilized  races  has  taken  place  without  con- 


1From  Heredity  and  Environment  (pp.  293-316),  by  Edwin  G.  Conklin. 


3  io 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


scious  human  control,  the  question  may  well  be  asked,  Is  it  possible 
to  improve  on  the  natural  method  of  evolution?  It  may  not  be  pos¬ 
sible  to  improve  on  the  method  of  evolution  and  yet  by  intelligent 
action  it  may  be  possible  to  facilitate  that  method.  Man  cannot 
change  a  single  law  of  nature  but  he  can  put  himself  into  such  relations 
to  natural  laws  that  he  can  profit  by  them. 

Selective  breeding  the  only  method  oj  improving  the  race .  It  is 
surely  not  possible  to  improve  on  nature’s  principle  of  eliminating  the 
worst  lines  from  reproduction.  This  has  been  the  chief  factor  in  the 
establishment  of  races  of  domesticated  animals  and  cultivated  plants, 
though  as  we  have  seen  it  has  probably  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
origin  of  mutations.  The  history  of  such  races  shows  that  evolution 
may  be  guided  to  human  advantage  by  intelligent  elimination  and 
selection,  and  probably  any  hereditary  improvement  of  the  human 
race  must  be  accomplished  by  this  means,  though  of  course  such 
elimination  and  selection  can  apply  only  to  the  function  of  reproduc¬ 
tion.  The  method  of  evolution  by  the  elimination  of  persons,  the 
destruction  of  the  weak  and  cowardly  and  antisocial,  which  was  the 
method  practiced  in  ancient  Sparta,  is  repugnant  to  the  moral  sense 
of  enlightened  men  and  cannot  be  allowed  to  act  as  in  the  past ;  but 
the  worst  types  of  mankind  may  be  prevented  from  propagating,  and 
the  best  types  may  be  encouraged  to  increase  and  multiply.  This  is 
apparently  the  only  way  in  which  we  may  hope  to  improve  perma¬ 
nently  the  human  breed. 

No  improvement  iM  human  heredity  within  historic  times.  The 
improvement  of  environment  and  of  opportunity  for  individual  de¬ 
velopment  enables  men  at  the  present  day  to  get  more  out  of  their 
heredity  than  was  possible  in  the  past.  Advance  of  civilization  has 
meant  only  improvement  of  environment.  But  neither  environment  nor 
training  has  changed  the  hereditary  capacities  of  man.  There  has  been 
no  perceptible  improvement  in  human  heredity  within  historic  times. 

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  .  •  •  •  • 

Why  the  race  has  not  improved.  If  mankind  has  made  no  prog¬ 
ress  in  hereditary  characteristics  since  the  time  of  the  Greeks  the 
cause  is  not  far  to  seek.  There  have  been  gifted  races  and  families, 
doubtless  many  notable  human  mutations  have  occurred,  but  most 
of  these  have  been  diluted,  squandered,  lost.  There  has  been  per- 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


3ii 

sistent  violation  of  all  principles  of  good  breeding  among  men.  For 
example,  there  has  been  for  ages  a  futile  reliance  upon  good  environ¬ 
ment  to  improve  heredity.  Men  do  not  so  improve  the  races  of  ani¬ 
mals  and  plants,  and  thousands  of  years  of  human  history  show  that 
this  method  is  of  no  avail  in  improving  the  human  breed. 

But  the  case  is  far  worse  than  this ;  such  efforts  though  futile  are 
at  least  well  intentioned,  but  on  the  part  of  most  men  and  govern¬ 
ments  ftiere  has  been  complete  disregard  of  the  entire  question  of  the 
improvement  of  the  human  stock.  Natural  selection  which  has  through 
countless  ages  eliminated  the  worst  and  conserved  the  best-fitted  and 
thus  has  led  on  the  whole  to  the  survival  of  the  fit  is  so  far  as  possible 
nullified  by  civilized  man ;  the  worst  are  preserved  along  with  the 
best  and  all  are  given  the  same  chance  of  reproduction.  The  mistake 
has  been  not  in  nullifying  natural  selection  by  preserving  the  weak 
and  incompetent,  for  civilized  men  could  not  well  do  otherwise,  but 
in  failing  to  substitute  intelligent  artificial  selection  for  natural  selec¬ 
tion  in  the  propagation  of  the  race.  Instead  of  this  there  has  been 
perpetuation  of  the  worst  lines  through  sentimental  regard  for  per¬ 
sonal  rights,  even  when  opposed  to  the  welfare  of  society ;  and  both 
church  and  state  have  cheerfully  given  consent  and  blessing  to  the 
marriage  and  propagation  of  idiots  and  of  diseased,  defective,  insane, 
and  vicious  persons.  Finally  there  has  been  extinction  of  the  world’s 
most  gifted  lines  by  enforced  celibacy  in  many  religious  orders  and 
societies  of  scholars;  by  almost  continuous  wars  which  have  taken 
the  very  best  blood  that  was  left  outside  of  the  monastic  orders; 
by  luxury  and  voluntary  sterility ;  by  vice,  disease,  and  consequent 
infertility. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  inheritance  of  the  human  race  has  not 
improved  within  historic  times?  Is  it  not  rather  an  evidence  of  the 
broadcast  distribution  of  good  and  wholesome  qualities  in  the  race 
that  in  spite  of  such  serious  violations  of  the  principles  of  good  breed¬ 
ing  mankind  remains  as  good  as  we  find  it  today  ? 

1  r 

Eugenics 

If  a  superior  power  should  deal  with  man  as  man  deals  with  domes¬ 
tic  animals  no  doubt  great  improvement  could  be  effected  in  the 
human  breed.  Society  is  in  some  respects  such  a  power  and  can  do 


312 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


what  the  individual,  because  of  self-interest,  short  life,  or  lack  of 
ability,  cannot  accomplish.  In  matters  of  public  health  and  comfort, 
security  of  life  and  property,  society  is  superior  in  power  to  the  in¬ 
dividual  ;  in  matters  of  the  perpetuation  of  the  race  the  individual  is 
still  supreme.  In  animal  societies  the  race,  the  breed,  is  to  the  swift 
and  strong  and  fit,  and  the  same  was  probably  true  of  primitive  men. 
But  it  is  impossible  to  return  to  the  conditions  of  primitive  society  in 
this  respect,  and  the  social  body  itself  must  in  some  way  control  the 
breeding  of  men. 

Fortunately  or  unfortunately  the  methods  which  breeders  use  can¬ 
not  be  rigidly  applied  in  the  case  of  man.  It  is  possible  for  breeders 
to  eliminate  from  reproduction  all  except  the  very  best  stocks,  and  this 
is  really  essential  if  evolution  is  to  be  guided  in  a  definite  direction. 
If  only  the  very  worst  are  eliminated  in  each  generation,  the  standard 
of  a  race  is  merely  maintained,  but  the  more  severe  the  elimination 
is  the  more  does  it  become  a  directing  factor  in  evolution.  In  the 
case  of  man,  however,  even  the  most  enthusiastic  eugenicists  have 
never  proposed  to  cut  off  from  the  possibility  of  reproduction  all 
human  stocks  except  the  very  best,  and  if  only  the  very  worst  stocks 
are  thus  eliminated,  we  must  face  the  conclusion  that  no  very  great 
improvement  can  be  effected.  It  is  impossible,  then,  to  apply  rigidly 
to  man  the  methods  of  animal  and  plant  breeders.  Society  cannot  be 
expected  to  eliminate  from  reproduction  all  but  the  very  best  lines. 
The  great  majority  of  mankind  cannot  be  expected  voluntarily  to 
efface  itself.  The  most  that  can  be  hoped  for  in  this  direction  is  that 
the  great  mediocre  majority  may  eliminate  from  reproduction  a  very 
small  minority  of  the  worst  individuals. 

Furthermore,  other  and  perhaps  even  more  serious  objections  to 
the  views  of  extreme  eugenicists  are  to  be  found  in  human  ideals 
of  morality.  Even  for  the  laudable  purpose  of  producing  a  race  of 
supermen,  mankind  will  probably  never  consent  to  be  reduced  to  the 
morality  of  the  breeding-pen  with  a  total  disregard  of  marriage  and 
monogamy.  The  geneticist  who  has  dealt  only  with  chickens  or  rab¬ 
bits  or  cattle  is  apt  to  overlook  the  vast  difference  between  controlling 
reproduction  in  lower  animals  and  in  the  case  of  man  where  restraints 
must  be  self-imposed. 

Another  fundamental  difficulty  in  breeding  a  better  race  of  men  is 
to  be  found  in  a  lack  of  uniform  ideals.  A  breeder  of  domestic  animals 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


313 


lives  long  enough  to  develop  certain  races  and  see  them  well  estab¬ 
lished,  but  the  devotee  of  eugenics  cannot  be  sure  that  his  or  her  ideals 
will  be  followed  in  succeeding  generations.  The  father  of  Simon  New¬ 
comb  is  said  to  have  walked  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  Nova 
Scotia  seeking  for  himself  a  suitable  mate,  but  neither  he  nor  any 
other  eugenicist  could  be  sure  that  his  descendants  would  follow  a 
similar  course,  and  long  continued  selection  along  particular  lines 
must  be  practiced  if  the  race  is  to  be  permanently  improved.  Man¬ 
kind  is  such  a  mongrel  mixture,  and  it  is  so  impracticable  to  exercise 
a  strict  control  over  the  breeding  of  men,  that  it  is  hopeless  to  expect 
to  get  pure  or  homozygous  stocks  except  with  respect  to  a  very  few 
characters  and  then  only  after  long  selection. 

But  granting  all  these  difficulties  which  confront  the  eugenicist, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  something  may  be  gained  by  eliminating 
merely  the  worst  human  kinds  from  the  possibility  of  reproduction, 
even  though  no  marvellous  improvement  in  the  human  race  can  be 
expected  as  a  result  of  such  a  feeble  measure. 

Possible  and  impossible  ideals.  Supermen.  What  the  future  evo¬ 
lution  of  the  human  race  may  lead  to  is  an  interesting  speculation, 
but  it  is  and  can  be  only  a  speculation.  There  is  no  present  evidence 
that  there  will  ever  be  a  higher  animal  than  man  on  the  earth,  and 
the  only  evidence  that  there  may  be  a  higher  species  than  Homo 
sapiens  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  there  have  been  lower  species 
of  men  in  the  past  and  that  evolution  has  been  on  the  whole  progres¬ 
sive.  The  idea  that  by  the  aid  of  that  infant  industry,  eugenics,  a 
new  race  of  supermen  is  shortly  to  be  produced  is  an  iridescent  dream, 
and  the  fantastic  demand  of  some  enthusiasts  for  changes  in  racial 
fashions  has  served  to  bring  this  whole  subject  of  eugenics  into  disre¬ 
pute  among  thoughtful  men. 

Hereditary  classes.  To  a  considerable  extent  ideals  regarding  in¬ 
dividuals  and  society  have  differed  among  different  races  in  the  past, 
but  with  the  closer  communications  which  have  been  established  be¬ 
tween  all  parts  of  the  earth  in  modern  times  there  has  developed  a 
greater  uniformity  of  ideal.  In  a  complex  society  all  types  of  service 
are  needed  and  different  types  of  individuals  are  socially  useful.  If 
the  social  good  were  the  supreme  end,  as  it  is  in  a  colony  of  ants  or 
bees,  the  greatest  differentiation  of  individuals  for  particular  kinds  of 
service  would  be  desirable.  There  should  be  an  hereditary  class  of 


314 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


laborers,  of  business  men,  of  scholars,  of  artists,  etc.,  and  for  the  im¬ 
provement  of  each  class  there  should  be  inbreeding  in  that  class.  Such 
methods  are  now  used  by  breeders  of  various  races  of  domestic  animals 
and  cultivated  plants  with  the  best  of  results.  No  breeder  would 
think  of  trying  to  improve  draft  horses  by  crossing  with  race  horses, 
nor  of  improving  milk  cows  by  crossing  with  beef  cattle.  In  other 
countries  and  ages  the  development  of  hereditary  classes  and  castes 
in  human  society  has  been  tried,  and  survivals  of  it  persist  to  this  day, 
but  they  are  only  vestigial  remnants  of  an  old  order  which  is  every¬ 
where  being  replaced  by  a  new  ideal  in  which  the  good  of  the  in¬ 
dividual  as  well  as  that  of  society  is  the  end  desired. 

The  whole  development  of  modern  society  is  in  the  direction  of 
racial  solidarity  and  away  from  hereditary  classes.  Government, 
education,  and  religion ;  socialism,  syndicalism,  bolshevism  all  reflect 
the  movement  for  individual  liberty,  fraternity,  and  equality.  The 
modern  ideal  individual  is  not  the  highly  specialized  unit  in  the  social 
organism,  as  in  the  case  of  social  insects,  but  rather  the  most  general 
all-round  type  of  individual,  the  man  who  can  when  conditions  de¬ 
mand  it  combine  within  himself  the  functions  of  the  laborer,  business 
man,  soldier,  and  scholar.  For  such  a  generalized  type  the  methods  of 
inbreeding  or  close  breeding  used  by  the  breeder  of  thoroughbreds 
are  wholly  inappropriate.  On  the  other  hand  such  a  generalized  type 
must  include  the  best  qualities  of  many  types  and  races  and  Men- 
delian  inheritance  shows  how  it  is  possible  to  sort  out  the  best  qualities 
from  the  worst. 

Nowadays  one  hears  a  lot  of  high  sounding  talk  about  "human 
thoroughbreds,”  which  usually  means  that  those  who  use  this  phrase 
desire  to  see  certain  narrow  and  exclusive  social  classes  perpetuated 
by  close  inbreeding ;  it  usually  has  no  reference  to  good  hereditary 
traits  wherever  found,  indeed  such  traits  would  not  be  recognized  if 
they  appeared  outside  of  "the  four  hundred.”  Such  talk  probably 
does  neither  harm  nor  good;  the  "social  thoroughbreds”  are  so  few 
in  number  and  so  nearly  sterile  that  the  mass  of  the  population  is  not 
affected  by  these  exclusive  classes. 

Galton  advocated  the  segregation  and  intermarriage  of  the  most 
highly  intellectual  members  of  society,  such  as  the  prize  scholars  in 
the  colleges  and  universities  ;  but  if  the  human  ideal  is  the  generalized 
rather  than  the  specialized  type  it  would  be  better  if  the  prize  scholars 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


315 


married  the  prize  athletes.  A  race  of  highly  specialized  scholars  or 
athletes  is  not  so  desirable  as  a  race  in  which  these  and  other  excel¬ 
lences  are  well  balanced.  From  this  point  of  view  the  person  who  is 
voted  the  "best  all-round  man  in  his  class”  is  nearer  the  eugenical 
ideal  than  the  prize  scholar. 

No  man  can  trace  his  lineage  back  through  many  generations  with¬ 
out  realizing  that  it  includes  many  hereditary  lines  differing  greatly 
in  value.  The  significance  of  sexual  reproduction  lies  in  this  very 
fact  that  it  brings  about  the  commingling  of  distinct  lines  and  thereby 
makes  every  individual  different  from  every  other  one.  The  entire 
history  of  past  evolution  testifies  to  the  value  of  this  process,  although 
it  causes  the  gardener,  the  breeder,  the  eugenicist  serious  trouble. 
But  the  gardener  can  propagate  his  choice  fruits  by  budding  and 
grafting,  the  breeder  can  for  a  time  preserve  his  choice  stock  by  close 
inbreeding,  but  the  eugenicist  cannot  shut  out  the  influence  of  foreign 
blood,  and  perhaps  it  is  well  that  he  cannot  for  if  he  could  do  so  the 
progress  of  the  race  might  soon  come  to  an  end. 

Racial  amalgamations.  In  the  human  species  the  only  absolute 
barrier  to  the  intermingling  of  races  is  geographical  isloation.  Every 
human  race  is  fertile  with  every  other  one,  and  though  races  and 
nations  and  social  groups  may  raise  artificial  barriers  against  inter¬ 
breeding  we  know  that  these  artificial  restraints  are  frequently  dis¬ 
regarded  and  that  in  the  long  run  amalgamation  does  take  place ;  and 
in  general  the  further  amalgamation  progresses  the  faster  it  goes. 
In  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  after  little  more  than  a  century’s  con¬ 
tact  with  white  races,  there  are  about  as  many  "half  castes”  as  there 
are  full  blooded  aborigines.  In  the  United  States  one-quarter  of  all 
persons  of  African  descent  contain  more  or  less  white  blood  ;  there  are 
about  eight  million  full  blooded  negroes  and  two  million  mulattoes,  and 
during  the  past  twenty  years  the  latter  have  increased  at  twice  the  rate 
of  the  former.  In  Jamaica,  where  there  are  about  seven  hundred  thou¬ 
sand  blacks  and  fifteen  thousand  whites,  there  are  about  fifty  thousand 
mulattoes.  A  similar  condition  prevails  wherever  different  races  oc¬ 
cupy  the  same  country.  Even  the  Jews,  who  were  long  supposed  to  be 
a  peculiarly  separate  and  distinct  people,  have  received  large  admix¬ 
tures  of  Gentile  blood  in  every  country  in  which  they  have  lived. 

Whether  we  want  it  or  not  hybridization  of  human  races  is  going 
on  and  will  increase.  Partition  walls  between  classes  and  races  are 


3l6 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


being  broken  down;  complete  isolation  is  no  longer  possible,  and  a 
gradual  intermixture  of  human  races  is  inevitable.  We  are  in  the  grip 
of  a  great  world  movement  and  we  cannot  reverse  the  current,  but  we 
may  to  a  certain  extent  direct  the  current  into  the  more  desirable 
channels. 

There  is  a  popular  belief  that  hybrid  races  are  always  inferior  to 
pure  bred  ones,  but  this  is  by  no  means  the  case.  Some  hybrids  are 
undoubtedly  inferior  to  either  of  the  parents  but  on  the  other  hand 
some  are  vastly  superior ;  only  experience  can  determine  whether  a 
certain  cross  will  yield  inferior  or  superior  types.  Society  may  well 
attempt  to  prevent  those  crosses  which  produce  inferior  stock  while 
encouraging  those  which  produce  superior  types. 

Immigration.  It  is  race  mixture  which  makes  the  problem  of  im¬ 
migration  so  serious.  Generally  immigration  is  regarded  merely  as 
an  economic  and  political  problem,  but  these  aspects  of  it  are  tem¬ 
porary  and  insignificant  as  compared  with  its  biological  consequences. 
In  welcoming  the  immigrant  to  our  shores  we  not  only  share  our 
country  with  him  but  we  take  him  into  our  families  and  give  to  him 
our  children  or  our  children’s  children  in  marriage.  Whatever  the 
present  antipathies  may  be  to  such  racial  mixtures  we  may  rest 
assured  that  in  a  few  hundred  years  these  persons  of  foreign  race  and 
blood  will  be  incorporated  in  our  race  and  we  in  theirs.  From  the 
amalgamation  of  good  races  good  results  may  be  expected  ;  but  fusion 
with  inferior  races,  while  it  may  help  to  raise  the  lower  race,  is  very 
apt  to  pull  the  higher  race  down.  How  insignificant  are  considerations 
of  cheap  labor  and  rapid  development  of  natural  resources  when 
compared  with  these  biological  consequences ! 

Negative  eugenical  measures.  Late  and  early  marriages.  Galton 
said  nothing  about  sterilization  or  elimination  from  reproduction  of 
less  valuable  lines  in  his  Inquiries  into  Human  Facidty  which  was 
first  published  in  1883.  He  proposed  no  radical  policy  but  rather 
one  which  he  thought  would  be  practical  and  might  meet  with  general 
favor.  He  suggested  a  social  policy  which  would  delay  the  age  of 
marriage  among  the  weak  and  hasten  it  among  the  vigorous,  whereas 
present  social  agencies  act  in  the  opposite  direction.  He  showed  by 
statistics  that,  on  the  average,  marriage  at  the  age  of  twenty-two 
would  produce  at  the  end  of  one  century  four  times  as  many  offspring 
as  marriage  at  thirty-three  and  at  the  end  of  two  centuries  ten  times 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


317 


as  many.  He  particularly  emphasized  the  great  harm  which  would  be 
done  by  an  application  of  the  theory  of  Malthus  among  the  better 
classes.  For  the  prudent  to  put  off  marriage  and  to  limit  offspring 
while  the  imprudent  continue  to  reproduce  at  the  present  rate  would 
be  to  give  the  world  to  the  imprudent  within  a  few  centuries  at  most. 

Segregation  and  sterilization.  His  suggestions,  which  were  at  first 
received  with  indifference  or  ridicule;  were  much  less  radical  than  the 
legal  requirements  in  many  of  our  States  today.  Public  sentiment 
has  been  greatly  aroused  on  this  question ;  the  apparent  increase  in 
the  number  of  defectives  and  criminals  has  seemed  to  call  for  radical 
action  and  a  flood  of  hasty  but  well  intentioned  legislation  has  been 
the  result.  We  may  confidently  expect  that  in  a  very  short  time  the 
marriage  of  the  feeble-minded,  hopelessly  insane  or  epileptic,  the 
congenitally  blind,  deaf,  and  dumb,  and  those  suffering  from  many 
other  inherited  defects  which  unfit  them  for  useful  citizenship  will  be 
prohibited  by  law  in  all  the  States.  Our  immigration  laws  already 
exclude  such  aliens,  and  the  number  of  persons  of  the  types  named 
who  seek  legal  consent  to  marry  is  not  large  so  that  it  need  not  be 
expected  that  such  laws  will  quickly  improve  the  general  population. 
If  in  addition  such  persons  are  either  segregated  or  sterilized  the 
danger  of  their  leaving  illegitimate  offspring  will  be  removed ;  such 
precautions  have  been  taken  in  certain  of  our  States  and  will  prob¬ 
ably  become  general,  though  at  present  few  of  the  laws  on  this  subject 
are  strictly  enforced. 

The  study  of  heredity  shows  that  the  normal  brothers  and  sisters, 
and  even  the  more  distant  relatives,  of  affected  persons  may  carry 
a  defect  as  a  recessive  in  their  germ  plasm  and  may  transmit  it  to 
their  descendants  though  not  showing  it  themselves.  It  will  be  more 
difficult,  perhaps  an  impossible  thing,  to  apply  rigidly  the  principles 
of  good  breeding  to  such  persons  and  to  exclude  them  from  reproduc¬ 
tion  ;  but  if  in  each  generation  those  persons  in  whom  this  recessive 
trait  appears  are  prevented  from  leaving  offspring  the  number  of 
persons  affected  will  gradually  grow  less,  other  conditions  being  equal. 

But  while  such  negative  eugenical  measures  are  wholly  commend¬ 
able  when  applied  to  such  defects  as  those  named,  which  are  certainly 
inherited  and  which  render  those  affected  unfit  for  citizenship,  the 
wholesale  sterilization  of  all  sorts  of  criminals,  alcoholics,  and  unde¬ 
sirables  without  determining  whether  their  defects  are  due  to  heredity 


318 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


or  to  conditions  of  development  would  be  like  burning  down  a  house 
to  get  rid  of  the  rats ;  and  the  only  justification  which  could  be  offered 
for  the  general  sterilization  of  the  inmates  of  all  public  institutions, 
which  is  urged  by  some  of  our  modern  crusaders,  would  be  the  defense 
which  some  persons  make  for  war,  namely  that  there  are  too  many 
people  and  that  anything  which  will  prevent  the  growth  of  population 
is  to  be  welcomed. 

Effects  of  war  on  race.  Advocates  of  war  never  cease  to  point 
out  its  beneficial  effects  on  the  race, — how  it  makes  men  strong, 
courageous,  unselfish,  how  it  makes  nations  great,  powerful,  progres¬ 
sive.  There  is  no  doubt  that  war  like  any  other  great  crisis  discovers 
great  men  and  furnishes  opportunities  for  the  development  of  great 
qualities  that  might  otherwise  remain  undeveloped  and  unknown. 
But  there  is  also  no  doubt  that  it  takes  the  very  best  blood  of  the 
nations.  Those  who  go  to  war  are  the  young,  the  strong,  the  capable, 
while  the  weak,  incompetent,  and  degenerate  are  left  behind  as  unfit 
for  military  service.  If  conditions  could  be  reversed  and  the  bungled 
and  botched,  the  feeble-minded  and  insane,  the  degenerate  and  de¬ 
bauched  could  be  put  in  the  forefront  of  battle  some  benefit  to  the 
race  might  result,  but  no  increase  of  national  greatness  can  compensate 
for  the  awful  waste  of  the  best  thing  which  any  nation  possesses — 
its  best  blood. 

Realizing  that  progress  in  evolution  has  been  won  only  through 
struggle  and  that  the  human  race  owes  much  to  the  fact  that  man  is 
by  nature  and  instinct  a  "fighting  animal”  many  persons  who  have 
recognized  the  evil  effects  of  war  have  endeavored  to  find  some 
substitute  for  modern  warfare,  which  is  no  longer  the  wager  of  per¬ 
sonal  combat,  but  a  vast  impersonal  mechanism  of  destruction.  In 
view  of  the  fact  that  "intrepidity,  contempt  for  softness,  surrender 
of  private  interests,  obedience  to  command,  must  still  remain  the  rock 
upon  which  states  are  built,”  William  James  proposed,  as  a  "moral 
equivalent  for  war,”  compulsory  service  in  hard  and  difficult  occupa¬ 
tions  where  dangers  and  hardships  would  be  incentives  to  effort  and 
where  struggle  for  success  would  "inflame  the  civic  temper  as  past 
history  has  inflamed  the  military  temper.” 

Professor  Cannon,  whose  work  has  demonstrated  that  the  adrenal 
glands  are  par  excellence  the  glands  of  combat  and  virility,  and  who 
recognizes  the  importance  to  the  human  race  of  maintaining  the 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


319 


functional  activity  of  these  glands,  has  proposed  athletics  and  espe¬ 
cially  international  athletic  contests,  such  as  the  Olympic  Games,  as 
a  ''physical  substitute  for  warfare.” 

The  eugenical  ideal  is  not  a  life  of  "peace,  perfect  peace,”  nor  a 
millennium  in  which  all  struggle  shall  cease,  but  rather  a  life  of  ad¬ 
venture,  conflict,  and  hard-won  success.  Inaction  and  satiety  end  in 
degeneration  and  progress  can  be  purchased  only  by  struggle.  But  it 
is  not  only  unnecessary,  it  is  positively  irrational,  to  resort  to  war  to 
secure  these  ends.  As  civilization  advances  more  and  more  substitutes 
are  found  for  war.  Among  these  are  not  only  athletics  and  sports 
but  also  struggles  with  natural  difficulties  and  forces  in  the  great 
warfare  which  is  being  waged  for  the  conquest  of  nature.  Even  in¬ 
tellectual  and  political  contests  and  competitions  in  skill  and  work¬ 
manship  may  to  a  great  extent  replace  war  as  a  field  of  adventure 
and  emprise. 

Positive  eugenical  measures.  Positive  eugenical  measures  are  much 
more  difficult  to  apply  and  are  of  more  doubtful  value  than  are 
negative  ones.  Of  course  compulsory  measures  requiring  the  best 
types  to  intermarry  and  have  children  are  out  of  the  question  and 
encouragement  and  advice  alone  are  feasible.  Giving  advice  regard¬ 
ing  matrimony  is  proverbially  a  hazardous  performance,  and  it  is  not 
much  safer  for  the  biologist  than  for  others. 

Eugenical  predictions  uncertain.  With  much  more  complete  knowl¬ 
edge  regarding  human  inheritance  than  we  now  possess  it  may  be 
possible  to  give  eugenical  advice  wisely,  especially  with  respect  to 
physical  characteristics  which  are  hereditarily  simple  and  generally  of 
minor  significance.  But  where  the  character  is  an  extremely  complex 
one  such  as  intellectual  ability,  moral  rectitude,  judgment,  and  poise, 
which  are  the  chief  characteristics  which  distinguish  the  great  man 
from  his  fellows,  it  will  probably  never  be  possible  to  predict  the 
result  before  the  event. 

He  would  be  a  bold  prophet  who  would  undertake  to  predict  the 
type  of  personality  which  might  be  expected  in  the  children  of  a  given 
union.  Some  very  unpromising  stocks  have  brought  forth  wonderful 
products.  Could  anyone  have  predicted  Abraham  Lincoln  from  a 
study  of  his  ancestry?  Observe  I  say  "predict,”  and  not  "explain” 
after  his  appearance.  Can  anyone  now  predict  from  what  kind  of 
ancestral  combinations  the  great  scholars,  statesmen,  men  of  affairs 


320 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


of  the  next  generation  will  come?  The  time  may  come  when  it  will 
be  possible  to  predict  what  the  chances  are  that  the  children  of  given 
parents  will  inherit  more  or  less  than  average  intellectual  capacity, 
but  since  germinal  potentiality  is  transformed  into  intellectual  ability 
only  as  the  result  of  development  such  a  prediction  could  not  be  ex¬ 
tended  to  the  latter  unless  the  environment  as  well  as  the  heredity 
were  known. 

Mankind  is  such  a  mongrel  race,  good  and  bad  qualities  are  so 
mixed  in  us,  marriage  is  such  a  lottery,  the  distribution  of  the  germinal 
units  to  the  different  germ  cells  and  the  union  of  particular  germ  cells 
in  fertilization  is  so  wholly  a  matter  of  chance,  the  influence  of  even 
bad  hereditary  units  on  one  another  is  so  unpredictably  good  or  bad 
as  is  shown  in  many  hybrids,  even  the  minor  influences  of  environment 
and  education  which  escape  attention  are  so  potent  in  development, 
that  the  chances  were  infinity  to  one  against  any  one  of  us,  with  all 
his  individual  characteristics,  ever  coming  into  existence.  If  the 
Greeks  or  Romans  had  known  of  the  real  infinity  of  chances  through 
which  every  human  being  is  brought  to  the  light  of  day  not  only  would 
they  have  deified  Chance  but  they  would  have  made  her  the  mother 
of  gods  and  men. 

Selective  mating.  But  granting  the  impossibility  of  predicting  the 
character  of  children  it  may  well  be  asked  if  good  general  advice  may 
not  be  given  regarding  the  choosing  of  a  mate.  Many  people  have 
thought  so,  and  if  all  that  has  been  said  or  written  on  this  subject 
were  to  be  gathered  together  I  suppose  that  there  would  not  or  should 
not  be  room  for  it  in  all  the  libraries  of  the  world.  It  is  generally 
admitted  that  few  lines  are  wholly  free  from  hereditary  defects  and 
the  question  has  often  been  asked  what  the  eugenical  practice  should 
be  in  such  cases.  Of  course  people  with  really  serious  hereditary 
defects  should  not  have  children.  If  the  defects  are  slight  Daven¬ 
port  has  suggested  that  they  may  either  be  disregarded  or  weakness 
in  any  character  may  be  mated  with  strength  in  that  character.  That 
people  with  only  slight  hereditary  defects  should  not  marry  at  all  is  a 
counsel  of  perfection. 

On  the  other  hand  it  would  be  a  dangerous  rule  to  propose  that 
persons  having  really  serious  hereditary  defects  should  be  mated  with 
those  who  are  strong  in  those  characters  on  the  ground  that  in  general 
strength  in  a  character  is  dominant  over  weakness.  It  has  been  sug- 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


321 


gested  that  a  normal  man  who  marries  a  feeble-minded  woman  would 
have  only  normal  children,  since  both  genius  and  feeble-mindedness 
seem  to  be  recessive  when  mated  with  mediocrity  or  normality.  But 
in  all  such  cases  the  weakness  is  not  neutralized  or  removed  but  merely 
concealed  in  the  offspring  and  is  therefore  the  more  dangerous.  If  a 
man  chooses  to  marry  a  feeble-minded  woman  he  at  least  does  so  with 
his  eyes  open  and  he  need  not  be  deceived.  But  the  normal  and  per¬ 
haps  capable  children  of  such  a  union  carry  the  taint  concealed  in 
their  germ  plasm  and  if  they  should  be  mated  with  other  normal 
persons  carrying  a  similar  taint  some  of  their  children  would  be 
feeble-minded,  and  thus  the  sins  of  the  parents  in  mating  weakness 
with  strength  would  be  visited  upon  the  children  to  the  nth  genera¬ 
tion.  Such  a  policy  of  concealing  weakness  by  mating  it  with  strength 
is  wholly  comparable  with  the  custom  once  prevalent  of  concealing 
cases  of  contagious  diseases,  and  may  properly  be  characterized  as 
the  "ostrich  policy.” 

After  all  in  the  choosing  of  mates  a  combination  of  instinct  and 
intelligence  is  probably  the  safest  guide.  Our  instincts,  built  up 
through  long  ages,  are  generally  adaptive  and  useful,  and  if  they  be 
guided  by  reason  the  result  is  apt  to  be  better  than  if  either  instinct 
or  reason  acts  alone.  More  need  not  be  said  on  this  subject,  since  it 
is  treated  ad  infinitum  in  works  of  fiction  and  in  ladies’  journals. 

Contributory  eugenical  measures.  General  education.  In  addi¬ 
tion  to  these  negative  and  positive  eugenical  measures  many  condi¬ 
tions  may  be  classed  as  contributory  to  eugenics.  One  of  the  most 
important  of  all  contributory  measures  is  the  general  education  of  the 
people  regarding  heredity.  The  widespread  ignorance  on  this  subject 
is  profound  and  very  many  offenders  against  the  principles  of  good 
breeding  have  sinned  through  ignorance.  Any  general  reform  must 
rest  upon  enlightened  public  opinion,  and  the  schools,  the  churches, 
and  the  press  can  do  no  more  important  work  for  mankind  than  to 
educate  the  people,  after  they  have  been  educated  themselves,  on  this 
important  matter. 

Society  too  may  cultivate  a  proper  pride  in  good  inheritance. 
Much  of  value  would  be  accomplished  if  the  silly  pride  in  ancestral 
wealth  or  position  or  environment  which  touched  our  forebears  only 
superficially  and  never  entered  into  their  germ  plasm,  or  the  still  sillier 
claims  of  long  descent,  in  which  we  are  all  equal,  could  be  replaced 


322 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


by  a  proper  pride  in  ancestral  heredity,  a  pride  in  those  inherited 
qualities  of  body,  mind,  and  character  which  have  made  some  families 
illustrious.  A  proper  pride  in  heredity  would  do  much  to  insure 
the  perpetuation  of  a  line  and  to  protect  it  from  admixture  with 
baser  blood. 

.  Coeducation  versus  monasticism.  Among  other  contributory  meas¬ 
ures  which  serve  to  promote  good  breeding  among  men  must  be 
reckoned  coeducation,  as  well  as  other  means  of  promoting  good  and 
early  marriages.  The  president  of  a  large  coeducational  institution 
once  said  that  if  marriages  were  made  in  heaven  he  was  sure  that  the 
Lord  had  a  branch  office  in  his  university.  I  had  occasion  a  few  years 
ago  to  investigate  the  eugenical  record  of  a  coeducational  institution, 
which  is  not  unknown  in  the  world  of  scholarship,  and  I  found  that 
about  33  per  cent  of  the  recent  graduates  had  married  fellow  students, 
that  there  had  been  no  divorces  and  that  there  were  many  children. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  coeducation  promotes  good  and  early  marriages 
and  that  it  is  not  necessarily  inimical  to  good  scholarship  even  though 
it  violates  the  spirit  of  mediaeval  monasticism.  There  was  a  time 
when  it  was  supposed  that  a  scholar  must  live  the  monkish  life  of 
seclusion  and  contemplation,  but  the  monasteries  are  disappearing 
the  world  over,  and  it  is  time  that  the  monastic  spirit  should  go  out 
of  the  colleges  and  universities. 

On  the  other  hand  the  colleges  exclusively  for  men  or  women  appear 
to  have  a  bad  influence  on  the  marriage  rate  and  birth  rate  of  their 
graduates.  Johnson  has  shown  that  90  p'er  cent  of  all  the  women  of 
the  United  States  marry  before  the  age  of  forty,  but  that  among 
college  women  only  half  that  number  have  married  at  the  same  age. 
As  a  result  of  investigations  at  one  of  the  leading  women’s  colleges 
he  finds  that  the  marriage  and  birth  rate  of  the  most  brilliant  students, 
who  have  been  elected  members  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  is  lowest  of  all. 
Cattell  says  that  a  Harvard  graduate  has  on  the  average  three-fourths 
of  a  son,  a  Vassar  graduate  one-half  of  a  daughter. 

At  present  early  and  fruitful  marriages  among  able  and  ambitious 
people  are  very  unfashionable  and  are  becoming  increasingly  imprac¬ 
ticable.  If  society  has  any  regard  for  its  own  welfare  all  this  must 
be  changed.  As  Gal  ton  has  shown,  the  race  that  marries  at  twenty- 
two  instead  of  thirty-three  will  possess  the  earth  in  two  or  three 
centuries. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


323 


The  good  of  society  demands  that  we  reverse  our  methods  of  put¬ 
ting  a  premium  upon  celibacy  among  our  most  gifted  and  ambitious 
young  men  and  women,  and  if  monastic  orders  and  institutions  are 
to  continue  they  should  be  open  only  to  those  eugenically  unfit. 

The  declining  birth  rate.  Stationary  population  normal.  Among 
animals  and  plants  in  a  state  of  nature  the  number  of  individuals  in 
each  species  remains  fairly  constant  from  year  to  year ;  that  is,  only 
enough  young  are  born  and  survive  to  take  the  places  of  mature  in¬ 
dividuals  that  die.  But  when  a  species  is  placed  in  new  and  favorable 
conditions  it  may  for  a  while  increase  at  an  amazing  rate  until  the 
pressure  of  population  becomes  sufficient  to  reestablish  an  equilibrium 
between  the  birth  rate  and  the  death  rate.  Thus  when  the  English 
sparrow  was  introduced  into  the  United  States  it  increased  at  a 
phenomenal  rate  for  a  number  of  years,  but  now  the  number  of 
individuals  in  any  given  locality  remains  about  the  same  from  year 
to  year,  the  birth  rate  merely  compensating  for  the  death  rate.  This 
equilibrium  is  brought  about  in  the  main  by  increased  mortality, 
especially  among  the  young,  though  decreasing  fecundity  may  play 
a  minor  part. 

Essentially  the  same  principles  apply  to  human  populations.  Up 
to  two  or  three  centuries  ago  the  populations  of  the  older  countries 
of  the  world  were  practically  stationary.  Fecundity  was  relatively 
high  but  the  death  rate  was  also  very  high,  the  excess  of  population 
in  each  generation  being  carried  off  in  large  numbers  by  war,  pesti¬ 
lence,  and  famine.  Then  owing  to  the  developments  of  science  and 
industry  and  to  the  opening  up  of  new  countries  a  period  of  remark¬ 
able  expansion  of  population  began.  The  population  of  Europe,  which 
was  about  175,000,000  in  1800,  increased  to  420,000,000  in  1900, 
and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  about  35,000,000  migrated  from 
Europe  to  new  countries  during  this  period.  This  great  increase  in 
the  population  of  Europe  was  due  primarily  to  reduction  of  the  death 
rate  since  the  birth  rate  also  declined  slightly  during  this  period, 
while  in  the  newer  countries  there  was  both  an  increase  in  the  birth 
rate  and  a  decrease  in  the  death  rate. 

It  is  perhaps  an  open  question  how  long  the  advances  of  science 
in  rendering  available  the  natural  resources  of  the  earth  may  be  able 
to  keep  pace  with  increasing  population,  but  it  is  evidently  impossible 
for  this  great  increase  in  the  population  of  the  world  to  go  on  indefi- 


324 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


nitely;  sooner  or  later  it  must  come  to  an  end  and  the  population 
again  become  stationary.  Already  the  birth  rate  is  decreasing  more 
rapidly  than  the  death  rate  in  all  the  western  countries  of  Europe  and 
this  movement  must  ultimately  extend  to  all  parts  of  the  world  and 
lead  to  a  checking  of  the  great  increase  in  population  which  has  char¬ 
acterized  the  last  two  hundred  years.  This  approach  to  a  stationary 
population  is  both  a  normal  and  a  desirable  thing,  for  no  one  could 
wish  to  see  the  population  increase  more  rapidly  than  the  supply  of 
food  or  other  necessaries  of  life ;  and  of  the  two  possible  methods  of 
checking  population  few  would  hesitate  to  choose  a  decreasing  birth 
rate  as  preferable  to  an  increasing  death  rate. 

It  is  not  therefore  the  declining  birth  rate  in  the  general  population 
that  should  cause  alarm  but  rather  the  declining  birth  rate  in  the 
best  elements  of  a  population,  while  it  continues  to  increase  or  at  the 
least  remains  stationary  among  the  poorer  elements,  and  there  is 
abundant  evidence  that  this  is  just  what  is  taking  place.  The  de¬ 
scendants  of  the  Puritans  and  the  Cavaliers  who  have  raised  the  cry 
for  "fewer  and  better  children”  are  already  disappearing  and  in  a 
few  centuries  at  most  will  have  given  place  to  more  fertile  races  of 
mankind.  Many  of  the  old  New  England  families  are  dying  out  and 
their  places  are  being  taken  by  recent  immigrants.  The  few  excep¬ 
tions  are  merely  eddies  in  the  current  that  is  bearing  them  to  doom. 
In  Massachusetts  the  birth  rate  of  the  foreign  born  is  twice  that  of 
the  native  population  while  the  death  rate  is  about  the  same  for  both. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  older  families  in  many  parts  of  the  world. 

Cattell  has  made  a  statistical  study  of  the  families  of  917  American 
men  of  science  and  he  finds  that  the  average  size  of  family  of  the 
parents  of  these  men  was  4.66  children,  whereas  the  average  size  of 
family  of  these  men  is  2.22  children.  In  one  generation  the  fertility 
of  these  lines  has  been  reduced  by  more  than  half.  The  causes  of  this 
decline  are  chiefly  voluntary  being  assigned  to  health,  expense,  and 
other  causes. 

Death  of  families.  But  the  causes  of  sterility  are  not  only  social 
and  voluntary  ones,  which  could  be  changed  by  custom  and  public 
opinion ;  there  are  also  involuntary  and  biological  causes  of  a  deep- 
seated  nature.  Fahlenbeck  has  made  a  study  of  433  noble  families 
of  Sweden  which  have  become  extinct  in  the  male  *line,  and  he  shows 
that  the  last  male  died  unmarried  in  45  per  cent  of  these  families,  and 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


325 


before  the  age  of  twenty-one  in  39  per  cent,  while  the  line  ended  in 
infertile  marriage  in  11  per  cent  and  in  daughters  only  in  5  per  cent. 

The  extinction  of  families,  however,  is  often  confused  with  the  ex¬ 
tinction  of  family  names,  which  means  only  that  the  family  has  died 
out  in  the  direct  male  line.  Biological  inheritance  does  not  necessarily 
follow  family  names.  Owing  to  the  elimination  of  one-half  of  the 
chromosomes  in  the  formation  of  the  sex  cells  and  the  replacing  of 
these  in  fertilization  by  chromosomes  from  another  source  it  happens 
that  many  persons  bear  the  name  of  some  progenitor  but  do  not  have 
a  single  one  of  his  chromosomes  or  inherited  traits;  on  the  other 
hand,  many  persons  who  do  not  bear  his  name  may  have  some  of  his 
chromosomes  and  traits.  Assuming  that  there  are  forty-eight  chromo¬ 
somes  in  the  human  species  and  that  these  never  break  up  or  lose  their 
identity  it  is  evident  that  no  person  can  inherit  from  more  than 
forty-eight  ancestors  though  he  may  be  descended  from  an  innumer¬ 
able  number. 

Much  confusion  is  caused  also  by  the  expression  " hereditary  lines,” 
as  if  each  family  were  separate  and  distinct  from  all  others.  But  this 
is,  of  course,  never  true.  The  only  hereditary  lines  which  exist  are 
those  of  individual  chromosomes  or  genes  and  these  divide  and  diverge 
like  the  branches  of  a  tree.  An  individual  containing  many  chromo¬ 
somes  received  from  many  sources  belongs  to  no  single  hereditary 
line,  but  rather  to  a  network  of  many  lines. 

It  has  been  said  that  if  the  birth  rate  of  the  Mayflower  families 
continues  to  decrease  at  the  present  rate  for  the  next  three  hundred 
years,  all  the  survivors  at  that  time  could  be  sent  back  in  the  original 
Mayflower.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  suspect  that  the  decreasing 
birth  rate  will  go  on  indefinitely  at  a  constant  ratio,  and  to  assume 
that  it  will  do  so  is  merely  to  look  forward  to  the  extinction  of  all 
families,  classes,  races,  and  nations  in  which  the  birth  rate  has  been  de¬ 
creasing;  this  includes  practically  the  entire  population  of  the  United 
States  and  Western  Europe  and  it  is  evident  that  such  a  result  while 
theoretically  possible  is  not  at  all  probable.  Considering  the  large 
number  of  collateral  lines  which  have  come  from  the  Mayflower  stock 
and  the  enormous  number  of  individuals  who  think  they  can  trace 
their  ancestry  back  to  the  Mayflower ,  it  is  incredible  that  all  these 
should  be  reduced  to  a  company  no  larger  than  that  which  came  over 
on  that  famous  ship. 


326 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


Broman  points  out  that  most  noble  families  of  Europe  die  out 
(probably  the  direct  male  line  only  is  meant)  after  one  hundred  to 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  and  generally  do  not  live  beyond  the 
third  generation.  The  same  is  true  of  the  families  of  great  scholars, 
artists,  and  statesmen.  Possibly  one  cause  of  such  declining  fertility 
may  be  found  in  too  great  brain  activity,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
in  many  instances  it  is  due  to  luxurious  living.  On  the  other  hand 
bodily  fatigue  and  simple  living  favor  fertility  in  both  animals  and 
men.  Wild  animals  brought  into  captivity  where  they  have  com¬ 
fortable  quarters  and  an  unwonted  abundance  of  rich  food  are  usually 
infertile ;  and  the  conditions  of  life  of  the  upper  classes  of  society  are 
almost  as  unfavorable  to  fertility  as  is  captivity  with  wild  animals. 
It  is  evident  that  if  we  had  fewer  luxuries  we  could  have,  and  could 
afford  to  have,  more  children. 

But  animals  in  captivity  may  gradually  become  adapted  to  their 
new  conditions  so  as  to  become  fertile,  and  there  is  evidence  that 
man  also  may  undergo  a  slow  adaptation  in  this  regard  to  conditions 
of  high  civilization.  Some  royal  families  of  Europe  go  back  six  or 
eight  hundred  years,  and  in  general  if  a  family  survives  the  new  con¬ 
ditions  of  affluence  and  luxury  for  more  than  three  generations  it  may 
become  more  or  less  adapted  to  the  new  conditions. 

Birth  control.  No  eugenical  reform  can  fail  to  take  account  of 
the  fact  that  the  decreasing  birth  rate  among  intelligent  people  is  a 
constant  menace  to  the  race.  We  need  not  "fewer  and  better  chil¬ 
dren”  but  more  children  of  the  better  sort  and  fewer  of  the  worse 
variety.  There  is  great  enthusiasm  today  on  the  part  of  many  childless 
reformers  for  negative  eugenical  measures ;  the  race  is  to  be  regener¬ 
ated  through  sterilization.  But  unfortunately  this  reform  begins  at 
home  among  those  who  because  of  good  hereditary  traits  should  not  be 
infertile.  Sterility  is  too  easily  acquired  ;  what  is  not  so  easily  brought 
about  is  the  fertility  of  the  better  lines.  Galton  was  far  wiser  than 
most  of  his  followers  for  he  realized  the  necessity  of  increasing  the 
families  of  the  better  types  as  well  as  of  decreasing  those  of  the  worse. 

What  Bernard  Shaw  regards  as  the  greatest  discovery  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century,  viz.,  the  means  of  artificially  limiting  the  size  of 
families,  may  prove  to  be  the  greatest  menace  to  the  human  race. 
If  it  were  applied  only  to  those  who  should  not  have  children 
or  to  those  who  should  for  various  reasons  have  only  a  few  children 


1 


♦ 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY  327 

it  would  be  a  blessing  to  mankind.  But  applied  to  those  who  could 
and  should  have  many  children  it  is  no  gift  of  the  gods.  No  one 
denies  that  the  chief  motive  for  limiting  the  size  of  families  is  per¬ 
sonal  comfort  and  pleasure  rather  than  the  welfare  of  the  race.  The 
argument  that  people  should  have  no  more  children  than  they  can 
rear  in  comfort  or  luxury  assumes  that  environment  is  more  important 
than  heredity,  which  is  contrary  to  all  the  biological  evidence.  In  the 
breeding  of  horses  or  cattle  or  men  heredity  is  more  potent  than 
environment;  and  it  is  more  important  for  the  welfare  of  the  race 
that  children  with  good  inheritance  should  be  brought  into  the  world 
than  that  parents  should  live  easy  lives  and  have  no  more  children 
than  they  can  conveniently  rear  amid  all  the  comforts  of  a  luxury- 
loving  age. 

The  method  of  evolution  in  the  past  has  been  the  production  of 
enormous  numbers  of  individuals  and  the  elimination  of  the  least  fit. 
The  modern  method  of  improving  domestic  races  is  to  select  for 
reproduction  the  best  types  from  large  numbers  of  individuals.  Nature 
has  provided  an  almost  infinite  wealth  and  variety  of  potential  per¬ 
sonalities  in  human  germ  cells  but  only  an  infinitesimal  number  ever 
come  to  development.  If  this  number  is  still  further  reduced  by 
artificial  means  and  without  regard  to  fitness  the  race  will  be  made 
the  poorer  not  merely  in  quantity  but  also  in  quality.  The  optimism 
of  those  who  believe  that  supermen  may  be  produced  by  artificially 
limiting  the  number  of  children  is  a  foolish  and  fatal  optimism. 

Finally  for  those  who  are  denied  the  privilege  of  parenthood  and 
upon  whom  sterility  is  forced  by  whatever  circumstances  there  is  a 
lesson  of  value  to  be  drawn  from  the  social  insects.  The  sterile  mem¬ 
bers  of  a  colony  of  ants  or  bees  are  forever  denied  the  possibility  of 
having  offspring  of  their  own,  but  they  become  foster  mothers  to  the 
offspring  of  the  queen.  They  tenderly  nurse,  care  for,  and  rear  the 
young  of  the  colony.  There  are  many  children  in  the  world  who  need 
foster  mothers  and  fathers;  there  are  many  men  and  women  in  the 
world,  both  married  and  unmarried,  who  need  adopted  children. 
"Go  to  the  ant,  thou  sluggard;  consider  her  ways  and  be  wise.”1 

JAn  excellent  glossary  of  the  terms  used  in  this  selection  will  be  found  in 
Conklin,  Heredity  and  Environment ,  rev.  4th  ed.  pp.  353-361.  The  whole  text 
may  be  ‘used  most  advantageously  by  classes  which  have  a  background  in 
biology. —  Ed. 


328 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


42.  The  Problem  of  Practical  Eugenics1 

Practical  eugenics  is  after  all  concerned  with  two  fundamental 
problems : 

1.  The  production  of  a  sufficient  Supply  of  leaders  of  ability  and 
energy  for  the  community,  and 

2.  The  provision  of  intelligent  and  healthy  men  and  women  for  the 
great  army  of  workers. 

If  the  great  army  of  workers  be  maintained  more  or  less  at  a  sub¬ 
sistence  wage,  then  the  second  fundamental  problem  of  practical 
eugenics  is  not  a  question  of  moral  teaching  to  be  backed  by  a  social 
sanction — those  methods  can  apply  only  to  our  first  fundamental 
problem.  It  is  a  question  of  economic  value  and  of  legislative  sanction. 

In  the  mass  of  the  community  the  child  is  a  ware,  and  its  produc¬ 
tion  is  singularly  sensitive  to  any  legislative  action  which  alters  its 
economic  value.  There  is,  I  believe,  one  way,  and  one  way  only,  of 
solving  this  problem:  we  must  reverse  the  effect  of  the  factory  acts 
which  have  penalised  parentage  and  handicapped  motherhood.  But 
the  reversal  must  be  done  in  a  differential  manner,  sound  parentage 
and  healthy  motherhood  must  be  given  a  substantial  economic  ad¬ 
vantage  over  not  only  childlessness,  but  over  unsound  parentage  and 
feeble  motherhood;  the  well-born  child  must  again  be  made  a  valu¬ 
able  economic  asset.  This  is  the  central  problem  of  all  practical 
eugenics, — eugenics  as  a  doctrine  of  national  welfare  is  a  branch  of 
national  economy. 

As  far  as  I  am  aware  all  forms  of  employment,  individual,  municipal, 
and  governmental  service  in  this  country,  directly  penalise  parentage 
and  motherhood.  The  single  exception  to  the  rule  that  I  know  of 
anywhere  is  in  the  pensions  of  the  Indian  Civil  Service,  which  provide 
directly  for  the  widow  and  for  the  education  of  each  individual  child 
to  the  age  of  twenty-one,  but  thus  far  without  any  regard  to  the 
probable  quality  of  the  stock.  Our  eugenic  object  must  be  to  regard 
the  quality  of  the  stock  in  at  least  a  rough  and  ready  way  when  we 
endeavour  legislatively  to  reverse  the  effect  of  the  factory  acts. 

1By  Karl  Pearson,  F.  R.S.,  Galton  Professor  of  Eugenics  and  Director  of  the 
Francis  Galton  Laboratory  for  National  Eugenics,  University  of  London.  Adapted 
from  The  Problem  of  Practical  Eugenics ,  pp.  22-25,  28-32.  Published  by  Dulau 
and  Co.,  London,  1909.  Printed  at  the  Cambridge  University  Press. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


329 


Before  touching  possible  directions  of  reform,  I  want  to  point  out 
to  you  that  while  all  penalisation  of  parentage  is  bad, — for,  given 
the  material,  Nature,  the  first  and  most  thorough  practical  eugenist, 
will  play  her  part  in  selection — yet  our  special  penalisation  is  ex¬ 
cessively  bad ;  for  it  has,  owing  to  municipal  and  charitable  institu¬ 
tions,  emphasised  the  penalty  in  the  case  of  the  better  type  of  parent. 

The  thrifty,  provident  parents  who  wish  to  provide  a  home  life  for 
their  offspring  not  only  find  themselves  penalised  as  against  their 
childless  competitors,  but  as  against  the  thriftless  and  improvident 
who  throw  the  burden  of  their  children  on  public  rates  and  on  pri¬ 
vate  charities.  I  want  to  bring  this  out  emphatically  because  it 
seems  to  me  an  essential  part  of  practical  eugenic  policy  to  protect 
and  fight  against  this  municipal  and  charitable  method  of  penalising 
better  parentage.  I  draw  your  attention  to  recent  statistics  of  the  av¬ 
erage  size  of  families  in  degenerate  and  pathological  stocks  (Table  I). 
You  will  see  that  the  old  rate  has  been  maintained  in  these  stocks ;  and 
not  a  little  of  this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  members  of  these  stocks  are 
largely  provided  for  at  public  expense. 


Table  I.  Fertility  in  Pathological  and  Normal  Stocks1 

PATHOLOGICAL 


Class 

Authority 

Nature  of  Marriage 

S^IZE  OF 

Family 

• 

Deaf  mutes  (England)  . 

Schuster 

Probably  completed 

6.2 

Deaf  mutes  (America)  . 

Schuster 

Probably  completed 

6.1 

Tuberculous  stock  . 

Pearson 

Probably  completed 

5-7 

Albinotic  stock  .... 

Pearson 

Probably  completed 

5-9 

Insane  stock . 

Heron 

Probably  completed 

6.0 

Edinburgh  degenerates . 

Eugenics  Laboratory 

Incomplete 

6.1 

London  mentally  defective 

Eugenics  Laboratory 

Incomplete 

7.0 

Manchester  mentally  defec¬ 
tive  . 

Eugenics  Laboratory 

Incomplete 

6-3 

Criminals . 

Goring 

Incomplete 

6.6 

Mean . 

1  Pearson,  The  Scope  and  Importance  to  the  State  of  the  Science  of  National 
Eugenics.  Dulau  and  Co.,  London. 


330 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


NORMAL 


Class 

Authority 

zzi; 

Nature  of  Marriage 

Size  of 
Family 

English  middle  class 

Pearson 

15  years  at  least 

\ 

begun  before  thirty-jive 

6.4 

Family  records  . 

Pearson 

Completed 

5-3 

English  intellectual  class 

Pearson 

Completed 

47 

Working  class,  N.  S.  W. 

Powys 

Completed 

5-3 

Danish  professional  class 

Westergaard 

15  years  at  least 

5-2 

Danish  working  class  . 

Westergaard 

25  years  at  least 

5.3 

Edinburgh  normal 

artizan . 

Eugenics  Laboratory 

Incomplete 

5.9 

London  normal  artizan  . 

Eugenics  Laboratory 

Incomplete 

5-i 

English  intellectuals . 

S.  Webb 

Said  to  be  complete 

i-5 

American  graduates . 

Harvard 

Complete 

2.0 

Mean,  omitting  last  two . 

5-5 

All  separate  lines  of  inquiry  tend  to  confirm  the  view  that  the  dis¬ 
tricts  of  a  good  social  character  have  the  lower  birthrates ;  that  the 
anti-social  stocks  are  at  present  most  prolific,  and  this  whether  we 
measure  the  gross  or  net  fertility.  Now  the  last  half  century  in  our 
history  has  been  one  of  which  the  central  historical  feature  has  been 
the  attempt  by  legislation  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  people. 
And  what  will  be  the  final  judgment  of  history  on  this  great  move¬ 
ment?  It  will  have  to  record  that  the  social  evolution  of  the  last 
fifty  years  has  produced  the  following  effects : 

1 .  A  markedly  lower  birthrate. 

2.  A  correlation  of  the  higher  grades  of  this  lower  birthrate  with 
socially  undesirable  characters. 

There  has  been  not  only  a  penalisation  of  parentage,  but  a  penalisa¬ 
tion  of  the  better  parentage  in  a  more  marked  degree.  The  child, 
ceasing  to  be  an  economic  asset,  has  become  a  burden,  but  poor  law 
and  charity  have  largely  succeeded  in  lifting  this  burden  from  the 
shoulders  of  the  degenerate  parents.  We  have  not  only  hindered  Nature 
from  weeding  out  social  wastage,  but  we  have  made  the  conditions 
increasingly  more  favourable  to  the  multiplication  of  this  degeneracy. 
Practical  eugenists  must  urgently  demand  the  reversal  of  all  legisla- 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


33 1 


tion  which  penalises  the  parentage  of  the  fit,  and  the  restriction  of  all 
charity  which  favours  the  parentage  of  the  unfit.  We  must  directly 
or  indirectly  produce  differential  wages  for  the  fit  parent ;  in  other 
words  there  must  be  endowment  of  fit  parentage  at  the  expense  of  the 
unfit  parent  and  of  childless  men  or  women. 

The  state  by  hasty  vote-catching  legislation  with  regard  to  old  age 
pensions  has  just  lost  a  splendid  opportunity  for  eugenic  reform.  The 
time  when  the  workman  really  wants  most  aid  is  when  his  children  are 
young  and  are  wholly  dependent  upon  him.  If  his  offspring  have  been 
sound  in  body  and  mind  his  dependence  upon  them  in  old  age  is  not 
in  itself  so  wholly  unreasonable.  In  a  society  where  children  are  few 
and  many  of  those  few  degenerate,  the  care  of  the  aged  becomes  no 
doubt  an  urgent  problem.  Such  genuine  demand  as  there  has  been 
for  old  age  pensions  is  not  a  little  based  oji  the  declining  birthrate  and 
the  increasing  incapacity  of  many  who  are  born.  Had  we  adopted  a 
general  system  of  insurance  similar  to  that  of  Germany  in  its  origin, 
i.e.  state,  employers,  and  workmen  themselves  contributing — but 
different  in  its  application — namely  insurance  against  invalidity,  with 
provision,  as  with  the  Foresters,  for  motherhood,  and,  as  in  the  Indian 
Civil  Service,  for  each  child,  we  could  at  once  have  reversed  the  evil 
effects  of  the  factory  acts  as  far  as  these  penalise  parentage  and 
handicap  motherhood.  It  needs  but  a  stage  further,  the  differentia¬ 
tion  of  the  provision  for  children  and  motherhood  according  to  the 
fitness  of  parentage,  and  we  have  a  complete  eugenic  social  scheme. 
At  first  a  very  rough  standard  of  differentiation  would  suffice — a 
fairly  clean  bill  of  health  for  both  parents,  an  absence  of  obvious  taint 
in  their  immediate  stock,  a  moderate  school  standard  passed,  and  a 
minimum  wage  value  in  the  market  to  test  general  ability.  Even 
without  this  slight  test — which  at  any  rate  would  exclude  the  epilep¬ 
tic,  the  deformed,  the  insane,  and  the  deaf-mute  stocks  from  the 
benefits  of  the  scheme — we  should  by  a  simple  insurance  fund  of  this 
kind  have  removed  the  present  disabilities  of  parentage  which,  as  I 
have  endeavoured  to  show,  are  practically  differential  with  regard  to 
the  fitter  parentage. 

When  we  regard  the  present  six  or  seven  million  pounds  a  year — 
soon  to  be  ten  or  more  millions — given  to  a  mere  environmental 
reform,  which  applied  long  after  the  reproductive  age  cannot  possibly 
produce  any  permanent  racial  change,  how  deeply  one  must  regret 


332 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  want  of  knowledge  and  of  statesmanship,  which  overlooked  the 
naturally  disastrous  policy  of  the  factory  acts,  and  did  not  seek  its 
opportunity  to  endow  parentage  rather  than  senility  with  those  an¬ 
nual  millions!  Even  as  a  party  cry  I  believe  the  endowment  of 
parentage  would  have  been  effective ;  as  a  step  to  meet  grave  racial 
dangers  it  would  have  possessed  real  insight. 

So  much  then  for  the  legislative  element  in  eugenic  reform.  When 
we  turn  to  the  field  of  charitable  and  social  enterprise  we  see  at  once 
the  very  large  amount  of  work  that  can  immediately  be  done  in 
educating  public  opinion  in  a  right  direction.  We  see  enormous  sums 
annually  given  for  charitable  purposes  without  the  least  attempt  to 
differentiate  between  the  recipients  who  spring  from  fit  and  those 
who  spring  from  unfit  parentages,  between  the  recipients  who  are  of 
racial  value  and  those  who  are  mere  social  wastage.  Asylums  abound 
for  the  imbecile  and  the  cripple,  homes  for  waifs  and  strays,  orphan¬ 
ages,  hospitals,  the  boast  of  which  is  that  they  receive  without  selec¬ 
tion  all  sufferers.  Do  the  subscribers  to  these  and  many  other  kindred 
institutions  ever  consider  that  they  are  directly  penalising  fit  paren¬ 
tage  by  enabling  the  unfit  parent  to  obtain  provision  for  his  deformed 
or  diseased  offspring  ?  Is  it  not  within  the  experience  of  many  of  us 
that  the  relatives,  who  wish  to  get  a  child  into  an  orphanage,  are  more 
likely  to  bring  him  to  the  head  of  the  poll,  if  they  can  say  that  his 
father  died  of  phthisis,  that  his  mother  is  delicate  and  unable  to  work, 
and  that  he  is  one  of  eight  children  five  of  whom  are  totally  un¬ 
provided  for,  the  three  others  being  two  in  an  epileptic  home,  and  the 
third  an  imbecile  ?  Is  it  not  possible  by  aid  of  a  little  educative  prop- 
agandism  of  a  eugenic  character  to  divert  some  of  the  thousands  we 
see  every  week  willed  to  indiscriminate  charity  into  a  more  rational 
and  national  channel?  Why  should  they  not  be  earmarked  in  even 
some  small  percentage  of  cases  for  the  offspring  of  fit  parentage? 

43.  The  Value  and  Limitations  of  Eugenics1 

Social  life  consists  in  the  interaction  of  human  beings,  and  social 
evolution — whether  progressive  or  the  reverse — in  the  consequent 
formation  and  modification  of  what,  for  lack  of  a  better  single  word, 
we  may  call  the  social  tradition.  Social  improvement  therefore  is  not 

iFrom  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory  (pp.  40-79),  by  Leonard  T. 
Hobhouse. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


333 


the  same  as  racial  improvement.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  with  no 
change  in  the  average  level  of  racial  capacity,  the  cumulative  efforts 
of  generations  to  better  their  life  might  produce  a  very  great  change 
in  the  social  structure,  and  in  point  of  fact  it  appears  to  be  mainly  by 
such  a  process  of  the  summation  of  effort  that  the  actual  achievements 
of  mankind  have  been  effected.  But  at  this  point  the  biological  critic 
may  very  fairly  break  in  with  a  new  criticism.  "Granted,”  he  may 
say,  "all  that  you  urge  on  behalf  of  the  social  tradition.  It  still 
remains  the  incontestable  truth  that  society  is  composed  of  individuals 
whose  qualities  determine  the  nature  of  their  interactions.  No  doubt 
these  qualities  are  very  complex.  Man  is  a  being  of  mixed  disposi¬ 
tion.  There  is  a  mingling  of  gold  and  brass  in  every  soul,  and  circum¬ 
stances  may  decide  which  is  to  show  on  the  surface.  We  grant  then 
that  there  are  wide  limits  of  variation  within  which,  without  modifica¬ 
tion  of  the  racial  type,  society  may  advance  or  retrograde.  None  the 
less  we  come  back  to  the  qualities  of  individuals  as  the  ultimate  deter¬ 
minants.  Their  average  merit  must  affect  the  standard  of  social 
action.  Conceive  the  racial  level — by  which  we  mean  the  average 
level  of  hereditary  endowment — raised,  and  to  that  extent  you  facili¬ 
tate  social  progress.  Conceive  it  lowered,  and  to  that  extent  you 
arrest  progress  and  favor  deterioration.”  The  contention  thus  mod¬ 
estly  put  cannot  be  denied.  The  very  efforts  that  men  make  to 
improve  their  individual  condition  and  the  social  order  are  themselves 
of  course  the  outcome  of  their  qualities;  and  if  these  qualities  take 
shape  and  find  expression  in  the  medium  of  the  social  tradition,  it  is 
equally  true  that  they  form  the  ultimate  reserve  of  energy  underlying 
the  social  changes  by  which  that  tradition  is  maintained,  improved, 
or  destroyed.  "Very  well  then,”  the  Eugenist  proceeds,  "it  is  ad¬ 
mitted  that  the  quality  of  the  stock  is  of  high  importance.  It  is 
admitted  also  that  natural  selection  is  no  longer  capable  of  performing 
its  function  in  weeding  out  inferior  stocks.  It  is  admitted  that  we 
cannot  revert  to  the  use  of  natural  selection  without  destroying  the 
characteristic  work  of  civilization.  We  cannot  undo  the  structure  of 
mutual  aid  and  mutual  forbearance  which  civilized  progress  has  pain¬ 
fully  built  up.  What  we  can  do  is  to  substitute  for  natural  a  rational 
selection.  We  may  discourage  and  even  prevent  the  perpetuation  of 
inferior  stocks,  and  for  this  purpose  a  rational  conception  of  fitness 
and  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  heredity  is  all  that  we  require.  AW 


334 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


that  has  been  urged  above  against  the  conception  of  the  struggle  for 
existence  may  be  true.  It  holds  true  none  the  less  that  selection  is 
necessary  to  racial  progress  and  to  the  avoidance  of  racial  deteriora¬ 
tion,  and  even  if  the  social  reformer  could  ignore  the  need  of  improve¬ 
ment  in  the  race,  he  must  take  a  very  serious  view  of  the  possibilities 
involved  in  deterioration.  He  must  look  very  carefully  at  the  reforms 
which  he  is  proposing,  for  fear  any  such  vital  injury  to  the  life-blood 
of  society  should  be  entailed  by  them.” 

Without  examining  all  the  details  of  this  argument,  we  may  admit 
the  main  contention  to  be  theoretically  sound.  The  improvement  of 
the  stock  by  rational  selection  is  in  the  abstract  a  clearly  legitimate 
object.  It  involves  no  such  contradiction  with  the  inherent  trend  of 
progress  as  is  contained  in  the  principle  of  leaving  society  to  the 
operation  of  the  unchecked  struggle  for  existence.  The  child  once 
born  has  a  claim  upon  society  which  can  only  be  ignored  at  the  cost 
of  abandoning  the  basic  principles  of  the  humanized  social  order. 
But  the  claim  to  bring  children  into  the  world  is  quite  another  matter. 
It  is  no  novel  point  of  ethics  to  forbid  parentage  to  a  person  of 
deeply  vitiated  stock,  and  Eugenists  who  draw  a  distinction  between 
the  right  to  live  and  the  right  to  bring  to  life  are  within  their  rights. 
So  far  then  we  admit  that  the  eugenic  conclusion  follows  from  its 
premises.  But  what  are  the  premises  ?  We  are  to  assume,  first,  that 
we  have  a  true  conception  of  social  worth,  of  the  nature  of  human 
progress,  and  of  the  qualities  making  for  it.  We  are  to  assume, 
secondly,  that  we  have  competent  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  inheri¬ 
tance  whereby  we  can  so  play  upon  the  race  as  to  engender  the 
qualities  that  we  desire.  This  is,  to  succeed  in  eugenics  we  need  a 
competent  understanding  both  of  the  eu  and  of  the  genics.  We  must 
know  what  we  want  to  breed  for  and  how  we  propose  to  breed  for  it. 
Have  we  the  clearness  of  conception  as  to  the  first  point  and  the 
fullness  of  knowledge  as  to  the  second  which  are  necessary  to  the  use¬ 
ful  development  of  eugenics? 

As  to  the  first  question,  the  nature  and  criterion  of  social  worth,  I 
think  we  may  trace  two  lines  of  thought  among  eugenic  writers  which 
it  is  highly  important  to  distinguish.  The  more  careful  admit  that 
for  a  thoroughgoing  application  of  their  principle  we  should  need  a 
well-grounded  social  philosophy.  They  admit  that  little  is  known  as 
to  the  causation  of  many  of  the  higher  human  qualities  and  fully  grant 


•  SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


335 


that  we  should  be  very  careful  in,  so  as  to  say,  passing  sentence  of 
execution  on  a  stock  which  may  after  all  contain  serviceable  elements 
mixed  with  its  blemishes.  But  they  say  there  are  many  qualities 
about  which  there  can  be  no  doubt.  We  do  not  want  insanity ;  we  do 
not  want  feeble-mindedness ;  we  do  not  want  alcoholism ;  we  do  not 
want  syphilis ;  we  do  not  want  the  stocks  which  are  infected  with 
such  taint.  We  want  to  extinguish  them  as  evil  in  themselves  and  as 
liable  to  infest  sound  stocks.  We  want  to  isolate  those  definitely 
infected  much  as  we  isolate  an  infectious  disease.  We  want  to  pre¬ 
vent  them  from  bringing  into  the  world  children  in  their  own  image. 
When  the  principle  is  admitted  and  the  experiment  has  been  made 
in  these  cases  that  are  clear,  it  will  be  time  enough  to  consider  those 
that  are  more  doubtful.  We  shall  in  the  meantime  have  gained  some 
knowledge  of  what  can  be  done  by  these  means  and  how  it  can  be 
done  with  the  least  possible  infliction  of  suffering. 

On  this  side  we  see  the  eugenic  case  at  its  strongest.  But  even 
here  we  must  put  in  one  caveat.  There  may  be  blemishes  which  are 
very  serious  in  themselves,  but  which  nevertheless  do  not  afford  ade¬ 
quate  grounds  for  pronouncing  capital  sentence  upon  a  stock.  As  an 
illustration,  I  will  take  the  case  of  tuberculosis.  The  heredity  of  this 
disease  is  still  a  matter  of  some  question.  For  the  sake  of  argument  I 
will  assume  the  diathesis  to  be  hereditary.  No  one  can  deny  that  it 
is  in  that  case  a  serious  blemish.  But  before  we  proceeded  to  pass 
sentence  of  exclusion  from  the  rights  of  parenthood  on  any  individual 
of  tubercular  stock,  I  think  we  should  have  very  carefully  to  weigh 
two  questions.  The  first  is,  what  are  the  other  qualities  of  the  in¬ 
dividual?  Liability  to  tubercular  infection  involves  no  mental  or 
moral  turpitude.  It  may  coexist  with  the  highest  qualities  on  this 
side.  I  am  not  aware  that  it  even  involves  any  other  form  of  physical 
weakness,  though  some  other  forms  of  physical  weakness  may  no 
doubt  increase  the  liability  to  tubercular  infection.  Now,  if  we  stamp 
out  the  tubercular  tendency,  what  other  qualities  are  we  stamping  out 
along  with  it?  If  an  otherwise  gifted  stock  has  this  blemish,  will 
there  be  net  loss  or  net  gain  in  its  disappearance  ?  I  do  not  think  that 
this  question  can  be  answered  offhand.  But  if  our  general  view  of 
progress  is  correct,  society  has  on  the  whole  gone  forward  by  the 
development  of  those  arts  which  assist  to  keep  alive  many  who  with¬ 
out  such  aid  would  have  perished ;  and  considering  the  very  wide  . 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


prevalence  which  is  now  believed  to  obtain  of  some  form  or  another 
of  the  tubercular  condition,  it  may  be  doubted,  whether  if  the  tubercle 
had  been  left  to  do  its  work  unchecked,  there  would  have  been 
any  social  progress  at  all.  Secondly,  it  is  well  within  the  bounds  of 
possibility  that,  by  the  development  of  scientific  hygiene,  instead  of 
eliminating  the  tubercular  stock  we  may  succeed  in  eliminating  the  tu¬ 
bercle.  In  that  case  this  particular  tendency — unless  provably  corre¬ 
lated  with  some  other  form  of  irremediable  weakness — will  no  longer 
rank  as  a  defect.  If  in  the  meantime  we  had  prohibited  the  marriage 
of  members  of  such  stocks,  we  should  have  lost  all  that  they  might 
have  contributed  to  the  population  and  its  well-being  for  the  sake 
of  no  permanent  gain. 

These  two  points  may  be  stated  generally.  We  must  be  certain 
that  the  stock  which  we  seek  to  eliminate  is  so  vicious  that  its  removal 
is  a  net  gain.  We  must  be  sure  that  the  vice  is  irremovable  and  not 
dependent  upon  conditions  which  it  is  within  our  power  to  modify. 
This  latter  condition  implies  a  certainty  as  to  the  operation  of 
heredity,  of  which  more  will  be  said.  But  meanwhile,  assuming  those 
two  conditions  fulfilled,  there  is  a  case  for  forbidding  parentage — al¬ 
ways  upon  this  further  provision  that  in  so  doing  we  do  not  allow 
ourselves  to  be  driven  to  methods  which  by  violating  the  painfully 
acquired  traditions  of  civilization  will  aid  the  ever  present  tendencies  to 
re-barbarization.  On  these  grounds  the  case  of  the  feeble-minded  be¬ 
comes  perhaps  the  strongest  for  the  application  of  eugenic  methods. 
We  have  here  a  type  which  it  is  becoming  possible  to  identify  with 
fair  precision.  It  is  found  in  men  and  women  who  are  not  capable 
of  independent  existence,  but  who  continually  drift  to  the  gaol  or  the 
workhouse,  who  are  fertile,  and  whose  condition  is  asserted  to  be 
hereditary  in  a  marked  degree.  On  grounds  of  humanity  we  have 
good  reason  to  undertake  the  care  ofjthis  class,  and  we  have  a  right 
to  demand  in  return  the  separation  of  the  sexes.  We  are  dealing  with 
people  who  are  not  capable  of  guiding  their  own  lives  and  who  should 
for  their  own  sake  be  under  tutelage,  and  we  are  entitled  to  impose 
our  own  conditions  of  this  tutelage,  having  the  general  welfare  of 
society  in  view.  Lastly,'  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  this  condi¬ 
tion  is  an  isolated  and,  as  it  were,  accidental  defect  in  a  nature  that 
is  otherwise  healthy  and  sound.  The  evidence,  I  understand,  is  rather 
that  it  is  a  form  of  general  deterioration  not  correlated  with  any 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


337 


specially  good  qualities  by  way  of  compensation.  Such  a  case  is,  I 
think,  one  of  the  strongest  that  Eugenists  can  press  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge.  •  <  ' 

On  such  lines  as  these,  physiological  or  medical  lines  as  we  may 
call  them,  eugenics  may  have  a  part  to  play  in  relation  to  the  social 
problem.  But  meanwhile  there  is  a  second  line  of  thought  discernible 
among  Eugenists  and  larger  claims  put  forward  bearing  on  political 
thought  as  a  whole  which  must  be  very  carefully  scrutinized.  By  no 
means  all  eugenic  writers  are  so  careful  in  their  application  of  the 
tests  of  unfitness  as  those  to  whom  I  have  referred.  To  read  a  good 
deal  of  what  is  written  on  this  subject  one  might  suppose  that  the 
whole  question  is  as  simple  as  daylight.  Often  it  would  seem  as  if  the 
actual  position  of  classes  in  society  was  taken  as  a  measure  of  their 
worth.  Thus  we  hear  a  great  deal  of  the  relative  sterility  of  the  richer 
classes  and  the  fertility  of  the  poorer,  as  if  this  were  in  itself  sufficient 
evidence  of  the  multiplication  of  the  unfit.  Now,  the  actual  forces 
which  determine  a  man’s  position  in  modern  society  are,  first,  the 
inheritance  of  property  and  other  social  privileges,  and  secondly,  his 
capacity  for  making  and  keeping  money.  The  first  of  these,  far  from 
affording  a  test  of  personal  merit,  tends  to  mask  the  actual  inequalities 
of  endowment.  One  knows  people  of  the  essential  pauper  character  in 
all  classes.  But  whereas  if  they  are  born  among  the  well-to-do  they 
exist  on  means  of  their  own  or  find  relations  on  whom  they  succeed 
in  fastening,  among  the  poor  they  drift  to  the  street  corner,  the  casual 
ward,  the  workhouse,  and  the  gaol.  One  would  suppose  it  axiomatic 
that  without  perfect  equality  of  opportunity  actual  position  in  the 
social  scale  would  be  no  criterion  of  relative  merit ;  and  yet  we  find 
at  least  one  able  writer  so  enamoured  of  the  qualities  of  the  British 
upper  and  middle  class  that  he  manages  on  eugenic  grounds  to  find 
reasons  for  the  maintenance  of  class  distinctions.  But  further,  given 
a  genuine  freedom  of  competition  and  full  equality  of  opportunity, 
the  qualities  which  bring  men  to  the  top  are  not  necessarily  social 
qualities.  Some  qualities  by  which  men  get  on  are  good,  some  in¬ 
different,  and  some  bad.  Which  of  these  will  predominate  depends  on 
the  character  of  the  social  organization.  The  financial  abilities  which 
bring  men  to  the  top  to-day  may  come  to  be  regarded  by  our  descend¬ 
ants  much  as  we  regard  the  qualities  of  a  robber  baron  who  prospered 
under  mediaeval  conditions.  Upon  the  whole  it  is  probable  that  the 


338 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


harder  and  more  self-regarding  qualities  still  play  a  larger  part  than 
the  gentler  and  more  social  in  determining  success,  and  we  are  not 
surprised  when  we  find  writers  of  the  type  to  which  I  refer  telling  us 
plainly  that  self-reliance  and  endurance  are  the  qualities  which  they 
wish  to  breed.  Now,  self-reliance  and  endurance  are  very  good  quali¬ 
ties,  and  we  must  not  depreciate  them,  but  a  view  of  human  nature 
which  centers  on  these  to  the  omission  of  the  other  side  of  character 
is  a  view  which  has  got  out  of  focus.  The  possibility  of  such  a  view 
indicates  the  absolute  necessity  of  a  social  philosophy  as  a  basis  of 
eugenics  the  moment  that  eugenic  considerations  are  used  to  deter¬ 
mine  the  main  lines  of  social  reform. 

In  fact,  when  they  begin  to  criticize  social  reform,  some  Eugenists 
of  the  class  to  which  I  am  referring,  political  Eugenists  as  we  may 
call  them,  come  perilously  near  to  thd  old  arguments  from  the  theory 
of  natural  selection.  They  make  reservations,  it  is  true,  which  must 
stand  to  their  credit.  They  admit  that  the  social  conscience  is  an 
indispensable  factor  in  progress,  and  that  what  has  been  done  in  the 
way  of  ameliorative  legislation  cannot  be  undone.  But,  they  argue, 
as  long  as  natural  selection  reigned  the  standard  of  the  stock  was  kept 
up.  The  weakling  was  eliminated ;  the  strong  survived.  Now  natural 
selection  is  superseded.  The  weakling  is  preserved.  He  is  allowed  to 
breed.  Relatively  he  is  more  fertile  than  the  fit.  The  birth-rate 
diminishes  most  among  the  higher  ranks  of  society.  More  and  more 
the  nation  of  the  future  will  be  recruited  from  the  unfit  stocks.  Mean¬ 
while  the  burden  of  maintaining  the  unfit  falls  in  the  shape  of  poor 
rates  and  state  taxes  on  the  shoulders  of  their  betters,  who  are  thus 
positively  handicapped  in  the  struggle  and  disinclined  to  rear  families. 
All  social  legislation  is  directed  to  the  improvement  of  the  environ¬ 
ment,  but  the  improvement  of  the  environment  has  no  effect  on  the 
stock.  It  may  in  some  degree — Professor  Pearson’s  school  argues 
that  it  is  in  a  very  slight  degree — improve  the  qualities  of  the  in¬ 
dividual,  but  the  qualities  so  acquired  will  not  be  handed  on.  Unless 
we  so  alter  our  institutions  as  to  encourage  the  propagation  of  the  fit 
and  discourage  the  unfit,  our  race  is  doomed. 

i.  If  these  jeremiads  were  well  founded,  we  should  expect  to  see 
the  signs  of  deterioration  already  manifest.  After  all,  the  suspension 
of  natural  selection  is  no  new  phenomenon.  It  has,  as  we  have  shown, 
been  in  progress  ever  since  civilization  began  and  even  before  civiliza- 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


339 


tion  began.  True,  with  the  decline  of  the  infantile  death-rate  it  has 
been  carried  much  farther,  but  this  is  only  the  continuance  of  a  very 
old  process,  and  that  this  process  can  ever  go  so  far  as  entirely  to 
eliminate  natural  selection  is  unlikely.  Variations  which  are  suf¬ 
ficiently  extreme  are  likely  always  to  carry  early  death  or  infertility 
as  their  effect.  In  our  own  times  what  proof  is  there  of  actual  deterio¬ 
ration  ?  As  it  happens  a  committee  was  instituted  in  my  own  coun¬ 
try  to  investigate  this  question  some  six  years  ago.  There  was  at 
that  time  a  widespread  uneasiness  arising  from  the  increasing  number 
of  recruits  who  were  rejected  on  medical  grounds.  Physical  deteriora¬ 
tion  was  the  thing  most  feared,  and  it  was  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
under  modern  considerations  it  would  be  on  this  side  if  anywhere  that 
deterioration  would  be  apparent.  The  committee  was  not  biased  in 
favor  of  any  optimistic  view,  and  all  available  evidence  in  favor  of 
deterioration  came  before  them.  The  result  was  that  while  they 
found  that  there  was  no  sufficient  material  as  at  present  available  to 
warrant  any  definite  conclusions  on  the  question  of  the  physique  of 
the  people  by  comparison  with  data  obtained  in  past  times,  yet  "the 
impressions  gathered  from  the  great  majority  of  the  witnesses  ex¬ 
amined  do  not  support  the  belief  that  there  is  any  general  progressive 
physical  deterioration.”  Familiar  social  statistics  support  the  nega¬ 
tive  view.  The  heavy  decline  of  the  death-rate  during  the  last  forty 
years  is  undoubtedly  due  to  improved  sanitary  and  social  conditions, 
but  it  also  indicates  an  improvement  of  general  health,  and  if  there 
were  any  strong  tendency  to  the  deterioration  of  the  stock  at  work, 
we  should  expect  it  to  appear  as  at  least  a  counterpoise.  The  decline 
of  pauperism  from  about  fifty  per  thousand  of  the  population  in  1850 
to  twenty-one  per  thousand  in  the  present  year  is  also  due  to  general 
social  progress ;  but  it  has  gone  on  long  enough  to  be  seriously  coun¬ 
teracted  by  the  growth  of  a  class  of  hereditary  paupers,  supposing 
that  such  a  class  were  in  fact  increasing.  Of  the  diminution  of  crime 
in  proportion  to  the  population — which,  notwithstanding  a  recent 
rise,  marks  the  period  as  a  whole — the  same  may  be  said.  Lastly,  the 
rise  in  real  wages,  which  is  slow  but  general  in  England  and  is  spread 
over  a  century,  tells  the  same  tale.  Wages  have  risen  owing  to  a 
variety  of  social  efforts,  but  the  higher  wage  could  hardly  in  the 
competition  of  the  world’s  market  be  earned  by  a  continuously  de¬ 
teriorating  population  of  workers.  The  only  unfavorable  comparison 


340 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


of  any  weight  that  can  be  instituted  with  the  past  is  in  the  matter 
of  insanity,  and  here  the  interpretation  of  the  figures  is  subject  to 
serious  doubt.  There  is,  says  the  committee,  in  the  report  which  I 
have  quoted,  no  doubt  as  to  the  great  increase  of  insane  persons  under 
treatment,  but  the  question  is,  first,  how  far  these  figures  indicate  true 
increase  of  insanity,  and  secondly,  if  this  is  true,  as  to  the  causes  of 
the  increase.  On  the  first  point  they  rely  chiefly  on  the  evidence  of 
Dr.  Wiglesworth,  who,  they  say,  admitted  that  the  statistical  informa¬ 
tion  was  incomplete,  and  that  the  conclusions  to  be  drawn  from  it 
varied  according  as  it  was  read  and  looked  at,  but  on  the  whole, 
though  he  would  like  to  express  himself  with  reserve,  was  inclined  to 
think  that  the  incidence  was  increasing.  You  see  how  cautiously  the 
opinion  as  to  the  last  fact  is  expressed.  When  we  come  to  the  inter¬ 
pretation,  we  find  Dr.  Wiglesworth  equally  cautious  as  to  the  argu¬ 
ment  that  the  increase  of  lunacy  can  be  taken  as  evidence  of  physical 
deterioration.  So  far  as  England  is  concerned  it  appears  to  be  con¬ 
nected  with  density  of  population,  and  therefore,  if  it  is  real,  to  be 
rather  an  effect  of  the  worst  side  of  the  social  environment — the 
crush  and  the  strain  of  industrial  life — than  of  deterioration  of  stock.1 
Upon  the  whole  we  are  justified  in  the  conclusion  that  whatever  the 
future  has  in  store  the  process  of  deterioration  has  not  begun. 

2.  In  the  absence  of  inductive  evidence  of  race  deterioration,  we 
may  usefully  go  on  to  inquire  whether  there  is  any  reason  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  why  the  suspension  of  natural  selection  within 
the  limits  up  to  which  such  suspension  is  possible  should  lower  the 
racial  standard.  To  many  biologists  the  question  refutes  itself.  The 
race  is  forever  varying,  but  its  variations  for  the  worse  are  nipped  in 
the  bud.  Once  allow  them  to  grow  and  they  must  infect  the  sounder 
stocks.  At  a  minimum  they  must  lower  the  racial  average,  and  this 
process  of  deterioration  will  go  on  indefinitely.  It  is  by  means  of  the 
selection  of  small  variations  for  the  better  that  the  racial  standard 
is  improved  and  that  new  varieties  and  new  species  are  formed. 
Similarly,  by  the  indefinitely  continued  propagation  of  variations  for 
the  worse,  the  whole  standard  of  a  race  will  be  lowered.  This  large 
way  of  looking  at  the  facts,  however,  implies  a  biological  theory 

1  There  is  in  fact  more  evidence  of  the  increase  of  lunacy  in  Ireland,  which  has 
for  historical  reasons  failed  in  large  measure  to  share  in  such  social  progress  as 
the  larger  island  has  achieved. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


34i 


which  is  by  no  means  universally  accepted.  How  far  a  race  is  actually 
capable  of  being  modified  by  the  accumulation  of  small  variations  has 
become  in  recent  years  a  matter  of  acute  controversy,  and  it  seems 
to  be  the  better  opinion  that  a  distinction  must  be  drawn  between  the 
less  important  variations  known  as  fluctuations  and  the  more  deep- 
seated  changes  to  which  the  name  of  mutations  has  been  given.  It  is 
probable  that  in  the  case  of  smaller  fluctuations  there  is  a  constant 
tendency  to  return  to  the  mean  or  standard  of  the  race,  and  if  we 
can  imagine  a  race  wholly  immune  from  natural  selection  and  not 
striking  out  any  new  line  by  a  definite  mutation,  the  mean  standard 
of  the  racial  type  would  be  roughly  maintained  for  an  indefinite  period. 
But  be  that  as  it  may,  we  have  to  point  out  once  more  that  the  view 
taken  of  the  effect  of  natural  selection  is  one-sided,  for  once  again  it  is 
assumed  that  it  is  only  the  unfit  who  are  eliminated.  Now  if  once  for 
all  we  get  rid  of  the  phrase  " selection  of  the  fit”  and  substitute  for  it 
"elimination  of  the  unsuccessful,”  which  is  what  is  really  meant,  we 
shall  see  the  facts  in  a  different  light.  In  a  race  subject  to  a  severe 
struggle  for  existence,  the  types  which  are  unsuccessful  under  the 
prevailing  conditions  will  constantly  be  eliminated ;  but  it  is  possible 
and  more  than  possible  that  these  types  should  include  among  them 
the  most  valuable  stocks  for  the  purposes  of  society.  Where  the 
conditions  of  life  are  hard,  where  there  is  little  regard  for  justice  and 
mercy,  and  in  a  word  for  all  the  higher  ethical  qualities,  those  who 
possess  these  qualities  have  less  chance  of  prospering  and  leaving  de¬ 
scendants  behind  them.  In  point  of  fact  in  earlier  forms  of  human 
society  there  is  good  reason  to  think  that  social  progress  was  seriously 
interfered  with  by  the  actual  elimination  of  the  best  types.  From  this 
point  of  view  political  and  civil  liberty,  social  and  economic  justice, 
are  the  most  eugenic  of  agencies.  Much  is  said  by  Eugenists  of  the 
decay  of  nations  in  the  past  by  the  failure  of  the  best  types  to  per¬ 
petuate  themselves.  I  know  of  no  case,  not  even  that  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  in  which  this  suggestion  is  susceptible  of  any  clear  historical 
proof,  for  the  lamentations  over  the  decay  of  the  Roman  population 
date  from  the  first  century  before  Christ,  a  period  which  history  has 
shown  to  have  been,  not  one  of  retrogression,  but  of  progress, — a 
progress  which  was  well  maintained  for  two  centuries  after  the  time 
when  these  jeremiads  had  become  familiar.  It  is  also  forgotten  by 
those  who  make  use  of  the  half-told  tale  of  Roman  decadence  that, 


342 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


as  the  Roman  Empire  consolidated  itself,  it  drew  for  its  support,  not 
on  the  old  aristocracy  of  Rome,  but  on  the  newer  population  of  the 
Mediterranean  basin,  and  that  this  population  was  decadent  or  was 
seriously  affected  by  the  relatively  fast  multiplication  of  inferior  stocks 
is  a  suggestion  for  which  I  have  never  seen  any  evidence.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  look  at  the  artificial  elimination  of  the  best  stocks 
by  political  and  religious  despotism,  we  get  much  more  definite  evi¬ 
dence  of  national  deterioration.  Take,  for  example,  the  case  of  Spain 
in  the  sixteenth  century.  We  need  not  assume  that  the  Protestant  re¬ 
formers  were  man  for  man  better  than  the  old  believers ;  but  we  may 
fairly  suppose  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  more  independent  minds 
and  more  active  thinkers  would  be  attracted  by  the  new  creed,  and 
when  we  find  that  these  were  eliminated  by  the  process  of  auto  da  fe 
to  the  number  of  tens  of  thousands,  we  can  well  understand  that  in 
Spain  the  selection  effected  by  political  circumstances  may  have  been 
such  as  to  denude  the  country  of  an  undue  proportion  of  its  most 
vigorous  stocks.  Speaking  broadly,  if  the  more  social  qualities  are  to 
have  their  chance,  it  is  on  political  and  social  institutions  that  that 
chance  must  depend.  Freedom  of  thought  and  action,  freedom  of 
choice  by  women,  the  repression  of  violence  and  fraud,  these  are  all 
eugenic  agencies  which  tend  to  diminish  the  contrast  between  the 
successful  and  the  fit.  So  regarded,  the  improvement  of  social  condi¬ 
tions  is  seen  to  tell  both  ways  in  its  effect  on  the  stock.  If  it  admits 
of  variations  for  the  bad,  it  also  allows  for  variations  for  the  good. 
So  far  the  two  tendencies  cancel  one  another.  But  we  may  go  a  step 
farther.  The  actual  progress  of  humanity  depends  far  more  on  the 
survival  of  the  best  than  on  the  elimination  of  the  worst ;  provided 
that  the  highest  types  can  always  have  breathing  space,  we  may  be 
assured  that  social,  as  distinct  from  racial,  progress  will  continue. 
Eugenically  considered  then,  the  broad  duty  of  society  is  so  to  arrange 
its  institutions  that  success  is  to  the  socially  fit,  and  this  is  only  pos¬ 
sible  in  proportion  as  the  social  order  is  based  on  principles  of  a  just 
and  equitable  organization. 

3.  In  this  account  of  the  matter  I  have  assumed,  in  accordance 
with  the  preponderance  of  biological  opinion,  that  environment  as 
such  has  no  direct  effect  upon  the  development  of  the  stock.  This  is 
a  point  on  which  some  schools  of  biologists  speak  with  an  assurance 
which  almost  amounts  to  dogmatism,  and  they  employ  this  principle 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


343 


as  an  argument  to  prove  the  futility  of  contemporary  efforts  at  social 
improvement.  In  so  doing  it  may  be  remarked  in  passing  that  very 
frequently  they  fail  to  draw  the  necessary  distinction  between  racial 
and  social  progress.  Thus  in  one  of  the  Eugenics  Laboratory  Lec¬ 
tures1  we  read:  " Practically  all  social  legislation  has  been  based  on 
the  assumption  that  better  environment  meant  race  progress.” 

I  beg  leave  to  doubt  whether  for  the  most  part  persons  interested 
in  social  legislation  have  given  any  profound  consideration  to  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  race  progress.  What  they  have  been  concerned  with  is  social 
progress,  that  is  to  say,  they  have  aimed  at  improving  the  actual  life  of 
the  people  and  the  building  up  of  a  better  social  structure,  and  I  may 
add  that  the  biological  terms  of  race  and  environment,  nature  and  nur¬ 
ture,  are  not  categories  to  satisfy  sociologists.  They  do  not  exhaust  the 
field.  From  one  point  of  view,  no  doubt,  social  institutions  may  be  re¬ 
garded  as  an  environment  within  which  the  individual  is  formed  and  to 
which  he  has  to  accommodate  himself.  But  the  actual  effect  of  social 
institutions  upon  life  is  not  to  be  understood  in  biological  terms.  The 
relation,  as  Professor  Henry  Jones  has  well  pointed  out,  between  the 
individual  and  society  is  far  more  intimate.  It  is  much  more  like 
an  organic  union.  One  and  the  same  set  of  qualities  will  take  a  to¬ 
tally  different  expression  according  as  the  social  environment  differs. 
The  very  same  motives,  the  same  original  characteristics,  which  will 
in  the  one  set  of  circumstances  lead  a  man  to  unsocial  practices, 
will,  if  suitably  directed,  render  him  an  efficient  and  useful  citizen. 
The  same  motives  of  pride  and  self-assertion  which  in  a  land  where 
the  blood  feud  reigns  would  lead  a  man  to  decorate  his  home  with  the 
skulls  of  his  enemies  and  their  wives  and  children,  will  in  a  civilized 
society  urge  him  on  to  commercial  or  professional  success,  and  will 
compel  him  to  serve  society  for  the  gratification  of  his  own  ambition. 
The  necessity  of  earning  a  living  will  impel  a  man  to  robbery  and 
fraud  or  to  honest  and  useful  labor  in  accordance  with  the  oppor¬ 
tunities  which  the  social  system  holds  out  to  him.  The  driving  power 
which  under  unrestrained  competition  will  make  a  man  a  hard  master 
may  under  suitable  social  control  be  directed  to  the  equally  efficient 
and  humane  conduct  of  business.  It  is  not  human  quality,  whether 
original  or  acquired,  that  differs  profoundly  from  period  to  period. 
It  is  the  turn  given  to  human  quality  by  the  social  structure.  As  with 

1'<The  Relative  Strength  of  Nurture  and  Nature,”  by  Ethel  M.  Elderton. 


344 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


the  self-regarding,  so  with  the  more  generous  impulses.  The  unrea¬ 
soned  philanthropy  of  an  earlier  time  might  do  harm  by  indiscrimi¬ 
nate  giving ;  when  it  finds  rational  channels  for  its  activity  it  will 
prompt  a  man  to  throw  in  his  weight  with  the  best  civic  movements 
of  the  day.  Nor,  again,  is  the  effect  of  social  institutions  to  be  meas¬ 
ured  by  modifications  in  the  qualities  of  individuals  as  that  expression 
would  be  generally  understood.  Take,  for  example,  the  effect  of 
education.  It  is  certainly  desirable  that  education  should  develop 
the  intelligence,  but  how  much  net  addition  is  made  to  intellectual 
capacity  by  educational  processes  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  measure. 
Acquired  knowledge  or  skill,  on  the  other  hand,  are  tangible  achieve¬ 
ments  in  which  the  response  of  the  individual  on  the  one  side  and  the 
teaching  provided  on  the  other  are  two  inseparable  conditions.  It  is 
acquirement  or  achievement,  e.g.  knowledge,  skill,  discipline,  that 
training  confers,  and  the  modifications  thus  effected  in  a  man’s  life 
and  his  functions  as  a  member  of  society  are  so  great  as  to  amount  in 
many  cases  to  a  change  of  kind  rather  than  of  degree.  The  distinction 
is  ignored  by  certain  writers  of  the  eugenic  school,  who  seek  to  depre¬ 
ciate  the  effect  of  nurture  as  compared  with  nature,  even  in  its  bearing 
on  the  individual. 

A  recent  number  of  the  Review 1  is  wholly  dedicated  to  the  criticism 
of  the  Poor  Law  Reports  from  the  eugenic  point  of  view,  and  though 
this  is  upon  the  whole  far  more  discriminating,  and  the  crudities  above 
quoted  are  by  implication  rejected  as  the  ignorant  prejudices  of  out¬ 
siders,  yet  the  line  of  criticism  taken  illustrates,  to  say  the  least,  a 
tendency  which  has  to  be  very  carefully  watched.  Both  branches  of 
the  commission,  we  are  told  (p.  172),  started  with  the  assumption  that 
the  pauper  was  a  normal  person  made  necessitous  by  circumstances. 
Such  round  generalization  will  surprise  any  one  who  has  carefully 
studied  the  two  reports.  The  majority  report,  in  particular,  is  the 
work  of  persons  who  are  well  known  to  have  carried  their  emphasis  on 
character  almost  to  what  seemed  to  some  of  their  critics  to  be  the 
breaking  point ;  and,  broadly  speaking,  having  studied  the  two  reports 
with  care,  I  may  say  roundly  that  in  both,  though  in  different  ways, 
the  aim  is  precisely  not  to  overlook  individual  character,  but  to  achieve 
a  just  demarcation  of  the  legitimate  spheres  of  social  and  individual 
responsibility.  Take,  for  example,  the  treatment  of  unemployment. 

1  Eugenics  Review ,  November,  1910. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


345 


It  is  perfectly  true  that  some  of  those  who  are  in  this  condition  suffer 
from  defect  of  their  own,  whether  congenital  or  acquired,  but  no  one 
looking  at  the  question  as  a  whole,  no  one  even  acquainted  with  the 
elementary  figures  published  month  by  month  in  the  English  Labor 
Gazette ,  can  overlook  the  part  played  by  social  changes  for  which 
the  individual  is  not  responsible.  Now,  what  is  the  recommendation 
of  the  commissioners?  In  both  cases  alike,  though  with  differences 
of  detail,  the  object  is  to  save  from  hardship  the  man  who  is  suffering 
from  social  changes  which  he  cannot  control,  and  thereby  to  make 
it  possible  for  the  first  time  to  deal,  with  due  disciplinary  rigor,  with 
him  whose  idleness  is  voluntary,  and  to  apply  curative  and  reforma¬ 
tory  measures  to  those  whose  misfortunes  are  due  to  incapacity.  The 
thesis  of  the  minority  report,  in  particular,  is  that  the  wastrel  cannot 
be  dealt  with  satisfactorily  until  he  is  parted,  by  a  clear  line  of 
demarcation,  from  the  man  whose  troubles  are  due  to  circumstance, 
and  from  the  eugenic  point  of  view  what  better  beginning  could  be 
made?  If  we  are  to  discover  whether  wastrels  are  men  of  degenerate 
stock,  and  if  we  are  ultimately  to  take  measures  to  prevent  the  de¬ 
generate  stock  from  breeding,  there  is  one  preliminary  condition  that 
we  must  realize ;  we  must  first  know  that  the  stocks  that  we  are  dealing 
with  are  in  reality  hopeless,  and  for  this  purpose  we  must  first  have  our 
social  conditions  so  adjusted  that  all  men  who  are  in  reality  capable  of 
adapting  themselves  to  a  well-ordered  social  organization  shall  have 
the  opportunity  of  proving  what  is  in  them.  The  social  environment 
must  be  established  upon  ethical  lines  before  we  can  say  that  the 
successful  are  the  fit,  or  that  the  unsuccessful  deserve  elimination. 

In  support  of  its  opinion  that  pauperism  is  in  the  main  a  hereditary 
taint,  the  Eugenics  Review  proceeds  in  all  solemnity  to  narrate  the 
lamentable  history  of  a  number  of  pauper  families,  as  though  heredi-  * 
tary  pauperism  were  a  new  phenomenon  or  one  of  which  Poor  Law 
administrators  had  not  long  since  learned  to  take  account.  We  know 
there  are  hereditary  paupers,  but  to  begin  with  we  have  to  ask  what 
is  the  nature  of  the  heredity,  and  I  find  no  attempt  to  make  this 
discrimination  in  the  pages  of  the  Review }  A  is  a  pauper,  and  his 
children,  B,  C,  and  D,  are  paupers,  and  D  marries  another  pauper, 

1See  ibid.  p.  187,  where  the  fact  that  successive  generations  of  the  same 
family  contain  an  undue  proportion  of  paupers  is  made  to  point  to  the  conclusion 
that  pauperism  is  due  to  inherent  defects  which  are  hereditarily  transmitted! 


346 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


and  of  their  children  again  three  out  of  four  are  paupers.  No  doubt. 
But  the  Eugenist  seems  to  forget  that  all  classes  are  in  the  main 
hereditary.  The  average  individual  is  he  who  neither  rises  much 
above  nor  sinks  below  the  position  in  which  he  is  born ;  and  as  an 
individual  of  average  endowments  born  in  the  landlord  or  the  profes¬ 
sional  or  the  artisan  class  will  become  a  landlord,  professional  man, 
or  an  artisan ;  so  the  individual  of  average  endowments  born  in 
pauperism  may  be  expected  to  remain  in  the  confines  of  pauperism. 
If  we  would  know  generally  how  much  of  the  heritage  of  pauperism 
is  due  to  the  conditions  under  which  tfee  children  make  their  start 
in  life,  and  how  much  to  hereditary  taint,  there  is  one  method  of 
determination.  It  is  that  of  securing  equal  opportunity  to  the  least 
and  to  the  most  fortunate,  and  to  secure  this  equal  opportunity  is  a 
problem  of  reorganizing  institutions.  Against  any  such  reorganiza¬ 
tion,  proceeding  open-eyed  with  a  clear  view  of  individual  differences, 
the  eugenic  criticism  is  wholly  beside  the  mark. 

The  whole  of  the  argument  admits  of  being  summed  up  in  a  few 
sentences.  So  far  as  the  eugenic  principle  advocates  the  substitution 
of  rational  for  natural  selection,  it  is,  in  the  abstract,  upon  firm 
ground.  Where  it  can  be  clearly  established  that  a  stock  is  tainted 
with  a  hereditary  blemish  so  great  as  to  outweigh  its  merits,  it  is 
desirable  that  that  stock  should  not  be  perpetuated.  That  is  already 
recognized  ethically  as  a  duty  and  is  acted  on  by  many  individuals, 
in  cases  where  there  is  such  a  taint  as  that  of  insanity.  There  is  every 
reason  why  our  knowledge  on  these  matters  should  be  carried  further 
and  systematized,  and  it  is  possible  that  in  certain  cases  it  may  be 
found  desirable  to  crystallize  ethical  sentiment  in  positive  law ;  for 
example,  in  the  case  of  such  a  class  as  the  feeble-minded,  where 
•  permanent  care  is  desirable  for  the  benefit  of  the  individual,  it  may 
be  right  that,  as  a  condition  of  such  care,  restriction  from  marriage 
should  be  insisted  on  by  society  in  the  future  interest  of  the  race. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  use  of  eugenic  arguments  against  legislation 
designed  to  replace  the  struggle  for  existence  by  ordered  social  co¬ 
operation  is  at  bottom  a  misapplication  of  the  principle.  It  rests  on 
the  survival  of  the  older  ideas  of  natural  selection  under  a  new  form, 
in  new  terminology.  The  method  of  social  legislation  should  not  be 
to  accommodate  institutions  to  the  survival  of  the  stronger;  it  should 
be  to  bring  the  social  structure  into  accordance  with  sound  principles 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


347 


of  social  cooperation.  In  such  a  system  those  who  are  fit  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  term,  those,  that  is  to  say,  who  are  capable  of  becoming 
useful  members  of  the  social  organization,  can  find  their  place ;  and  it 
is  only  when  all  such  persons  are  endowed  with  full  opportunities  to 
adapt  themselves  to  social  requirements  that  the  failures  of  society  can 
be  legitimately  regarded  as  the  unfit.  Those  who  so  prove  their  unfit¬ 
ness  are  then  legitimate  objects  for  institutional  tutelage,  and  it  will 
then  for  the  first  time  become  possible  to  enter  into  the  question  of  their 
right  to  propagate  their  like.  That  question  would  then  be  determined 
by  the  light  that  our  knowledge  of  heredity  could  throw  upon  the 
future  of  their  descendants.  These  views  do  not  appear  to  me  to  be 
out  of  accord  with  the  sounder  teaching  of  the  more  cautious  biologists. 
They  conflict  only  with  those  enthusiasts  who  make  rash  applications 
based  on  confusion  of  the  new  teaching  with  the  old.  To  illustrate  this 
contrast  I  cannot  do  better  than  set  side  by  side  the  sociological  appli¬ 
cations  which  Professor  Bateson  would  make  of  Mendelian  principles 
with  the  deductions  drawn  from  his  remarks  by  an  enthusiastic  reviewer 
in  the  pages  of  the  Eugenics  Review.  Let  us  hear  first  the  reviewer, 
Mr.  G.  P.  Mudge,  in  the  Eugenics  Review  for  July,  1909,  p.  137 : 

With  regard  to  man,  it  is  now  clear  that  what  social  reform,  legislation, 
and  philanthropy  have  failed  to  accomplish,  can  be  achieved  by  biology. 
Tell  the  student  of  genetics  what  type  of  nation  we  desire,  within  the  limits 
of  the  characters  which  the  nation  already  possesses,  and  confer  upon  him 
adequate  powers,  and  he  will  evolve  it.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that,  if  he 
were  instructed  to  evolve  a  "fit”  nation,  i.e.  one  of  self-reliant  and  self-sup¬ 
porting  individuals,  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations  there  would  be  neither 
workhouses,  hospitals,  unemployables,  congenital  criminals,  or  drunkards. 

Students  of  eugenics  will  turn  with  interest  to  the  concluding  pages  of 
Professor  Bateson’s  book;  there  he  deals  with  the  sociological  application 
of  the  science  of  genetics.  We  commend  every  advocate  of  social  panaceas 
and  of  legislative  interference  with  natural  processes  to  read  this  part  of  the 
book.  In  a  few  well-chosen  sentences  he  gives  expression  to  the  judgment 
of  every  biologist,  alike  of  the  present  and  the  past,  who  has  given  to  social 
problems  adequate  and  unbiassed  thought.  For  nothing  is  more  evident  to 
the  naturalist  than  that  we  cannot  convert  inherent  vice  into  innate  virtue, 
nor  change  "leaden  instincts  into  golden  conduct,”  nor  "transform  a  sow’s 
ear  into  a  silken  purse”  by  any  known  social  process.  Our  vast  and  costly 
schemes  of  free,  compulsory,  elementary  education,  of  County  Council  schol¬ 
arships  and  evening  classes,  which  are  among  these  social  processes  supposed 
(0  possess  the  magic  virtue  of  transforming  the  world  into  a  fairyland,  may 


348 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


be  a  delusion  and  a  danger.  And  so,  too,  may  be  all  the  other  well-inten¬ 
tioned  but  costly  panaceas  that  harass  and  tax  and  eventually  destroy  the 
fit  in  order  to  attempt,  for  they  can  never  achieve,  the  salvation  of  the  unfit. 

Let  us  turn  from  these  sweeping  condemnations,  these  triumphant 
prophecies,  these  large  assertions  of  the  powers  of  the  biologist,  to 
Professor  Bateson’s  own  words,  the  very  words  to  which  we  are  re¬ 
ferred  in  justification  of  Mr.  Mudge’s  statement.  They  are,  unfortu¬ 
nately,  too  long  to  quote  as  a  whole,  but  I  will  take  the  leading  points. 

To  the  naturalist  it  is  evident  that,  while  the  elimination  of  the  hopelessly 
unfit  is  a  reasonable  and  prudent  policy  for  society  to  adopt,  any  attempt 
to  distinguish  certain  strains  as  superior  and  to  give  special  encouragement 
to  them  would  probably  fail  to  accomplish  the  object  proposed  and  most 
certainly  be  unsafe. 

Contrast  this  with  the  proclamation,  "Tell  the  student  of  genetics 
what  type  of  nation  we  require  ...  he  will  evolve  it.”  Let  us  turn 
back  again  to  Professor  Bateson : 

Some  serious  physical  and  mental  defects,  almost  certainly  also  some 
morbid  diatheses  and  some  of  the  forms  of  vice  and  criminality,  could  be 
eradicated  if  society  so  determined.  That,  however,  is  the  utmost  length  to 
which  the  authority  of  physiological  science  can,  in  the  present  state  of 
knowledge,  be  claimed  for  interference.  More  extensive  schemes  are  al¬ 
ready  being  advocated  by  writers  who  are  neither  Utopians  nor  visionaries. 
Their  proposals  are  directed  in  the  belief  that  society  is  more  likely  to 
accept  a  positive  plan  for  the  encouragement  of  the  fit  than  negative  inter¬ 
ference  for  the  restraint  of  the  unfit.  Genetic  science,  as  I  have  said,  gives 
no  clear  sanction  to  these  proposals.  It  may  also  be  doubted  whether  the 
guiding  estimate  of  popular  sentiment  is  well  founded.  Society  has  never 
shown  itself  averse  to  adopt  measures  of  the  most  stringent  and  even  brutal 
kind  for  the  control  of  those  whom  it  regards  as  its  enemies. 

Genetic  knowledge  must  certainly  lead  to  new  conceptions  of  justice,  and 
it  is  by  no  means  impossible  that,  in  the  light  of  such  knowledge,  public  opin¬ 
ion  will  welcome  measures  likely  to  do  more  for  the  extinction  of  the  criminal 
and  degenerate  than  has  been  accomplished  by  ages  of  penal  enactment. 

With  so  cautious  and  reasoned  a  statement  social  philosophy  can 
in  principle  have  no  ground  of  quarrel.  It  can  only  desire  that  the 
data  may  be  as  fully  as  possible  ascertained  and,  in  proportion  as 
civic  effort  succeeds  in  reorganizing  the  social  structure  on  the  basis 
of  justice  and  equity,  it  will  be  prepared  to  deal  with  the  strains,  if 
they  exist,  with  which  a  life  in  accordance  with  equity  is  incompatible. 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


349 


44.  Social  Ideals:  Eugenics,  Eutechnics,  Eutopias1 

When  we  consider  the  social  sphere,  the  part  of  the  Kingdom  which 
is  most  distinctively  Man’s  own,  we  have  cause  to  be  at  once  proud 
and  ashamed.  There  is  magnificence  cheek  by  jowl  with  misery,  and 
the  sublime  is  jostled  by  the  sordid.  What  literature,  what  art,  what 
science !  i\nd  yet,  what  trash,  what  ugliness,  what  ignorance !  At 
times  it  seems  as  if  Man  as  organism  lagged  behind  the  externally 
enregistered  gains  of  evolution,  as  if  the  citizen  were  not  worthy  of 
the  city.  At  other  times  it  seems  as  if  Man  handicapped  himself  with 
external  impediments,  as  if  the  machinery  he  fashioned  became  too 
strong  for  him,  as  if  the  slum  got  the  better  of  the  citizen.  Yet  those 
are  wisest  who  keep  brave  hearts.  "What  is  Man?”  said  the  chap¬ 
lain,  quoting  the  Psalmist  to  Richard  Yea-and-Nay.  "What  is  Man 
not? ”  thundered  back  the  King.  And  that  is  the  right  spirit. 

The  three  great  objective  ideals  of  mankind  are :  Eugenics,  the 
improvement  of  the  human  breed ;  Eutechnics,  the  improvement  of 
occupations  and  activities;  and  Eutopias,  the  improvement  of  sur¬ 
roundings.  These  correspond  to  the  three  facts — Folk,  Work,  Place; 
Organism,  Function,  Environment;  Le  Play’s  Famille,  Travail,  Lieu. 

Eugenics  was  defined  by  Sir  Francis  Galton  as  "the  study  of 
agencies  under  social  control  that  may  improve  or  impair  the  racial 
qualities  of  future  generations,  either  physically  or  mentally.”  It  is 
often  spoken  with  an  indulgent  smile,  as  if  it  was  an  amiable  weakness 
to  be  interested  in  an  ideal  which  yielded  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  is 
an  ancient  art  in  China.  There  is  no  difficulty  in  vindicating  the 
ideal ;  the  difficulty  is  in  regard  to  practicable  Eugenics.  We  cannot 
here  do  more  than  make  a  few  suggestions : 

1.  While  men  and  women  cannot  select  their  parents,  they  do  to 
some  extent  select  their  partners  in  life,  and  in  this  subtle  process  it  is 
possible  that  an  enthusiasm  for  health  in  the  widest  and  highest  sense 
may  have  an  influence  in  a  eugenic  direction. 

2.  If  men  and  women  who  are  handicapped  by  serious  constitutional 
unsoundness  permit  themselves  to  marry,  they  should  not  permit 
themselves  to  be  parents.  No  one  can  contemplate  without  grave  regret 
the  spoiling  of  more  or  less  good  stock  by  the  introduction  of  defects 
like  deaf-mutism,  or  predispositions  to  well-defined  mental  instability, 

^rom  The  Control  of  Life  (pp.  257-264),  by  J.  Arthur  Thomson. 


350 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


or  to  certain  forms  of  diabetes  and  epilepsy.  But  it  is  a  little  suspi¬ 
cious  that  it  is  always  the  other  fellow,  not  oneself,  that  one  thinks  of 
as  not  a  good  parent !  Professor  G.  H.  Parker  expresses  the  whole¬ 
some  dread  that  people  have  of  inquisitions — scientific  or  otherwise. 

My  neighbours  are  charitably  inclined,  but  some  of  them,  I  am  sure, 
would  give  what  seemed  to  them  good  reasons  for  not  having  my  particular 
personality  repeated  in  the  future,  and  yet,  with  all  due  respect  to  the  wel¬ 
fare  of  society,  I  confess  to  a  slight  measure  of  feeling  that  I  be  allowed 
some  individual  freedom  in  this  matter. 

If  there  is  to  be  a  marriage  inquisition,  one  would  like  to  stipulate 
for  a  peripatetic,  non-local  tribunal,  on  which  the  family  physician 
might  be  an  assessor,  and  for  a  court  of  appeal  at  least. 

3.  For  natural  selection  from  which  man  struggles  away  there  is 
need  to  substitute  rational  and  social  selection.  But  it  does  not  follow 
that  all  the  modes  of  this  deliberate  selection  are  for  the  good  of 
society  or  the  race,  or  are  wholly  in  that  direction.  It  is  often  sug¬ 
gested  that  obviously  undesirable  types  who  have  fallen  back  upon 
the  community  for  support  should  be  prevented  from  reproducing  their 
kind.  But  limits  to  repression  and  segregation  will  be  found  in  the 
prevailing  social  sentiments  of  freedom  and  solidarity,  and  it  has  to  be 
borne  in  mind  that  in  some  measure  society  may  be  itself  responsible 
for  the  making  of  the  failures  alluded  to,  so  that  we  are  bound  to  do 
something  to  prevent  their  production  as  well  as  their  reproduction ! 

4.  It  is  often  suggested  that  there  should  be  some  deliberate  return 
to  "the  purgation  of  the  State’7  which  Sparta  to  some  extent  prac¬ 
tised  and  Plato  approved.  It  has  been  recommended  that  weakly  in¬ 
fants,  whose  life  must  be  more  or  less  miserable,  should  be  allowed 
to  pass  away  in  their  sleep.  This  may  be  justifiable  in  certain  very 
clear  cases,  but  it  is  open  to  serious  objections:  (1)  that  many 
weaklings  have  been  the  makers  and  shakers  of  the  world,  (2)  that 
the  Spartan  proposals  outrun  our  present  secure  knowledge,  (3)  that 
their  operation  would  remove  the  results  of  evil  without  touching  the 
causes,  and  (4)  that  we  cannot  go  far  in  social  surgery  without  out¬ 
raging  social  sentiment  in  its  finest  expressions  and  shaking  the 
foundations  of  our  modern  system. 

5.  Given  an  understanding  of  natural  inheritance  and  the  influence  of 
nurture,  given  a  pride  of  race  and  a  pride  in  having  a  vigorous  family, 
given  an  enthusiasm  for  health,  many  morepositive  methodsof "  improv- 


SOCIAL  CONTROL  OF  HEREDITY 


35i 


ing  the  breed”  will  occur.  A  community  which  realises  the  racial  value 
of  fine  types,  of  men,  let  us  say,  with  high  artistic  gifts  and  vigorous  phy¬ 
sique,  will  in  its  criticised  expenditure  tend  to  secure  their  continuance.- 
The  applications  of  this  economic  idea  of  "the  criticism  of  consump¬ 
tion”  are  endless  and  far-reaching.  All  expenditure  which  promotes 
unhealthy  rather  than  healthy  occupations,  which  helps  to  multiply  un¬ 
desirable  types,  which  makes  for  sweated  labour  and  slums  rather  than 
for  well-paid  work  and  gardens,  is  necessarily  dysgenic  and  not  eugenic. 

6.  There  is  hopefulness  also  in  a  practical  criticism  of  those  proc¬ 
esses  which  at  present  thin  the  ranks  of  mankind  to  little  or  no  purpose. 
Thus,  it  is  certain  that  many  microbic  diseases  are  not  discrimina- 
tively  selective,  but  effect  only  a  wasteful  thinning  of  the  population. 

7.  Much  betterment  may  be  looked  for  from  a  patient  persistence  in 
education — if  only  that  could  be  readjusted  to  modern  conditions  and 
informed  with  sound  psychology.  Apart  from  mere  discipline,  it  may 
be  said  that  there  are  three  main  "subjects ”  in  education :  ( 1 )  the  his¬ 
tory  of  our  race,  (2)  the  world  in  which  we  live,  and  (3)  the  conditions 
of  health,  happiness,  and  effective  work.  Even  an  optimist  must  find  it 
hard  to  maintain  that  our  present-day  methods  of  education  are  grip¬ 
ping  in  any  one  of  these  three  fundamental  subjects.  When  improved 
methods  begin  to  grip,  eugenics  will  become  a  dominant  social  ideal. 

As  to  Eutechnics,  there  is  a  growing  sense  of  the  fact  that  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  maximum  production  it  does  not  pay  to 
treat  workers  as  if  they  were  mere  machines,  and  much  of  the  disgrace 
of  the  occupational  conditions  of  the  Victorian  period  has  been  wiped 
out.  As  to  Eutopias,  much  has  been  done  in  the  way  of  removing 
utterly  inhuman  surroundings,  but  there  is  little  reduction  in  the 
supply  of  materials  for  a  disgraceful  scrap-heap ;  and  compared  with, 
say,  Japan  of  yesterday,  English-speaking  peoples  do  little  towards 
securing  what  is  positively  beautiful. 

A  good  sign  is  the  spread  of  the  conviction  that  there  is  no  one 
line  of  betterment, — that  all  secure  biological  progress  must  be  along 
three  lines,  and  must  be  supplemented  by  progress  in  social  organisa¬ 
tion  and  in- the  kingdom  of  the  Spirit.  Vigour  is  a  eugenic  ideal,  but  a 
vigorous  serf  is  not  a  human  ideal,  nor  is  vigour  in  a  slum.  A  beau¬ 
tiful  countryside  or  a  beautiful  city  is  a  eutopian  ideal,  but  it  is  not  a 
human  ideal  if  the  people  are  dull  and  joyless,  or  if  their  work  is 
unrelieved  toil.  Wholesome  occupation  is  a  eutechnic  ideal,  but  it 


352 


SOCIAL  METHOD 


fails  of  human  completeness  unless  the  workers  have  vigorous  health 
and  pleasant  houses  to  dwell  in.  We  cannot  be  equally  interested  in 
all  three  kinds  of  amelioration,  but  we  have  ceased  to  disparage  our 
neighbour’s  enthusiasm  because  it  is  not  ours. 

Science  as  torch.  We  must  pause  at  this  point  to  re-emphasise  the 
idea  that  the  hopefulness  of  the  modern  vision  of  the  old  ideals  to 
which  we  have  been  referring  lies  in  a  slowly  growing  appreciation  of 
the  value  of  Science  as  torch.  If  Man  is  to  win  his  kingdom,  it  must 
be  in  part  by  putting  more  brains  into  the  campaign.  By  brains  we 
here  mean  primarily  scientific  control — that  is  to  say,  control  based 
on  knowledge — verifiable  and  communicable  knowledge — gained 
from  actual  experience  of  the  things,  the  forces,  the  lives,  or  the  so¬ 
cieties  to  be  controlled.  Science  is  truly  a  crystallised  systematisation 
of  observed  sequences — ("If  this,  then  that”)  like  Newton’s  Prin- 
cipia  ;  but  it  is  more.  It  is  a  living  thing,  like  Philosophy ;  it  is  a  life. 

The  common  phrase  "a  knowledge  of  science”  betrays  a  misunder¬ 
standing.  There  are,  of  course,  fundamental  facts  and  laws  to  be 
mastered,  and  they  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  expert, — the  per¬ 
manent  furniture  of  his  mind ;  but  beyond  a  certain  limit  of  con¬ 
venience  no  wise  man  dreams  of  increasing  this  furniture  except  at  a 
particular  time  for  a  particular  purpose.  The  root  of  the  matter  is  a 
habit  of  mind  which  insists  on  getting  at  the  facts  in  regard  to  any 
particular  problem,  which  knows  the  methods  of  getting  at  the  facts, 
which  has  a  high  standard  of  accuracy,  which  is  disciplined  to  criticise 
inferences  from  facts  and  is  alert  to  detect  clues.  This  type  of  mind 
is  in  its  finest  expression  rare,  but  in  its  serviceable  expression  not 
uncommon,  and  on  its  utilisation  survival  largely  depends. 

No  one  need  suppose  that  we  are  even  for  a  moment  forgetting  that 
social  progress  depends  in  part  on  feelings  of  kinship,  on  generous 
good-will,  and  on  the  sentiment  of  solidarity,  so  characteristic  of  the 
Christian  religion.  We  are  not  for  a  moment  forgetting  the  impetus 
that  may  be  given  to  any  good  cause  by  social  organisations  suf¬ 
ficiently  resolute  ethically  (as  in  regard  to  slavery),  or  sufficiently 
enthusiastic  (as  in  regard  to  pacificism  and  women’s  suffrage),  or 
sufficiently  determined  on  lines  of  self-interest  (as  in  the  case  of 
trade-unions).  But  there  are  many  problems  which  only  Science  can 
solve.  We  need  more  knowledge  and  more  use  of  the  knowledge  we 
have.  Knowledge  is  foresight,  and  foresight  is  power. 


PART  III.  THE  PROBLEM  OF 
DEFECTIVENESS 

CHAPTER  XIII 

MENTAL  TESTS  AND  THE  VARIATIONS  IN  MENTAL 

EQUIPMENT 

45.  The  Nature  of  Mental  Examinations1 

Although  in  general  the  public  has  become  familiar  with  the  fact 
that  mental  examinations  are  made  in  many  cases  where  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  insanity  exists,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  doubt 
in  the  minds  of  many  as  to  the  nature  of  the  methods  and  the  in¬ 
formation  they  may  be  expected  to  yield.  It  may  not,  therefore,  be 
amiss  to  give  briefly  the  outlines  of  this  work. 

Mental  examinations,  as  they  are  now  made,  may  be  divided  into 
two  main  groups:  The  first,  or  psychometric  method,  sometimes 
called  the  psychological  tests,  consists  in  the  application  of  certain 
standardized  sets  of  tests  with  the  object  of  determining  the  native 
mental  ability,  or,  as  it  is  called,  the  " intelligence ”  of  the  subject. 
Various  forms  of  tests  are  now  used,  but  practically  all  of  them  are 
based  upon  the  work  of  the  French  scientist,  Alfred  Binet,  who,  to¬ 
gether  with  his  collaborator,  Theodore  Simon,  published  in  the  years 
1905  to  1908  the  first  scale  for  the  measurement  of  intelligence  in 
children. 

This  scale  is  arranged  in  accordance  with  the  idea  that  as  a  child 
grows  older  and  his  mentality  develops  he  is  able  to  perform  more  and 
more  complicated  acts  and  to  carry  out  more  and  more  complex  intel¬ 
lectual  processes ;  so  that,  if  we  arrange  a  series  of  tests,  questions, 
and  problems  in  the  order  of  their  difficulty  and  present  them  to  a 

‘‘From  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland  (pp.  448-452),  by  Herman  M.  Adler, 
M.A.,  M.D.,  Illinois  State  Criminologist.  Copyright,  1022,  by  the  Cleveland 
Foundation. 


353 


354 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


child,  we  may  be  able  to  infer  his  degree  of  development  by  the  point 
in  such  a  series  beyond  which  he  is  unable  to  answer  questions  satis¬ 
factorily.  The  scale  thus  arranged  by  Binet  has  since  been  tried  out  on 
a  large  number  of  school  children,  and  as  a  result  of  this  experiment  it 
has  been  possible  to  arrange  the  tests  in  groups  of  six  for  each  year. 
Since  publication,  these  tests  have  been  used  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
indicate  thoroughly  the  existing  need  of  such  measurement. 

It  soon  developed  that  there  were  in  the  schools  and  elsewhere  in¬ 
dividuals  who,  on  being  subjected  to  these  tests,  failed  more  or  less 
widely  to  come  up  to  the  grade  corresponding  to  their  actual  age,  and 
since  the  tests  had  originally  been  arranged  for  age  groups,  it  was  said 
that  their  chronological  age  or  actual  age  was,  let  us  say,  twelve 
years,  and  the  mental  age  as  determined  by  the  scale  was,  let  us 
say,  nine  years. 

As  the  tests  have  become  more  definitely  standardized,  and  as  new 
tests  have  been  devised  and  come  into  use,  the  exact  definiteness  with 
which  the  mental  ages  were  stated  ten  years  ago  has  gradually  become 
subject  to  modification.  Thus,  while  in  the  case  of  school  children  of 
twelve  or  less  it  is  reasonably  satisfactory  to  express  their  deviation  or 
subnormality  in  terms  of  years,  it  is  not  so  clear  when  the  method  is 
applied  to  older  persons.  When  applied  to  adolescents,  and  especially 
to  adults,  these  methods  have  frequently  given  rise  to  incredulity  on 
the  part  of  many ;  an  instance  of  such  a  case  is  when  an  individual  of 
twenty-five  years  who  is  guilty  of  a  felony,  and  perhaps  has  a  wife  and 
children,  and  in  other  respects  appears  to  be  mature,  is  said  to  have 
the  mind  of  a  child  of  nine  years  as  determined  by  the  mental  tests. 

The  reason  for  this  apparent  discrepancy  is  the  fact  that  the  original 
Binet  scale  and  its  modifications  and  amplifications  hold  with  con¬ 
siderable  accuracy  for  children  of  twelve  and  less,  because  the  innate 
intelligence  reaches  its  full  development  at  about  the  age  of  puberty. 
This  statement  is  not  true  in  an  absolute  sense,  but  for  present  pur¬ 
poses  is  sufficiently  accurate.  The  development  which  goes  on  after 
tfie  age  of  puberty,  during  the  age  of  adolescence,  and  until  full 
adolescent  maturity  is  reached,  is  a  growth  in  strength,  power,  and 
the  use  of  the  innate  ability  through  acquired  habits  and  experience. 

As  this  is  the  period  during  which  the  greatest  apparent  progress  is 
made,  when  the  change  from  childhood  to  adult  maturity  is  visibly 
going  on,  it  is  difficult  at  first  glance  to  reconcile  this  fact  with  the 


MENTAL  TESTS 


355 


previous  statement  in  regard  to  the  maturing  of  intelligence.  A  child 
of  twelve  or  fourteen  may  have  as  much  intelligence  as  an  individual 
of  twenty-five  or  thirty  years,  and  yet  the  adult  will  far  exceed  the 
child  in  intellectual  performance  and  ability.  This  is  because  the 
older  person  is  able  to  use  his  intelligence  much  more  effectively  be¬ 
cause  his  emotional  control,  equilibrium,  and  judgment  are  much 
greater  than  those  of  a  child.  Less  difficulty  would  undoubtedly  be 
experienced  in  this  regard  had  we  a  measure  of  the  development  which 
takes  place  during  the  adolescent  period  corresponding  to  the  one  we 
now  have  for  the  mental  development  during  childhood. 

The  psychometric  tests,  therefore,  give  us  a  fairly  accurate  state¬ 
ment  of  the  degree  of  intelligence  of  any  individual.  All  inferences 
regarding  the  maturity  of  the  individual  in  other  respects,  namely, 
emotional  control,  forbearance,  responsibility,  honesty,  self-denial, 
respect  for  others,  and  the  other  attributes  of  personality  which  deter¬ 
mine  an  individual’s  place  in  the  social  scale,  can  be  determined  only 
roughly.  We  can  compare  one  individual  with  another  in  regard  to 
his  intelligence  rating  and  can  say  with  considerable  precision  by  how 
much  one  excels  another.  For  the  period  of  adolescent  development, 
no  such  exact  measurement  is  possible,  and  we  have  to  be  content  with 
a  "more  or  less,”  "better  or  worse,”  standardization. 

So  striking  have  been  the  results  achieved  by  means  of  the  Binet- 
Simon  tests  that  in  the  ten  years  since  the  first  publication  this  type  of 
measurement  has  become  firmly  established  in  schools,  courts,  and 
institutions,  in  fact,  wherever  child  welfare  is  concerned. 

Other  scales  have  been  devised  which  furnish  the  information  in  a 
somewhat  different  way,  perhaps  with  greater  precision  than  the 
original  Binet  scale.  Aside  from  the  first  important  modification  of 
the  scale,  the  so-called  Stanford  Revision,  by  Professor  Terman,  of 
Leland  Stanford  University,  there  have  been  developed  a  point 
scale  by  Professor  Yerkes,  and  a  number  of  special  tests,  such  as  those 
of  Dr.  William  Healy,  Dr.  Guy  Fernald,  Professor  Whipple,  and 
many  others. 

The  problem  of  giving  an  intelligence  rating  to  the  soldiers  of  the 
draft  army  during  the  late  war  gave  an  impetus  to  another  form  of 
test  which  has  been  claiming  attention  in  the  schools,  namely,  that  of 
the  so-called  "group  tests.”  This  method,  based  in  general  upon  the 
same  logic  as  the  Binet  tests,  was  so  arranged  that  any  one  who  can 


356 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


read  and  write  may  perform  the  test.  The  method  consists  in  an 
instructor  reading  certain  instructions  to  the  group,  who  are  equipped 
with  pencils  and  test  blanks,  and  who  then  carry  out  the  instructions, 
answering  questions  and  solving  problems  in  accordance  with  printed 
statements,  while  the  instructor  keeps  time.  In  this  way  as  many  as 
a  thousand  men  can  be  examined  simultaneously. 

The  scores  made  on  these  tests,  which  are  now  usually  referred  to 
as  the  army  tests,  are  expressed  in  figures :  the  highest  possible  score, 
for  instance,  was  212.  The  performance  varied  throughout  the  entire 
range  from  o  to  212.  In  order  to  express  the  result  in  a  usable  form 
the  score  is  divided  into  five  groups,  designated  by  the  letters  A  to  E 
as  follows :  A,  very  superior ;  B,  superior ;  C,  average ;  D,  inferior ; 
E,  very  inferior.  It  was  found  that  so  many  men  fell  into  the  C  or 
average  group  that  it  became  necessary  to  divide  this  into  two  more 
groups,  C  plus  and  C  minus,  high  average  and  low  average  respec¬ 
tively.  The  score  necessary  for  a  commission  was  judged,  as  a  rule, 
to  be  either  A  or  B.  The  men  of  E  intelligence  included  the  feeble¬ 
minded,  the  defective,  and,  in  the  main,  men  not  fitted  for  the  army 
because  of  low  mentality. 

In  evaluating  the  mental  status  of  an  individual  who,  for  one  rea¬ 
son  or  another,  is  a  subject  for  examination,  more  than  intelligence 
rating  is  required.  This  further  information  is  obtained  by  means  of 
certain  mental  examinations  which  have  as  their  object  the  determina¬ 
tion  not  so  much  of  the  qualitative  mental  ability  as  of  the  existence 
of  diseased  or  abnormal  functionings  or  reactions.  We  might  visualize 
this  by  saying  that  in  the  intelligence  field  we  are  taking  a  measure, 
just  as  we  might  measure  the  height  of  an  individual,  and  that  the 
differences  are  differences  in  mental  stature.  In  the  second  form  of 
examination,  namely,  the  psychiatric  examination,  we  are  looking  not 
for  differences  in  height,  but  for  pathological  processes  comparable  to 
disease  processes  in  the  field  of  physical  health.  This  type  of  ex¬ 
amination  seeks  to  determine  the  existence  or  absence  of  certain  symp¬ 
toms  of  disease,  and  when  found,  to  evaluate  their  significance  and 
the  severity  of  the  condition.  It  yields  information  upon  which  may 
be  based  such  diagnosis  as  mental  disease  or  the  less  severe  pathologi¬ 
cal  conditions,  sometimes  called  psychopathic  personality. 

The  study  of  the  mentality  of  an  individual  from  the  point  of  view 
of  psychiatry  requires  something  further,  however,  than  merely  testing 


MENTAL  TESTS 


357 


the  mind  or  the  nervous  system.  One  cannot  dissect  the  living  human 
being  and  deal  with  one  portion  only.  One  of  the  characteristics  of  a 
living  organism  is  that  every  part  is  in  relation  with  every  other. 
Nowhere  is  this  more  important  than  in  the  pathology  of  the  mind. 
Of  late  a  great  deal  of  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  influence  on 
mentality  of  certain  factors  which  lie  outside  the  nervous  system. 
The  existence  of  physical  disease  elsewhere  in  the  body,  as,  for  in¬ 
stance,  in  the  delirium  of  fever,  various  intoxications  and  auto¬ 
intoxications,  the  effect  of  digestive  disturbances,  and,  above  all,  the 
more  newly  disclosed  effects  of  various  glands  and  organs,  such  as  the 
thyroid  and  the  sex  glands,  are  examples  of  these  factors.  It  will  be 
clear,  therefore,  that  the  examination  of  mentality  from  this  point  of 
view  cannot  be  conducted  with  the  same  apparent  exactness  as  is  often 
possible  in  the  investigation  of  the  mental  age.  It  must  also  be  clear 
that  this  type  of  investigation  requires  the  application  of  all  the  medi¬ 
cal  knowledge  available  and  must,  therefore,  be  made  by  a  medical 
man  with  special  experience  in  this  field. 

There  is  another  point  which  must  be  understood  in  order  to  appre¬ 
ciate  why  medical,  especially  psychiatric,  knowledge  must  be  applied 
in  addition  to  the  intelligence  rating.  As  we  have  seen  before,  the 
intelligence  test  is  a  matter  of  measuring  mental  stature.  While  these 
methods  must  be  applied  with  the  greatest  care  in  order  to  be  of  any 
value  and,  therefore,  require  the  services  of  a  highly  trained  specialist, 
they  nevertheless  do  not  require  any  medical  or  pathological  knowl¬ 
edge.  In  the  elucidation  of  behavior  difficulties  we  are  confronted 
with  a  problem  which  is  comparable  less  to  an  educational  problem 
than  to  a  problem  of  health.  Even  though  our  object  is  not  to  pin  a 
label  on  the  individual  and  find  him  either  insane  or  feeble-minded, 
nevertheless  we  must  arrive  at  a  diagnosis  of  health  by  exclusion,  for 
in  no  other  way  can  a  diagnosis  be  made.  We  cannot  make  a  diag¬ 
nosis  of  health  or  of  sanity.  We  can  only  make  a  diagnosis  of  "no 
evidence  of  disease  found.”  We  can  positively  identify  only  the 
signs  and  symptoms  of  disease.  In  the  absence  of  such  we  are  justified 
in  assuming  that  a  person  is  healthy.  It  must  be  clear,  therefore, 
that  in  making  this  sort  of  judgment  upon  the  mentality  of  individuals 
and  in  elucidating  the  mental  factors  in  behavior  reactions  a  true 
knowledge  of  mental  pathology  is  necessary  in  order  to  allow  this 
judgment  by  exclusion. 


358 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


The  fact  that  psychiatrists  are  interesting  themselves  more  and 
more  in  the  behavior  problems  of  the  non-insane  should  not  be  inter¬ 
preted  as  an  indication  that  the  psychiatrist  is  endeavoring  to  adjudge 
everybody  insane.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  commonly  held  fallacy 
that  the  psychiatrist  has  no  interest  in  the  problems  of  the  non  insane 
or  mentally  healthy  individual  should  be  also  dispelled. 

46.  Individual  Variations  in  Mental  Equipment1 

In  order  to  deal  intelligently  and  rationally  with  human  beings 
obviously  there  must  be  acquaintance  with  certain  practical  aspects 
of  that  most  important  science  of  human  life,  psychology.  Social  work 
as  it  has  developed  in  the  past  has  been  focused  specifically  on  all  sorts 
of  conditions  and  facts  which  make  up  the  setting  of  its  human  prob¬ 
lems,  while  more  or  less  neglecting  essentials  of  the  qualities  and  possi¬ 
bilities  of  the  human  beings  themselves.  Psychology,  on  the  other 
hand,  until  very  recently  has  been  least  interested  in  the  settings,  the 
external  conditions,  even  as  they  most  vitally  affect  mental  life;  it 
has  dealt  exclusively  with  the  generic  nature  of  mental  life  in  human 
beings,  apart  from  action  in  life,  apart  from  the  interplay  between 
diverse  human  nature  and  a  particular  environment.  This  condition, 
however,  has  somewhat  changed,  and  already  in  the  last  decade  or 
two  there  has  been  accumulated  a  body  of  scientific  psychological 
fact  which  is  available  for  those  who  would  be  effective  students  of 
social  processes.  It  is  clear,  in  particular,  that  the  social  worker 
should  know  much  of  the  psychology  of  individual  differences  and  of 
the  factors  which  are  active  in  making  varieties  of  human  beings  and 
varieties  of  behavior. 

Nowadays  psychological  and  psychiatric  study  of  the  individual  is 
fairly  well  accepted  in  principle,  even  where  no  opportunities  for  such 
study  exist.  There  is,  however,  a  tendency,  far  too  widespread,  to 
accept  the  view  that  adequate  study  can  be  made  by  a  brief,  more  or 
less  formal  examination  and  that  the  giving  of  some  test  or  scale  of 
tests  is  all  that  is  needed  to  answer  all  one’s  queries  or  guide  all  future 
efforts.  The  attitude  of  the  lay  worker,  and  sometimes,  unfortunately, 
of  the  professional  one  as  well,  is  indicated  in  a  questionnaire  sent 

1  From  the  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Social  Work ,  iq2o,  by 
Augusta  F.  Brunner,  Ph.  D.,  Director,  Judge  Baker  Foundation,  Boston. 


MENTAL  TESTS 


359 


out  the  other  day  by  a  national  organization  which  sums  up  the  facts 
desired  on  mentality  as  follows:  "If  the  person  has  been  examined, 
state  if  pronounced  feebleminded  or  insane.  If  not  examined,  give 
your  impressions  of  the  mentality.”  This  point  of  view,  is,  of  course, 
ridiculous.  A  moment’s  common  sense  reflection  will  lead  to  the 
realization  that  mental  life  is  so  complex  and  that  the  practical  issues 
are  so  numerous  that  any  brief  examination  or  any  short  summary 
statement  of  the  mental  equipment  must  necessarily  be  incomplete  and 
must  overlook  points  of  great  significance  for  practical  adjustment. 

A  lesson  that  we  have  been  forced  to  learn  well,  as  we  have  at¬ 
tempted  to  meet  the  practical  social  issues  of  the  cases  presented  to 
us  for  opinion,  is  that  adequate  study  of  the  mental  makeup  or  equip¬ 
ment  must  cover  at  least  five  aspects.  These  we  shall  take  up  and 
briefly  outline,  not  in  the  order  of  their  importance,  for  that  is  hard 
to  determine  and  varies  with  the  individual.  But  since  it  is  most 
commonly  discussed  and  uncritically  asked  for  and  interpreted  by 
the  social  worker  at  present,  we  may  well  begin  with  the  age-level 
rating  of  mentality. 

I.  Age-Level  Tests 

A  testing  by  an  age-level  scale,  such  as  the  Stanford  revision  of  the 
Binet,  perhaps  the  scale  most  widely  used  at  the  present  time,  has 
certain  advantages :  ( i )  it  is  a  method  in  very  common  use  and  hence 
admits  of  ready  comparative  studies;  (2)  it  estimates  so-called  "in¬ 
telligence”  or  "general  ability,”  not  emphasizing  any  one  ability; 
(3)  it  enables  one  to  classify  in  terms  of  mental  age  or  intelligence 
quotient  (the  "I.Q.”).  Thus  Terman,  and  indeed  Binet  and  each  of 
the  revisers  of  the  scale,  has  stated  that  according  to  the  score  ob¬ 
tained  on  the  scale  the  individual  shall  be  diagnosed  as  supernormal, 
normal,  dull-normal,  borderline,  or  feebleminded. 

Although  we  do  not  agree  that  such  a  classification  should  be  based 
on  an  age-level  scale  alone,  and  despite  its  limitations  and  inade¬ 
quacies,  yet  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  such  testing  gives  a  rough 
placing,  a  first  blocking  out  of  some  of  the  problems  that  need  to  be 
corroborated  or  studied  further. 

The  Binet  scale  and  its  revisions  do  not  suffice  alone,  for  a  number 
of  reasons :  ( 1 )  The  results  are  not  always  reliable,  for  they  are  in¬ 
fluenced  by  special  abilities  and  disabilities,  thus  a  good  or  poor  audi- 


360 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


tory  memory  span  raises  or  lowers  the  score  unduly.  (2)  Educational 
and  cultural  opportunities  play  a  large  part  in  success  or  failure  on 
some  of  the  tests.  The  scale  involves  language  very  largely  and  the 
final  score  is  markedly  affected  by  the  chances  one  has  had  to  acquire 
a  certain  vocabulary  and  to  gain  facility  in  understanding  and  use  of 
language.  (3)  Special  abilities  and  disabilities  that  may  be  matters 
of  great  practical  import  are  left  totally  or  largely  unrevealed.  The 
scale  involves  almost  entirely  ability  to  deal  with  ideas  and  gives  no 
hint,  for  example,  of  ability  to  deal  with  things,  as  we  have  long 
insisted,  and  with  persons,  as  Wells  has  pointed  out.  (4)  The  final 
score  may  be  readily  misinterpreted,  especially  by  those  untrained  in 
clinical  psychology;  the  mental  age  or  I.Q.,  given  out  as  the  only 
necessary  statement,  implying  that  from  it  all  facts  about  mental 
equipment  can  be  inferred,  gives  rise  to  numerous  misconceptions. 

Practically,  just  what  does  the  mental  age  or  I.Q.  mean  ?  Suppose, 
for  example,  the  result  shows  that  a  young  woman  of  twenty  has  a 
mental  age  of  twelve  years,  or  an  I.Q.  of  75.  How  shall  one  interpret 
this?  Surely  no  one  believes  that  for  purposes  of  social  treatment 
this  is  any  answer  to  the  practical  questions  that  arise.  Does  anyone 
believe  that  this  young  woman  of  twenty,  with  eight  years  of  world 
experience  since  she  was  chronologically  twelve  years  old,  can  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  in  all  ways  comparable  to,  much  less  exactly  like,  a  child 
of  twelve?  And  yet,  as  if  this  were  true,  there  is  nowadays  a  great 
clamor  by  the  uncritical  for  this  type  of  bare  numerical  statement,  as 
if  all  could  be  told  in  a  word  or  a  couple  of  digits,  not  even  taking  into 
account  that  among  children  of  twelve  years  there  are  vast  differences 
in  makeup  and  potentialities.  Does  the  statement  "I.Q.  75”  mean 
anything  very  helpful  without  many  more  supplementary  data?  We 
have,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  only  a  very  slight  notion  of  the  practical 
correlations,  such  as  social  adjustments,  that  any  ordinary  I.Q. 
indicates. 

Illustrative  cases.  The  foregoing  points  might  be  illustrated  by  numerous 
examples,  each  varying  in  details;  we  may  group  these  under  three  headings: 

1.  Where  the  I.  Q.  is  unreliable  because  too  high.  Here,  for  example,  is 
a  lad  about  eleven  years  old;  the  intelligence  quotient  on  Stanford  scale  is 
1 1 7,  which  grades  him  as  considerably  supernormal.  A  very  wide  range  of 
other  tests  gives  results  greatly  at  variance  with  this;  on  several  he  scores 
at  age,  a  large  number  of  others  grade  him  from  slightly  below  age  to  three 


MENTAL  TESTS 


361 


years  retarded.  On  not  a  single  test  other  than  the  Stanford  is  the  score 
above  age.  In  the  light  of  this  shall  one  still  call  him  supernormal  ?  How 
shall  we  interpret  his  high  I.Q.  ?  Analysis  of  the  separate  results  of  the 
scale  shows  that  the  score  is  influenced  by  remarkable  auditory  powers  which 
enable  him  to  receive  credit  for  successes  at  twelve,  fourteen,  and  eighteen 
years.  A  highly  specialized  ability  thus  distorts  the  picture  which  the  final 
score  gives.  If  we  used  age-level  tests  alone  and  made  inferences  from  only 
those,  our  social  treatment  in  this  case  would  in  all  likelihood  be  a  failure. 

2.  Where  the  I.Q .  is  unreliable  because  too  low.  An  instance  of  this  kind 
is  the  case  of  a  boy  of  fourteen  and  a  half  whose  I.Q.  80,  would  classify 
him  as  being  subnormal,  or  dull-normal.  But  on  many  tests,  arithmetic, 
motor  control,  visualizing  powers,  apperceptions,  and  particularly  in  work¬ 
ing  with  concrete  material  he  made  good  records.  On  some  of  these  his 
performance  was  far  above  the  normal  for  his  age  or  school  grade.  His 
particular  disability  was  concerned  with  language;  although  born  in  this 
country  and  going  to  public  school,  he  had  much  difficulty  with  both  the 
use  and  comprehension  of  language.  In  the  light  of  all  the  tests  that  he  did 
so  ^ell,  many  of  them  being  of  much  social  importance,  we  were  convinced 
that  his  proper  classification  should  be  normal,  of  at  least  fair  ability. 

3.  Where  the  I.Q.  does  not  reveal  the  significant  features  of  mental 
ability.  Irregularities  in  performance  are  sometimes  the  outstanding  fact  of 
a  mental  examination;  this  may  itself  be  due  to  any  one  of  several  different 
causes,  such  as  physical  conditions — epilepsy  notably — or  to  prolonged  in¬ 
dulgence  in  debilitating  habits,  or  to  some  sensory  defect.  This  irregularity 
may  or  may  not  be  indicated  on  the  age  scale;  in  case  it  is,  the  ^extent  cannot 
be  determined  without  supplementary  tests.  Thus  a  boy  of  fourteen  just 
entering  high  school  was  seen  as  a  vocational  and  educational  problem,  the 
question  on  the  part  of  a  relief  agency  being  whether  his  abilities  warranted 
further  assistance  to  the  family  so  that  the  boy  could  continue  in  school,  or 
whether  it  would  be  wiser  to  start  him  at  work.  If  the  latter  seemed  advis¬ 
able,  for  what  occupation  was  he  best  adapted?  His  I.Q.  was  93,  grading 
him  as  average  normal.  Other  tests  showed  much  more  that  was  important ; 
they  varied  in  score  from  nine-year  norms  to  those  for  superior  adults. 
None  of  the  above-mentioned  causes  were  operative,  and  tests  for  various 
types  of  performance  were  consistent  with  each  other.  Language  ability 
was  found  very  poor,  so  was  ability  to  deal  with  concrete  material,  but 
auditory  powers  were  very  good  and  facility  with  numbers  was  clearly 
evinced.  The  boy  seemed  incapable  of  profiting  by  further  high-school  in¬ 
struction  but  well  fitted  for  special  training  as  a  bookkeeper.  This  con¬ 
clusion  would  scarcely  have  been  justified,  or  even  possible  to  reach,  on  the 
basis  of  age-level  tests  alone.  This  case  suggests  our  second  consideration 
in  the  study  of  individuals. 


362 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 

« 

IT.  Study  of  Special  Abilities  and  Disabilities 

Besides  estimating  general  ability  it  is  advisable  to  know  as  much 
as  we  can  about  the  special  abilities  or  disabilities  of  those  for  whom 
a  constructive  program  is  under  consideration.  From  the  practical 
standpoint  this  is  important,  for  it  cannot  be  too  frequently  em¬ 
phasized  that  the  greatest  values  are  likely  to  accrue  from  grading 
the  individual  up  rather  than  from  grading  him  down.  Since  study  of 
mental  equipment  is  most  valuable  as  a  basis  for  constructive  efforts, 
we  wish  to  know  all  we  can  of  the  potentialities  that  bespeak  the 
greatest  likelihood  of  successful  development  and  use,  which  augur  best 

as  a  means  of  contributing  to  the  individual’s  happiness  and  useful- 

• 

ness  and  to  society’s  welfare.  Hence  we  are  interested  in  revealing  the 
abilities  that  can  be  utilized  educationally,  vocationally,  and  socially. 

One  of  the  more  recent  directions  in  which  educational  and  applied 
psychology  has  been  moving  has  been  toward  devising  and  standardiz¬ 
ing  trade  and  vocational  tests,  by  means  of  which  qualifications  for 
specialized  tasks  shall  be  measured.  This  is  entirely  in  keeping  with 
our  own  point  of  view  and  seems  justified  both  from  common  sense 
and  from  scientific  considerations. 

The  cases  already  cited  give  some  indication  of  the  facts  we  have  in 
mind.  The  range  of  special  abilities  found  is  quite  large  and  we  can¬ 
not  illustrate  all  types  here.  The  most  commonly  thought  of  is  me¬ 
chanical  ability.  We  have  heard  or  read  quite  a  bit  in  educational 
discussions  of  the  child  who  is  "hand-minded”  rather  than  "book- 
minded,”  of  those  adapted  for  vocational  and  prevocational  classes 
rather  than  for  academic  courses.  This  ability  to  deal  with  things 
rather  than  with  ideas,  with  concrete  material  rather  than  with  ab¬ 
stract,  is  not  tapped  at  all  in  the  age-scales. 

For  vocational  purposes  such  ability  should  be  thought  of  as 
divided  into  three  kinds :  ( i )  simple  manual  dexterity,  that  is,  ability 
to  use  the  hands  skilfully  and  quickly;  (2)  mechanical  skill,  where 
besides  dexterity  there  is  ability  to  deal  with  problems  presented  in 
concrete  material;  (3)  planfulness,  resource,  and  originality  with 
concrete  material.  The  first  of  these  is  exemplified  in  unskilled  fac¬ 
tory  work,  such  as  packing  or  pasting,  where  speed  is  the  primary 
need.  The  second  may  be  illustrated  by  repair  work,  where  parts  of 
a  machine,  let  us  say,  must  be  put  together.  The  last  is  typified  by 


MENTAL  TESTS 


363 


the  inventor  or  mechanical  engineer,  where  originality  is  the  great 
desideratum.  We  often  see  instances  of  special  ability  of  the  first  or 
second  kind  and  occasionally  of  the  third. 

Illustrative  cases.  A  young  woman  of  seventeen  recently  studied  did 
poorly  on  most  tests;  she  was  classified  as  subnormal.  She  had,  however, 
remarkable  speed  and  dexterity  in  the  use  of  her  hands,  grading  far  above 
the  average  in  this,  but  she  could  scarcely  solve  construction  tests  requiring 
judgment  of  the  relationship  of  pieces  to  each  other.  Clearly  she  was  fitted 
only  for  routine  factory  work  where  speed  was  the  greatest  requirement. 

A  lad  almost  fourteen  years  old  grading  as  average  in  general  ability  made 
just  about  an  average  performance  on  tests  for  a  number  of  abilities.  On 
tests  for  manual  dexterity  he  did  well,  but  on  those  for  mechanical  ability 
where  planfulness  and  insight  were  required  he  made  remarkable  records — 
indeed  on  a  half-dozen  such  tests  he  rapidly  made  perfect  scores.  This 
demonstrated  ability  was  later  corroborated  by  very  successful  work  in  the 
shoe  shop  of  a  correctional  institution.  Unfortunately  his  marked  special 
ability  was  not  taken  into  account  in  the  still  later  adjustments  made.  The 
boy  was  paroled  on  a  farm,  where  he  had  no  outlet  for  his  skill  along  me¬ 
chanical  lines  and  where  in  consequence  this  was  not  only  wasted  but  the 
lad  became  dissatisfied  and  unhappy  as  well. 

• 

Other  special  abilities  are  equally  helpful  signs  which,  if  properly 
read,  guide  vocational  advice  and  action.  Sometimes  finding  espe¬ 
cially  good  ability  in  the  field  of  language  together  with  certain  per¬ 
sonal  qualifications  has  led  us  to  recommend  training  in  salesmanship. 
Special  ability  in  clerical  work  can  be  fairly  reliably  determined  by 
the  tests  now  available.  Again,  good  visualizing  powers  may  offer  the 
basis  of  educational  and  vocational  advice. 

Recently  we  studied  for  vocational  guidance  a  young  woman,  seventeen 
years  old,  who  was  taking  a  commercial  course  in  high  school  with  very 
slight  success.  She  had  already  failed  in  the  academic  course  and  had  trans¬ 
ferred  to  the  business  course  as  the  only  alternative.  Psychological  testing 
showed  the  unsuitability  of  this;  in  the  clerical  examination  she  ranked 
among  the  lowest  2  per  cent.  But  the  study  demonstrated  unusual  ability 
in  powers  of  visualization.  On  the  basis  of  this  we  recommended  training 
in  draftsmanship;  this  advice  was  followed  and  our  last  report  stated  that 
she  is  happier  and  more  successful  than  she  has  been  at  any  time  since  she 
entered  the  high  school. 

The  corollary  of  this — the  finding  of  special  disability — should  of 
course  be  equally  as  practical  a  determinant  in  educational  and  voca- 


3^4 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


tional  efforts.  Obviously  it  is  unwise,  uneconomical,  and  productive 
of  poor  results  to  train  or  place  people  at  work  for  which  they  are 
innately  unfitted.  The  round  peg  and  the  square  hole  are  frequently 
enough  spoken  of,  but  the  relationship  is  not  always  recognized  when 
it  appears.  Nor  is  the  situation  avoided  as  frequently  as  it  might  and 
probably  would  be  if  special  inaptitudes  were  known.  Only  too  com¬ 
monly  employment  that  is  available  is  the  criterion  for  adjustment 
and,  no  consideration  being  given  to  its  suitability,  much  less  scientific 

knowledge  of  fitness,  the  outcome  is  likely  to  be  a  speedy  need  for  a 

£  - 

new  job  for  the  applicant.  We  have  known  of  bright  boys  and  girls 
being  placed  at  routine  work  not  at  all  worthy  of  their  capacities,  and 
work  unsuited  to  abilities  is  often  assigned  when  the  chance  for  suc¬ 
cess  is  slight.  We  know  a  young  fellow  of  sixteen,  who,  committed  to 
a  correctional  institution,  spent  two  years  in  the  carpentry  shop, 
though  our  mental  examination  disclosed  a  considerable  disability 
along  that  line.  Another  boy  was  permitted  to  enter  the  commercial 
course  in  a  high  school  when  his  ability  for  arithmetic  was  notably 
poor,  whereas  his  fine  capacity  for  arts  and  crafts  was  totally 
unrecognized. 

Thus  the  discovery  of  special  ability  or  disability  of  social  significance 
enables  one  to  direct  education  and  vocation  and  because  of  aiding  in 
a  definite  program  the  prognosis  in  problem  cases  becomes  much  more 
favorable  and  the  recommendations  for  treatment  much  more  specific. 

III.  Functioning  of  the  Mind ;  the  Dynamic  Aspect 

When  " mental  abilities”  have  been  ascertained,  there  still  remains 
the  question,  How  well,  with  these  abilities,  does  the  mind  function  ? 
What  is  the  individual’s  mental  working  ability?  How  great  is  the 
capacity  for  output?  Perhaps  we  can  best  present  this  problem  of 
dynamics  by  giving  two  contrasting  illustrations. 

A  lad,  fourteen  years  old,  was  recently  studied  by  us  at  great  length.  He 
was  a  boy  who  had  had  many  opportunities,  he  had  traveled,  lived  in  a 
home  of  culture,  attended  a  private  school  that  bears  a  fine  reputation. 
Although  encouraged  in  every  usual  way  he  remained  at  the  very  foot  of 
his  class,  not  successful  in  any  of  his  studies;  he  had  had  tutoring  and  yet, 
although  well-behaved  and  amenable,  he  made  poor  progress.  The  results 
on  the  age-scale  gave  no  aid  in  understanding  the  difficulty;  he  graded  as 


MENTAL  TESTS 


36s 


supernormal,  I.Q.  113.  On  many  other  tests  he  did  very  well,  especially 
where  directions  were  to  be  followed.  He  also  passed  the  vocabulary  test 
for  superior  adult  intelligence.  Yet  on  a  word-building  test  where  six  as¬ 
signed  letters  are  to  be  combined  into  words,  he  reached  only  a  nine-year 
norm.  He  was  steady,  but  slow  in  reactions.  While  willing  enough,  he  was 
not  at  all  alert  or  keen  mentally;  on  a  number  of  tests  he  showed  little 
initiative,  resource,  or  imagination.  He  showed  no  special  disability;  no 
physical  defect  offered  the  explanation.  He  was  not  only  lacking  in  energy 
in  mental  tasks,  but  was  reported  as  not  responding  to  any  competitive 
stimulus,  uninterested  in  athletics  or  in  anything  that  required  exertion. 
Both  his  family  and  teachers  regarded  him  as  intelligent,  in  spite  of  his 
failures,  social  and  in  the  classroom.  With  us  his  high  I.  Q.  and  the  ex¬ 
ceedingly  good  results  on  some  other  tests  indicated  that  there  was  no  lack 
of  ability;  we  were  led  to  conclude  that  this  was  distinctly  a  problem  of 
mental  dynamics. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  this  last  case  to  the  notable  instance  of  a  feeble¬ 
minded  girl,  twelve  years  old,  who  was  in  the  sixth  grade.  Our  impressions, 
dictated  at  the  end  of  the  -examination  read,  "Very  lively,  responsive 
girl.  Tremendously  energetic.  Works  with  test  in  most  remarkable  fashion 
so  that  she  gets  every  bit  of  which  she  is  capable  out  of  herself.  Her 
dynamic  qualities  are  very  striking.  Her  great  energy  and  application  to  a 
task  have  no  doubt  aided  her  much  in  her  school  progress.”  A  year  later 
we  learned  that  she  was  in  the  seventh  grade. 

The  facts  relating  to  mental  energy,  to  powers  of  continuity  of  pur¬ 
pose  and  effort  all  belong  to  this  present  category.  Here,  too,  we 
must  place  the  problems  of  those  constitutionally  inferior  persons  who, 
though  not  rating  as  defective  mentally,  yet  are  lacking  in  forcefulness 
and  effectiveness  whenever  a  situation  becomes  at  all  difficult.  Here 
also  belong  questions  of  balance,  of  mental  balance  and  control  which 
so  largely  affect  the  actual  accomplishment,  no  matter  what  the  in¬ 
nate  capacity  may  be.  There  are  problems  of  individuals  over¬ 
dynamic,  impulsive,  hyperactive,  perhaps  even  defective  in  control ; 
or  of  intelligent  people  who  do  not  adjust  well  because  over-sensitive 
and  thus  unduly  inhibited. 

The  first  of  these  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  a  young  girl,  fourteen  and 
a  half  years  old,  who,  placed  out  by  an  agency,  was  found  a  great  problem 
in  each  of  several  homes.  Immediately  upon  seeing  her  one  was  impressed 
by  her  general  attitude.  She  was  strong,  sturdy,  alert,  vivacious,  rather  a 
tomboy  in  manner,  overactive  physically.  From  her  reactions  while  with 
us,  from  the  social  history,  from  her  own  statement  of  her  interests  and 


366 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


desires  it  was  clear  she  was  of  a  strong,  distinctive  personality.  She  was 
impulsive  and  uncontrolled  to  the  extent  of  being  practically  defective  in 
inhibitions,  was  changeable  in  ideas  and  purposes,  uncritical,  generous,  un¬ 
repressed,  and  childish.  She  described  herself  as  bold  and  defiant;  she  was 
reported  stubborn  and  self-willed.  She  was  fond  of  outdoor  sports  and  the 
most  active  recreations.  Mentally  she  was  normal  and  it  was  evident  that 
the  problem  was  not  that  of  capacity  but  rather  one  of  balance  and  control. 

The  problem  of  the  over-inhibited  is  well  known.  Typically  the  case  is 
that  of  a  bright,  conscientious  girl  with  an  excellent  school  record,  who'  is 
unsuccessful  socially  or  vocationally  because  of  her  timidity,  sensitiveness, 
and  lack  of  self-confidence. 

IV.  Personality  M akeup 

In  the  study  of  mental  equipment  there  must  be  a  place  for  the 
sizing  up  of  the  personality.  Although  at  the  present  time  there  are 
available  no  standardized  tests  analogous  to  mental  tests,  psychiatrists 
have  emphasized  the  need  for  such  study  and  some  schedules  have 
been  outlined  *  for  characterization  of  individuals.  We  have  long 
appreciated  the  importance  of  personality  studies  and  our  tendency 
is  more  and  more  to  inquire  and  observe  and  to  formulate  specific 
descriptive  terms.  That  it  is  possible  to  do  more  than  this  at  present 
we  doubt,  even  though  we  regard  with  interest  certain  attempts  to 
estimate  by  a  numerical  value  these  character  traits.  Subjective  stand¬ 
ards  and  interpretations  offer  the  only  means  of  evaluating  these  ob¬ 
jective  and  highly  important  life-reactions. 

Practically,  it  is  often  difficult  to  determine  what  is  innate  person¬ 
ality  makeup  and  what  is  the  result  of  environment  and  experience. 
The  interplay  of  the  two  is  great  and  the  innate  makeup  can  scarcely 
be  extricated  from  the  product  of  circumstances.  Perhaps  from  one 
point  of  view  such  separation  is  not  needed  or  desirable,  and  yet  for 
the  offering  of  prognoses  it  is  sometimes  essential  to  know  just  what 
the  individual  is  innately,  and  what  he  might  be  like  under  different 
circumstances. 

Thus,  we  saw  a  girl,  only  nine  years  old,  who  was  a  most  difficult  placing 
problem.  Everywhere  she  lived  there  were  complaints  of  violent  behavior, 
temper  spells,  quarreling,  and  rough  treatment  of  children.  She  was  a  most 
unpleasant  personality,  regarded  as  disagreeable  by  foster  mothers,  teachers, 
and  playmates.  The  major  point  at  issue  when  we  studied  her  was  deter- 


MENTAL  TESTS 


367 

mination  of  the  extent  to  which  her  personality  might  be  modified  by  some 
therapeutic  endeavor,  which  in  turn  seemed  to  depend  on  the  question  as 
to  whether  her  traits  were  innate  or  the  result  of  experiences.  In  the  course 
of  the  study  previously  unknown  causative  experiences  were  unearthed  and 
with  these  brought  to  light  and  special  social  and  educational  processes 
undertaken  there  has  been  a  marked  change  in  what  before  were  called 
personality  traits. 

It  is  true,  conversely,  that  the  same  experience  reacts  differently  on  dif¬ 
ferent  individuals.  Thus  two  brothers,  a  year  apart  in  age,  both  bright, 
were  subjected  to  the  same  experience.  The  one  was  markedly  disturbed 
thereby,  the  other  apparently  totally  unaffected.  This  variance  in  effect  is 
possibly  due  to  differences  in  personality  makeup  while  in  turn  the  experi¬ 
ence  itself  may  change  the  personality,  at  least  for  the  time  being,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  one  brother  who  became  very  peculiar  and  irritable,  so  that  he 
was  regarded  by  all  as  a  specific  personality  problem.  Very  frequently 
cases  are  met  where  the  personality  is  reported  as  distinctly  changed,  and 
study  reveals  that  this  has  followed  upon  some  peculiar  specific  experience. 

The  personality  makeup  may  be  the  feature  of  a  case  upon  which 
all  the  adjustments  are  conditioned.  Practical  procedure  sometimes  is 
more  largely  determined  by  this  than  by  any  aspect  of  mental  ability. 
Thus,  for  example,  the  social  treatment  of  even  the  mentally  defective 
must  be  considered  in  terms  of  the  personality  characteristics  shown. 
One  feebleminded  lad  is  socially  suggestible  to  a  marked  degree, 
though  perhaps  industrious  and  mild ;  under  good  supervision,  where 
suggestible  to  good  influences,  he  may  succeed  in  a  simple  environ¬ 
ment.  Another  with  an  identical  I.Q.  is  aggressive,  a  leader,  possibly 
even  vicious.  He  needs  perhaps  segregation.  The  social  adjustments 
here  are  not  determined  by  mental  capacity,  but  very  largely  by 
character  and  personality  traits. 


V.  M ental  Content 

Lastly  we  come  to  the  group  of  problems  which  we  may  designate 
as  those  of  mental  content,  an  aspect  of  mental  life  often  overlooked 
by  the  psychologist,  just  as  the  study  of  general  ability  and  of  special 
abilities  and  disabilities  is  usually  neglected  by  the  psychiatrist.  To 
understand  the  fundamentals  of  conduct  one  must  inquire  into  and  be 
acquainted  with  the  stuff  of  which  the  individual’s  mental  life  is 
woven.  What  for.ms  the  content  of  his  mental  life,  what  are  his  in- 


368 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


terests,  his  ideals,  and  ambitions?  In  what  fancies  or  phantasies  does 
he  indulge,  what  ideation  is  more  or  less  recurrent?  Does  he  have 
day  dreams,  and  of  what  do  they  consist  ?  Is  he  subject  to  obsessive 
thoughts  or  imagery? 

In  general  we  usually  consider  the  mental  content  as  good  or  bad, 
but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  problem  is  sometimes  concerned,  not  with 
good  or  bad  content  or  ideation,  but  with  mental  emptiness — vacuity. 
The  surprising  fact,  according  to  our  experience  is  that,  notwithstand¬ 
ing  compulsory  school  attendance  and  the  abundance  of  social  settle¬ 
ments,  community  centers,  and  other  similar  organizations,  there  yet 
may  be  found  many  persons  of  decidedly  good  ability  who  have  almost 
no  mental  interests  and  the  paucity  of  whose  mental  life  is  amazing. 
It  is  astonishing  to  find,  for  instance,  the  number  of  young  people  who 
know  nothing  of  everyday  affairs  in  the  midst  of  which  they  live,  who 
are  unaware  of  the  resources  of  their  city,  who  have  no  interest  in 
clubs,  books,  politics,  art,  music,  or  indeed  in  any  ordinary  wholesome 
activities  or  recreations.  Of  course,  this  may  sometimes  betoken  lack 
of  ambition,  but  frequently  it  is  not  a  matter  of  dynamics — the 
individual  has  plenty  of  energy  for  other  things. 

For  instance,  a  young  girl,  sixteen  and  a  half  years  old,  was  found  to  be 
quite  bright;  her  I.Q.  was  107,  which  indicates  that  she  was  somewhat 
above  adult  intelligence  according  to  the  Terman  scale.  She  was  very  quick 
in  her  reactions  and  on  a  wide  range  of  tests  she  did  well  without  exception. 
She  had  graduated  from  grammar  school  at  fourteen,  third  highest  in  her 
class.  After  a  prolonged  study — for  she  was  seriously  delinquent — we 
stated,  "The  most  interesting  features  of  her  makeup  are  lack  of  curiosity 
and  her  narrow  range  of  interests.  She  seems  never  to  have  thought  deeply 
about  anything.  She  says  of  herself  that  when  eight  years  old  she  read  a 
book  or  two  by  Alger  and  has  never  read  a  book  since,  does  not  read  news¬ 
papers  or  magazines,  never  read  a  novel.  She  had  gone  to  no  lectures;  she 
knew  nothing  of  social  or  civic  affairs ;  having  been  asked  to  join  the  Red 
Cross  she  had  made  a  small  money  contribution  but  took  no  active  part. 
She  went  very  occasionally  to  dances  and  rarely  to  the  theatre.  She  had 
no  curiosity  even  about  sexual  matters,  never  wondered  nor  asked  about 
such  things.  When  she  became  acquainted  at  the  waiting  room  of  a  de¬ 
partment  store  with  a  young  woman  who  later  introduced  her  to  a  group 
of  other  women,  she  had  no  curiosity  about  them  or  their  lives,  even  when 
after  a  short  time  they  led  her  into  shoplifting.  She  said  of  herself  that  in 
school  she  learned  easily,  that  usually  after  reading  a  history  lesson,  for 
example,  she  could  recite  it  verbatim.” 


MENTAL  TESTS 


369 


Such  unfortunate  mental  vacuity  can  only  be  a  little  less  pernicious 
than  definitely  bad  mental  content.  What  specific  ideation  or  imagery 
may  be  harmful  to  the  individual  or  to  society  through  the  individual 
is,  of  course,  impossible  here  to  discuss  in  detail.  The  most  disturbing 
mental  content  no  doubt  centers  about  sex  matters,  with  the  some¬ 
times  ensuing  misconduct,  irritability,  dissatisfactions,  deleterious 
physical  and  mental  habits,  repressions,  or  mental  conflicts.  Or  the 
flow  of  mental  life  may  be  most  unfortunately  given  over  in  consider¬ 
able  measure  to  ideation  concerning  stealing  or  gambling  or  other  mis¬ 
conduct  or  to  undesirable  notions  of  adventure.  Ideas  and  imagery 
may  recur  so  frequently  and  with  such  force  that  they  become  really 
obsessive,  even  in  instances  not  so  extreme  that  there  is  indication  of 
pathological  conditions  of  the  mind  in  general.  We  have  many  times 
studied  the  facts  concerning  young  people  who  have  first  learned 
tabooed  words  under  disturbing  circumstances,  the  words  then  forcibly 
weaving  themselves  into  the  mental  content  and  causing  emotional 
stresses  and  impulsions.  That  the  chain  of  causation  must  be  brought 
into  the  light  of  full  consciousness  before  effective  curative  processes 
can  be  initiated  is  now  a  well-accepted  fact.  (The  method  of  aiding 
the  individual  to  this  self-realization  is  the  analysis  of  the  mental  life 
familiar  to  those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  work  of  Freud.  In 
various  modified  forms  this  method  is  most  helpful  in  studying  the 
mental  content.) 

Illustrative  cases.  Our  case  studies  are  replete  with  findings  of  the 
bearings  of  mental  content  upon  social  and  moral  behavior  and  even  upon 
reactions  to  educational  and  vocational  adjustments. 

Sometimes  it  is  an  idea  or  thought  rather  than  a  word ;  again  it  is  a  visual 
image,  a  picture.  A  boy,  not  yet  thirteen  years  old,  was  in  court  after  a 
series  of  burglaries  so  remarkable  as  to  become  featured  in  the  newspapers. 
In  the  course  of  inquiry  concerning  beginnings  he  told  of  various  experi¬ 
ences,  on  the  basis  of  which  most  vivid  imagery  had  developed.  From  an 
older  boy  he  had  heard  much  of  stealing:  "He  made  the  idea  come  up  in 
my  mind  and  sometimes  I  can  hardly  get  it  out.  I  always  think  of  break¬ 
ing  in.  Breaking  in  comes  in  my  mind  every  minute  sometimes.  It’s  like 
chains  that  hold  you.” 

It  must  be  patent  that  any  re-educative  process  in  these  cases  can 
be  mainly  achieved  by  building  up  substitutive,  good  mental  content 
through  developing  better  and  more  appealing  interests.  But  it  is 


370 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


equally  true  that  the  essential  trouble  can  never  be  fairly  met  until 
it  is  really  known. 

Of  course  these  five  phases  or  aspects  of  mental  equipment  upon 
which  we  have  touched  overlap  and  are  interrelated  in  many  ways  and 
influence  each  other.  The  dynamic  and  personality  qualities  are  closely 
related  and  the  mental  content  is  determined  in  part  by  these  as  well 
as  by  the  mental  abilities.  In  the  integrated  individual  it  is  difficult 
to  separate  them,  but  for  the  purpose  of  analytic  and  practical  study 
of  the  individual  the  five  aspects  of  mental  equipment  should  be  kept 
in  mind,  and  the  striking  characteristics  of  each  noted. 

This  paper  represents  of  necessity  only  a  cursory  and  incomplete 
survey  which  sketches  merely  a  -schema  that  has  proved  useful  both 
for  purposes  of  diagnosis  and  recommendations.  The  time  and  effort 
such  study  requires  has  seemed  amply  justified  by  the  specific  social 
treatment  that  can  be  based  on  the  findings  and  by  the  successful  out¬ 
comes  in  many  cases  which  social  treatment  so  founded  has  achieved. 

47.  On  the  Use  of  the  Term  "Feeble-Minded”1 

The  subject  of  feeble-mindedness  is  so  persistently  claiming  atten¬ 
tion  in  school  and  social  measurements  that  it  seems  not  untimely  to 
make  a  plea  for  the  more  cautious  use  of  the  term  ''feeble-minded,” 
especially  in  reports  of  investigations  in  which  mental  defect  is  a 
serious  consideration.  Research  is  so  rapidly  demonstrating  the  wide¬ 
spread  significance  of  feeble-mindedness  and  its  bearing  on  social  and 
educational  problems,  that  unless  the  workers  in  this  field  proceed 
with  at  least  a  fair  amount  of  conservatism,  there  is  danger  of  bringing 
the  subject  into  disrepute.  In  fact,  the  literature  already  presents  some 
obvious  absurdities  caused  by  the  ill-considered  use  of  terminology, 
and  the  failure  to  describe  the  limitations  of  the  studies  reported. 

Binet  and  Simon,  in  1905,  showed  that  inferior  intelligence  is  the 
fundamental  distinguishing  sign  of  feeble-mindedness,  and  ultimately 
devised  a  Measuring  Scale  of  Intelligence  which  makes  possible  the 
relatively  exact  determination  of  intelligence  levels,  and  which,  When 
expertly  evaluated  and  interpreted,  throws  much  light  on  the  analysis 

JBy  E.  A.  Doll,  Director,  Division  of  Education  and  Classification,  State  of 
New  Jersey  Department  of  Institutions  and  Agencies.  Journal  of  the  American 
Institute  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology ,  Vol.  VIII,  No.  2,  pp.  216-221. 


MENTAL  TESTS 


371 


of  mental  states.1  This  Measuring  Scale  has  so  profoundly  influenced 
all  subsequent  study  of  mental  deficiency  that  many  students  are  now 
on  the  verge  of  substituting  an  intelligence  status  for  a  diagnosis  of 
feeble-mindedness.  But  while  remaining  fully  conscious  of  the  essen¬ 
tial  importance  of  the  intelligence  examination  in  determining  feeble¬ 
mindedness,  we  must  not  permit  ourselves  to  forget  that  it  is  not  in 
itself  a  complete  diagnostic  method,  more  especially  when  only  the 
gross  mental  age  of  an  individual  and  not  the  sum  total  of  mental 
symptoms  obtained  in  the  intelligence  examination  is  employed.  It 
is  because  even  some  reputable  psychologists,  as  well  as  comparative 
laymen  and  "amateur  Binet  testers/’  apparently  accept  the  intelli¬ 
gence  classification  as  an  equivalent  of  a  differential  diagnosis  that  a 
note  of  warning  should  be  sounded. 

It  is  sufficient  to  cite  only  a  few  reasons  why  intelligence  status 
alone  (whether  expressed  as  mental  age,  mental  retardation,  intelli¬ 
gence  quotient,  or  some  other  means)  does  not  afford  an  adequate 
basis  for  the  judgment  of  feeble-mindedness:  (1)  it  does  not  in  itself 
distinguish  between  developmental  and  degenerative  defects,  although 
this  distinction  is  essential  to  prognosis ;  ( 2 )  it  does  not  in  itself  dis¬ 
tinguish  between  the  superficially  intelligent  feeble-minded  and  the 
intellectually  stupid  normals,  although  this  distinction  is  essential  to 
the  estimation  of  social  competence;  (3)  it  does  not  in  itself,  among 
young  children,  distinguish  between  potential  defectiveness  and  poten¬ 
tial  normality,  although  this  distinction  is  essential  to  early  recogni¬ 
tion  ;  (4)  it  does  not  in  itself  distinguish  between  high-grade  borderline 
defectives  and  low-grade  borderline  normals,  although  this  distinction 
is  essential  to  diagnosis.  There  is  not  sufficient  space  at  my  command 
to  permit  me  to  amplify  the  argument  showing  the  scientific  value  of 
these  distinctions,  and  the  practical  necessity  for  making  them,  but 
it  must  be  obvious  that  failure  to  observe  these  shortcomings  of  the 
intelligence  tests  may  lead  one  astray  in  his  thinking. 

In  the  minds  of  the  more  mature  students  of  mental  deficiency,  the 
term  "feeble-minded”  has  consistently  been  used  to  describe  a  condi¬ 
tion  which  is  differentiated  from  normality  by  social  incompetence 
due  to  arrested  mental  development.  There  is  as  yet  no  good  reason 

1See  The  Development  of  Intelligence  in  Children  and  The  Intelligence  of  the 
Feeble-Minded ,  by  Alfred  Binet  and  Th.  Simon  (translated  by  Elizabeth  S.  Kite). 
The  Training  School  at  Vineland,  New  Jersey,  Vineland,  1916. 


372 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


to  reject  this  conception.  To  be  sure  it  is  rather  too  vague,  as  a 
standard,  for  scientific  purposes,  and  a  more  exact  criterion  is  much 
to  be  desired.  But  for  some  time  to  come  it  must  remain  the  working 
basis  for  study  and  for  developing  other  concepts. 

At  the  present  time  no  less  than  six  major  criteria  of  feeble-minded¬ 
ness  are  employed  by  diagnosticians.1  ( i )  It  must  be  shown  that  the 
individual  in  question  is,  in  terms  of  the  classic  and  legal  definition 
of  the  British  Royal  Commission  on  the  Feeble-Minded,  "incapable  of 
competing  on  equal  terms  with  his  fellows,  or  of  managing  himself  and 
his  affairs  with  ordinary  prudence.”  This  standard,  with  subsequent 
verbal  changes,  is  still  authoritative.  For  feeble-minded  juveniles, 
the  Act  of  Parliament  of  1899  substituted  "incapable  of  receiving 
proper  benefit  from  the  instruction  in  the  ordinary  public  elemen¬ 
tary  schools,”  and  this  is  now  the  basis  of  the  definition  of  high-grade 
mental  deficiency  in  the  English  Mental  Deficiency  Act  of  1913.  But 
the  social  and  pedagogical  standards  alone  do  not  constitute  the  sole 
criterion  of  feeble-mindedness,  for  many  persons  are  not  able  to 
compete  on  equal  terms  with  their  fellows  or  manage  their  affairs 
prudently,  who  nevertheless  are  not  feeble-minded ;  for  example,  the 
insane,  the  non-feeble-minded  epileptics,  the  physically  disabled,  and 
the  many  types  of  "human  derelicts.”  Likewise  many  children  re¬ 
ceive  no  proper  benefit  from  public  school  instruction  who  still  are 
not  feeble-minded ;  for  example,  the  motor  defectives,  the  sense  de¬ 
fectives,  the  language  defectives,  the  neural  defectives,  the  physical 
defectives,  in  short,  the  great  unclassified  host  who  fill  the  ordinary 
"special  classes.”  (2)  It  is  to  separate  the  social  and  pedagogical 
defectives  who  are  feeble-minded  from  those  who  are  normal  that  the 
definitions  of  feeble-mindedness  all  specify  a  second  criterion,  mental 
defect,  as  the  cause  of  the  social  incompetence.  This  supplementary 
standard  eliminates  many  social  incompetents  from  the  feeble-minded 
class,  but  does  not  eliminate  some  others,  like  the  psychopathic  and  the 
insane.  (3)  This  is  accomplished  by  a  third  criterion,  which  specifies 
that  the  mental  defect  must  be  caused  by  arrest  of  development,  and 
not,  for  example,  by  degeneration  from  normal  states.  Consequently, 

XA  detailed  critical  evaluation  and  description  of  these  diagnostic  criteria  of 
feeble-mindedness,  with  six  illustrative  clinical  cases,  is  presented  in  Clinical 
Studies  in  Feeble-Mindedness,  by  E.  A.  Doll.  Richard  G.  Badger,  Boston,  1917. 
About  200  pages. 


MENTAL  TESTS 


2  *1  1 

v)  /O 

t 

the  term  "feeble-minded,”  if  used  technically,  must  imply  at  least  these 
three  considerations:  (i)  social  incompetence,  (2)  resulting  from 
mental  defect,  which  is  (3)  caused  by  arrested  mental  development. 

Three  additional  criteria  are  now  recognized  as  aids  in  determining 
feeble-mindedness,  although  they  are  not  themselves  essential,  but 
are  considered  symptomatic  of  the  three  just  mentioned.  (1)  The 
social  incompetence  is  particularly  characterized  by  certain  traits  of 
behavior,  such  as  innate  limitations  in  ability  to  learn  or  to  plan,  the 
absence  of  judgment  and  foresight,  incapacity  for  ready  adaptation  to 
unaccustomed  situations,  and  many  forms  of  social  maladjustment, 
like  poverty,  improvidence,  social  "unconventionality,”  crimes,  and 
'misdemeanors.  (2)  The  mental  defect  is  essentially  inferior  intelli¬ 
gence  level,  and  is  associated  with  somatic  retardation,  physical 
anomalies,  and  neural  defects  or  diseases.  (3)  The  arrest  of  develop¬ 
ment  is  caused  by  inherited  limitations  of  development  and  by  various 
"accidents,”  that  is,  specified  illnesses,  diseases,  functional  disturb¬ 
ances,  and  traumas. 

Because  of  these  differential  characteristics  of  the  feeble-minded, 
mental  deficiency  in  individuals  must  be  diagnosed  by  a  clinical  con¬ 
sideration  of  all  these  traits.  No  authority  on  the  subject  has  ever 
ventured  to  propose  any  one  criterion  as  the  sole  standard  of  feeble¬ 
mindedness  ;  all  have  unqualifiedly  recommended  the  use  of  thecomplete 
clinical  syllabus  for  examination.  But  on  the  other  hand,  no  one  has 
shown  how  to  weight  the  several  criteria  if  they  conflict,  nor  how  many 
and  which  symptoms  constitute  a  minimum  for  differential  diagnosis. 
This  has  tacitly  been  conceded  to  be  a  matter  of  expert  judgment. 

For  these  reasons  it  is  necessary  to  urge  that  readers  ought  not 
unreservedly  to  accept  as  gospel  the  reports  of  investigations  which 
present  percentages  of  "feeble-minded”  persons  found  to  be  present 
in  school  and  social  groups,  unless  this  judgment  of  "feeble-minded” 
is  supported  by  at  least  some  clinical  evidence  offered  in  support 
of  the  classification  obtained  by  the  intelligence  tests.1  I  mean  by 

1  It  is  possible  that  in  the  future  mental  tests  can  be  so  interpreted  as  to  dis¬ 
pense  almost  entirely  with  this  clinical  evidence.  Binet  did  so  interpret  some  re¬ 
sults  of  his  Measuring  Scale  (see  The  Intelligence  of  the  Feeble-Minded ,  by  Alfred 
Binet  and  Th.  Simon),  and  some  res^irches  are  now  in  progress  to  demonstrate 
the  validity  of  such  interpretation.  But  at  present  these  methods  of  evaluating 
mental  tests  are  not  commonly  recognized,  and  only  gross  "mental  ages”  are 
made  use  of  in  the  statistical  reports. 


374 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


•  I 

this,  that  if  the  investigator  is  unable  to  obtain  diagnosis  of  feeble¬ 
mindedness  he  should  state  his  results  in  terms  of  intelligence  classifi¬ 
cation.  Then  if  he  wishes  to  use  the  term  "  feeble-minded  ”  for  subjects 
not  clinically  diagnosed,  let  him  define  his  use  of  the  term  by  stating 
his  standard,  whether  in  years  of  mental  age,  years  of  intelligence 
retardation,  range  of  intelligence  quotients,  an  upper  limit  of  mental 
level,  or  what  not.  This  method  of  presenting  results  avoids  the  im¬ 
plication  that  additional  symptoms  have  been  taken  into  account,  and 
at  the  same  time  renders  results  much  more  useful  and  open  to  subse¬ 
quent  correction,  if  the  intelligence  standard  undergoes  material  revi¬ 
sion.  Nothing  is  lost  and  much  is  gained,  for  the  results  have  exactly 
the  same  significance,  but  they  avoid  the  challenge  of  scientific  in¬ 
completeness  and  thereby  get  a  better  hearing.  Moreover,  "feeble¬ 
minded  ”  connotes  quite  different  states  even  to  professional  workers, 
linked  up  as  it  is  with  historical  conceptions.  Such  workers  may  not 
be  ready  to  admit  that  forty  per  cent  of  delinquents  are  feeble-minded, 
but  may  not  deny,  let  us  say,  that  the  I.Q.’s  of  forty  per  cent  of 
delinquents  are  under  .70.  For  example,  as  a  result  of  examining  150 
children  in  the  first  four  grades  of  a  certain  school,  27  children  were 
found  with  I.Q.’s  under  .70.  I  should  err  greatly  if  I  termed  these 
27  individuals  "feeble-minded”  on  the  basis  of  their  intelligence  status 
alone.  Perhaps  all  the  2  7  are  feeble-minded,  but  surely  the  individual 
children  and  their  parents  have  a  claim  to  a  more  comprehensive 
consideration  of  their  ultimate  social  competence.  But  there  is  no 
denying  that  these  27  are  of  a  definite  degree  of  inferior  intelligence, 
and  need  special  attention  and  instruction  and  may  not  be  capable  of 
certain  kinds  or  amounts  of  work.  This  fact  may  disturb  but  need 
not  antagonize  either  the  parents  or  the  teachers  of  these  children. 

The  field  of  juvenile  delinquency  in  particular  has  suffered  from  this 
indiscriminate  use  of  terminology  and  the  substitution  of  intelligence 
status  for  clinical  diagnosis.  The  writer,  with  Mr.  L.  W.  Crafts, has  made 
a  critical  review  and  evaluation  of  the  literature  in  this  field,  and  found 
a  most  chaotic  confusion  of  investigating  methods  and  classificatory 
criteria.  Hardly  a  half-dozen  of  the  studies  of  the  relation  of  feeble¬ 
mindedness  to  juvenile  delinquency  can  withstand  critical  analysis.1 

* 

1  As  an  example  of  the  best  of  these  studies  see  the  "  Report  of  the  Psychological 
Department,”  by  Dr.  Grace  M.  Fernald,  in  the  Second  Biennial  Report  of  the 
California  School  for  Girls.  Published  by  the  California  State  Printing  Office,  1916. 


MENTAL  TESTS 


375 


In  many  instances  the  fault  is  only  one  of  presentation,  but  the  pres¬ 
entation  must  be  the  reader’s  chief  basis  for  opinion.  In  such  instances 
the  results  may  be  true,  but  the  reader  is  left  without  conclusive  evidence. 

There  is  another  limitation  to  the  use  of  intelligence  tests  alone  in 
judging  feeble-mindedness,  which  is  its  bearing  on  the  converse  judg¬ 
ments  of  normality.  A  certain  percentage  (no  one  knows  how  great) 
of  young  children  prove  to  be  feeble-minded  by  clinical  diagnosis, 
who  classify  as  normal  by  their  intelligence  status.  There  is  also 
an  appreciable  percentage  of  borderline  cases  of  high-grade  feeble¬ 
mindedness  who  classify  as  "borderline,”  "doubtful,”  "low  normal,” 
or  "dull  normal”  by  the  intelligence  tests,  but  who  prove  to  be  feeble¬ 
minded  by  the  evidence  of  the  complete  diagnosis.  From  the  stand¬ 
point  of  science  and  of  social  welfare,  it  is  just  as  important  to 
recognize  these  potential  and  real  defectives  instead  of  terming  them 
"normal,”  as  it  is  to  unwarrantedly  term  some  normals  "feeble¬ 
minded.”  In  the  averages  and  percentages  these  two  errors  compen¬ 
sate  to  some  unknown  extent,  but  the  disposition  of  individual  persons 
should  not  be  made  so  hastily. 

The  use  of  the  intelligence  examination  has  enabled  us  to  travel  a 
long  distance  in  a  short  time  along  the  highways  of  social  and  educa¬ 
tional  readjustments.  It  is  not  my  intention  to  underrate  its  immense 
value,  but  to  conserve  its  importance  by  confining  it  to  its  own  limits. 
I  myself  believe  that  for  averages,  and  in  a  remarkably  high  percen¬ 
tage  of  individual  cases,  the  intelligence  examination,  expertly  admin¬ 
istered  and  evaluated,  not  only  is  the  essential  basis  of  the  diagnosis 
of  feeble-mindedness,  but  even  proves  nearly  a  complete  diagnostic  as 
well  as  classificatory  method,  provided  that  the  individual  in  question 
is  not  a  borderline  case  and  provided  that  the  demonstrated  inferior 
intelligence  is  an  arrested  mental  state.  Indeed,  in  my  own  experi¬ 
ence,  not  wholly  confined  to  institutional  cases,  the  intelligence  method 
alone  and  unsupported  by  the  additional  clinical  data  would  have 
erred  only  by  excluding  some  defectives  as  normal  rather  than  by  in¬ 
cluding  any  normals  as  defectives,  as  proved  by  subsequent  case 
histories.  \Ye  need  experimental  studies  which  shall  show  the  per¬ 
centage  of  accuracy  which  can  be  obtained  in  mental  diagnosis  by  the 
use  of  the  intelligence  method  alone.  This  method  certainly  is  more 
exact  as  a  method  than  is  any  other  part  of  the  clinical  syllabus, 
certainly  it  is  more  fundamental,  and  certainly  it  is  more  practicable. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 
48.  The  Jukes  in  19151 

In  1875  Richard  L.  Dugdale  made  the  first  public  announcement 
of  his  study  of  the  Juke  family  in  the  annual  report  of  the  Prison 
Association  of  New  York,  of  whose  executive  committee  he  was  a 
member.  In  July,  1874,  he  was  chosen  a  committee  of  one  to  inspect 
thirteen  of  the  county  jails  of  the  State  of  New  York.  He  made  a 
tour  of  the  State,  inspected  the  jails,  and  in  each  place  asked  of  every 
prisoner  a  set  of  questions  which  had  been  formulated  by  him  with 
the  help  of  Dr.  Elisha  Harris  (then  corresponding  secretary  of  the 
association)  regarding  the  prisoners’  heredity  and  environment.  No 
particular  cases  of  striking  family  history  were  discovered  until  he 
reached  Z  County,  where  he  found  six  persons  under  four  family 
names,  who  were  blood  relations  in  some  degree. 

The  oldest  (Benjamin),  a  man  of  fifty-five,  was  awaiting  trial  for  re¬ 
ceiving  stolen  goods;  his  daughter,  -aged  eighteen,  held  as  witness  against 
him;  her  uncle  (Antonio),  aged  forty-two,  burglary  in  the  first  degree;  the 
illegitimate  daughter  of  the  latter’s  wife,  aged  twelve  years,  upon  which 
child  the  latter  had  attempted  rape,  to  be  sent  to  the  reformatory  for 
vagrancy;  and  two  brothers  in  another  branch  of  the  family,  aged  respec¬ 
tively  nineteen  and  fourteen,  accused  of  an  assault  with  intent  to  kill,  they 
having  maliciously  pushed  a  child  over  a  high  cliff  and  nearly  killed  him. 

Consultation  with  the  sheriff  of  the  county  and  with  a  physician 
eighty-four  years  of  age,  who  had  practiced  in  that  and  neighboring 
counties,  showed  that  these  people  belonged  to  a  long  lineage,  reach¬ 
ing  back  to  the  early  settlers  of  New  York  State,  and  that  they  had 
intermarried  little  with  immigrant  stock  and  were  therefore  a  strictly 
American  family. 

iBy  Arthur  H.  Estabrook,  Ph.D.,  of  the  Eugenics  Record  Office.  Publication 
No.  240,  Carnegie  Institution  of  Washington,  1916.  Adapted  from  pages  1-3,  50- 

52,  56,  62-64,  69-71,  77-78,  82,  85. 


376 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 


377 


In  1877  the  report  was  again  published,  this  time  in  book  form,  by 
G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons,  and  is  now  in  its  fourth  edition.  The  book  has 
been  widely  read  and  has  had  a  great  influence.  It  has  stimulated 
discussion  and  led  many  to  study  the  interaction  of  the  "forces  of 
heredity  and  environment.”  Dugdale  was  very  cautious  in  the  con¬ 
clusions  which  he  drew.  The  book  does  not  demonstrate  the  inheri¬ 
tance  of  criminality,  pauperism,  or  harlotry,  but  it  does  show  that 
heredity  with  certain  environmental  conditions  determines  criminality, 
harlotry,  and  pauperism. 

In  this  book  (Estabrook,  The  Jukes  in  1915),  as  in  Dugdale’s,  all 
names  are  fictitious.  It  has  seemed  best,  for  purposes  of  the  treat¬ 
ment,  to  assign  names  to  certain  heads  of  families  in  the  middle  gener¬ 
ations  as  Dugdale  did  in  the  earlier.  The  original  data  are  on  file  at 
the  Eugenics  Record  Office,  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  New  York. 

The  present  study  of  the  Juke  family  was  made  possible  by  the 
chance  discovery  of  the  original  manuscript  Juke  record  of  Dugdale. 
In  January,  1912,  the  investigation  was  started.  It  has  been  persist¬ 
ently  carried  on  for  three  years  in  fourteen  States  of  the  Union. 
Every  Juke  possible  to  see  has  been  personally  visited.  Care  has 
been  taken  to  check  all  data  secured.  Official  records  from  State 
prisons,  county  clerks’  offices,  and  sheriffs’  books  have  been  used  for 
data  as  to  crime.  Records  of  State  Boards  of  Charities,  almshouses, 
and  poor  commissioners  have  been  used  for  data  of  pauperism.  Other 
institutional  records  have  been  used  in  suitable  cases. 

Dugdale  studied  709  persons,  540  being  of  Juke  blood  and  169  of 
"X”  blood  who  had  married  into  the  Juke  family.  He  estimated  that 
the  Juke  family  would  consist  of  1200  persons  were  it  possible  to  have 
traced  all  the  lines  of  descent  from  the  original  six  sisters.  Of  the 
709  whom  he  studied,  180  had  either  been  in  the  poorhouse  or  re¬ 
ceived  outdoor  relief  to  the  extent  of  eight  hundred  years.  There  had 
been  140  criminals  and  offenders,  60  habitual  thieves,  7  lives  sacri¬ 
ficed  by  murder,  50  common  prostitutes,  40  women  venereally  dis¬ 
eased  contaminating  440  persons,  and  30  prosecutions  in  bastardy. 
The  total  cost  to  the  State  of  New  York  of  this  one  group  of  mental 
and  social  degenerates  was  estimated,  for  a  period  of  seventy-five 
years  beginning  in  ti8oo,  at  $1,308,000. 

Jukes  to  1915  for  purposes  of  comparison.  In  the  present  investi¬ 
gation  2820  people  have  been  studied,  inclusive  of  all  considered  by 


37» 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Dugdale;  2094  were  of  Juke  blood  and  726  of  "X”  blood  who  mar¬ 
ried  into  the  Juke  family;  of  these  366  were  paupers,  while  171  were 
criminals  and  10  lives  have  been  sacrificed  by  murder.  In  school 
work  62  did  well,  288  did  fairly,  while  458  were  retarded  two  or  more 
years.  It  is  known  that  166  never  attended  school;  the  school  data 
for  the  rest  of  the  family  were  unobtainable.  There  were  282  intem¬ 
perate  and  277  harlots.  The  total  cost  to  the  State  had  been  esti¬ 
mated  at  $2,093,685. 

Habitat  and  social  status.  Most  of  the  original  Jukes  were  squat¬ 
ters  on  the  soil  and  became  owners  by  occupancy.  They  lived  in 
stone  or  log  houses,  usually  of  one  or  at  the  niost  two  rooms,  the  men, 
women,  and  children  intermingling  freely.  Here  the  Jukes  lived  for 
a  period  of  one  hundred  years.  The  cement  industry  was  discon¬ 
tinued  in  1880,  owing  to  the  introduction  of  Portland  cement,  and  a 
general  exodus  of  the  remaining  Jukes  took  place.  Now  there  is  not 
a  single  Juke  living  in  the  ancestral  area,  and  only  ruins  of  these 
abodes  remain. 

As  the  Jukes  increased  in  number  a  community  of  criminal  men, 
semi-industrious  laborers,  and  licentious  women  developed.  Children 
grew  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  poverty,  crime,  and  licentiousness..  The 
girls  and  young  women  of  these  families  were  very  comely  in  appear¬ 
ance  and  loose  in  morals.  This  combination  attracted  the  men  from 
a  nearby  city,  even  those  of  so-called  "good”  families.  These  illicit 
unions  brought  forth  many  an  illegitimate  child,  named  usually  after 
the  supposed  father ;  as  a  result  one  finds  among  the  Jukes  some  of 
the  most  honored  names  of  the  region.  In  this  way  syphilis  has  been 
spread  from  these  harlots  to  the  good  and  virtuous  wives  in  the  nearby 
community.  These  Jukes  were  and  are  still  so  despised  by  the  repu¬ 
table  communities  nearby  that  the  statement  of  Dugdale’s  that  "their 
family  name  had  come  to  be  used  generically  as  a  term  of  reproach” 
is  still  true.  If  anyone  in  the  community  now  commits  even  a  slight 
indiscretion  he  is  told  that  he  is  acting  like  a  "Juke.”1 2  The  owner 
of  one  factory  in  Z-  kept  a  list  of  Juke  names  in  his  office.  When 

1  Locally  instead  of  the  word  Juke  being  used  the  name  of  the  five  lakes  is  supplied . 

2Z  refers  to  a  city  of  20,000  people  near  the  five-lake  region  where  the  Jukes 
lived.  Z  County  is  the  county  in  which  Z  is  situated  ami  is  the  present  home 
of  many  of  the  Jukes.  Y  is  a  small  village  in  Z  County,  about  one  mile  from  the 
lake  region. 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 


3  79 


anyone  applied  for  employment  and  his  family  name  appeared  in  the 
list,  he  was  refused  work.  Such  is  the  feeling  of  the  community 
towards  the  Jukes. 

The  first  two  generations  oj  Jukes.  It  was  in  this  region,  inacces¬ 
sible  and  unfertile,  that  Max  was  born  somewhere  between  1720  and 
1740.  He  is  described  as  "a  hunter  and  fisher,  a  hard  drinker,  jolly 
and  companionable,  and  averse  to  steady  toil.”  He  had  many  chil¬ 
dren —  two  of  whom,  Harry  and  Harvey,  married  two  out  of  six 
sisters.  All  these  six  sisters  were  children  of  the  same  mother  and 
four  bore  the  same  family  name,  while  the  name  of  two  seems  to  be 
obscure,  and  these  are  for  this  reason  assumed  to  be  illegitimate. 
One  of  these  six  sisters  left  the  country  and  nothing  is  known  of 
her.  The  other  five  are  the  renowned  Juke  sisters,  Ada,  Bell,  Clara, 
Delia,  and  Effie. 

Ada,  who  is  better  known  both  in  Z  County  and  to  the  general 
public  as  -'Margaret,  the  mother  of  criminals,”  was  born  about  1755. 
She  had  one  bastard  child,  Alexander.  The  group  of  Jukes  that  de¬ 
scended  from  Alexander  is  called  the  illegitimate  posterity  of  Ada. 
Soon  after  this,  Ada  married  Lem,  and  had  four  legitimate  children, 
who  formed  the  legitimate  posterity  of  Ada.  Ada  was  temperate 
and  healthy,  but  not  industrious,  and  in  her  old  age  received  poor 
relief.  Lem  is  described  by  Dugdale  as  follows:  "Laborer;  lazy;  no 
property  ;  outdoor  relief  ;  healthy  ;  temperate  ;  thief ;  received  thirty 
lashes  for  sheep  stealing;  died  1810.” 

Bell,  sister  of  Ada,  had  four  bastard  children  before  marriage,  three 
of  them  mulattoes.  She  was  unindustrious  and  a  pauper,  much  like 
her  sister.  She  had  no  property,  received  outdoor  relief,  and  was 
temperate.  She  married  Bruce,  and  died  in  1832.  Bruce  was  a 
Revolutionary  soldier  and  received  a  pension.  He  was  not  indus¬ 
trious,  never  acquired  any  property,  and  received  outdoor  relief.  He 
was  temperate  and  not  criminal.  They  had  four  legitimate  children. 

Clara,  the  third  of  the  five  sisters,  was  reputed  chaste.  She  married 
Lawrence,  who  was  licentious  and  had  shot  a  man.  Delia,  the  fourth 
sister,  had  two  bastard  and  five  legitimate  children.  Of  Delia  nothing 
is  known  further  than  that  she  was  a  prostitute.  She  married  Harry, 
son  of  old  Max.  Nothing  is  known  of  Harry.  The  bastard  children  of 
Delia  had  no  offspring.  There  is  no  personal  information  about  Effie, 
the  last  of  the  five  sisters.  She  married  Harvey,  the  other  son 


380 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


of  old  Max  mentioned  above,  who  was  probably  a  thief.  They  had 
four  children. 

Population.  In  this  study  2820  individuals  have  been  considered. 
Following  Dugdale’s  terminology,  the  "Jukes”  are  all  of  those  de- 
cended  from  the  common  mother,  generation  I,  of  the  "five  original 
Juke  sisters.”  All  others  who  married  into  or  consorted  with  the  Juke 
blood  are  called  "X”  blood.  Table  I  gives  the  numbers  of  Jukes  and 
of  "X”  blood  grouped  by  generations. 


Table  I.  Population  by  Generations 


Generation  • 

Juke 

"X” 

Total 

I . .  . 

I 

1 

2 

II . . 

5 

5 

10 

Ill . 

35 

22 

57 

IV . 

106 

69 

175 

V . 

269 

i95 

464 

VI . 

74i 

330 

1071 

VII . .  . 

792 

96 

888 

VIII . 

IX . 

143 

2 

8 

151 

2 

Total . 

2094 

726 

2820 

(Dugdale) . 

(54o) 

(169) 

(709) 

Of  the  2094  Jukes  enumerated,  378  died  under  the  age  of  five 
years.  There  are  1258  of  the  described  Jukes  now  living,  scattered 
throughout  twenty  States  of  the  Union  and  in  Canada.  Although 
many  are  old,  the  great  majority  are  now  in  the  prime  of  life  and 
reproducing  continually.  The  younger  generation  is  still  in  school. 
The  Jukes  of  to-day  are  to  be  found  in  all  classes  of  society.  The 
good  citizen,  prosperous  and  rearing  a  family  with  good  moral  and 
mental  stamina,  has  earned  his  place  in  the  community.  Then  there 
is  the  more  numerous  class,  composed  of  steady,  hard-working  persons 
who  toil  from  day  to  day  at  semi-skilled  or  unskilled  labor  and  make 
no  deep  impression  on  the  community,  but  rear  their  children  as  well 
as  their  limited  outlook  on  the  world  will  allow,  endeavoring  at  least 
to  rear  them  to  the  parental  social  level.  Again,  there  is  the  scum  of 
society  represented  among  the  Jukes.  These  are  inefficient  and  indo- 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 


381 

lent,  unwilling  or  unable  to  take  advantage  of  any  opportunity  which 
offers  itself  or  is  offered  to  them.  These  form  the  real  social  problem 
of  the  Jukes  of  to-day. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  to  classify  the  living  Jukes  into  these 
three  classes.  There  are  748  Jukes  over  the  age  of  fifteen  considered 
in  this  connection.  There  are,  roughly  speaking,  76  in  the  first  class, 
the  socially  adequate;  255  individuals  are  doing  fairly  well;  323  are 
typical  Jukes  of  the  kind  described  by  Dugdale ;  and  94  were  un¬ 
classified,  due  to  lack  of  sufficient  information.  The  writer  realizes 
that  these  figures  mean  little  except  to  give  a  comparative  idea  of  the 
general  proportion  of  the  three  classes.  As  time  goes  on  many  of  the 
younger  ones  classed  as  "doing  poorly”  may,  through  added  respon¬ 
sibility  and  as  the  result  of  experience,  enter  the  second  or  even  the 
first  class.  Those  who  remain,  not  profiting  by  experience,  are  the 
mentally  deficient,  for  whom  nothing  can  be  done  except  to  give  con¬ 
tinual  oversight  and  custodial  care. 

Fecundity.  An  analysis  of  the  figures  of  the  Jukes  in  regard  to  the 
birth-rate  shows  that  of  a  total  of  403  married  Juke  women,  330  re¬ 
produced  one  or  more  children  and  73  were  barren.  The  average 
fecundity,  counting  those  who  are  barren,  is  3.526  children  per  female. 
The  330  women  having  children  have  an  average  fecundity  of  4.306 
as  compared  with  that  of  4.025,  based  on  120  reproducing  women  in 
the  Nam  family.  On  the  other  hand,  265  of  "X”  blood  in  the  Juke 
study,  including  71  barren,  had  an  average  fecundity  of  2.554. 

Consanguinity  in  marriage.  In  looking  over  the  marriage  statistics 
in  the  Juke  family,  there  are  found  20  first-cousin  matings,  20  second- 
cousin,  20  third-cousin,  8  fourth-cousin,  and  1  fifth-cousin.  There 
were  in  all  772  out-matings.  Of  all  the  matings,  therefore,  9  per 
cent  are  consanguineous,  an  amount  much  less  than  that  found  in  the 
Nams,  which  had  22  per  cent.  It  is  found  that  23  per  cent  of  the 
total  matings  in  generation  III  are  consanguineous.  At  that  time 
the  Jukes  had  not  dispersed  from  their  original  home.  The  physical 
barriers  prevented  their  seeking  consorts  from  elsewhere,  and  the 
natural  aversion  of  better  families  near  by  toward  the  Jukes  aided 
this  consanguinity  by  forcing  Jukes  to  marry  Jukes.  In  generation  IV 
we  find  only  20  per  cent  of  consanguineous  matings.  In  generation  V, 
with  the  beginning  of  the  wholesale  removal  of  the  Jukes  to  other 
places,  the  amount  of  consanguinity  drops  to  12  per  cent.  In  the 


3^2 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Nams  it  will  be  remembered  that  little  dispersal  had  taken  place  until 
recently  and  then  not  to  such  distant  localities.  The  amount  of 
consanguinity  is  decreased  to  5  per  cent  in  generation  VI,  which  is 
scattered  much  more  widely  than  generation  V ;  also  many  of  genera¬ 
tion  VI  are  under  marriageable  age.  In  generation  VII  most  of  the 
individuals  are  still  young. 

As  the  Jukes  in  the  sixth  and  seventh  generations  scattered  here 
and  there,  they  mated  with  other  families  rather  than  with  their  own, 
but  they  tended  to  marry  like-to-like,  and  where  there  was  the  com¬ 
mon  defect  in  the  germ-plasm  the  out-matings  into  defective  germ- 
plasms  were  as  baneful  in  results  as  cousin-mating  in  Juke  stock. 
Consanguineous  marriages  are  less  a  cause  of  degeneration  than  an 
indication  of  the  geographical  barriers  of  a  region  that  prohibit  the  free 
choice  of  mates  and  intensify  the  tendency  of  like  to  mate  with  like. 

Harlotry.  It  will  be  interesting  to  take  the  mere  aggregate  figures 
of  harlotry  and  compare  the  Jukes  of  to-day  with  those  living  previous 
to  1874.  Table  III  of  Dugdale’s  book  shows  that  84  of  162  marriage¬ 
able  women  in  the  Juke  blood  were  harlots,  making  a  percentage  of 
harlotry  of  52.4.  To-day  there  are  541  female  Jukes  of  marriageable 
age  (including  those  of  Dugdale),  277  of  whom  have  been  harlots, 
or  51.20  per  cent.  It  is  obvious  from  these  figures  that  harlotry  has 
decreased  but  little  in  the  Juke  blood. 

Pauperism.  In  1874  Dugdale  recorded  148  Jukes  and  58  of  "X” 
blood  who  received  pauper  relief  either  in  their  own  homes  or  in 
almshouses.  The  cost  of  this  poor  relief  from  1800  to  1875  was 
$20,680.  Many  of  the  poor-master’s  books  were  missing  in  Dugdale’s 
time ;  in  fact,  only  one-third  of  the  poor  records  of  that  period  were 
available  to  Dugdale  for  study.  Since  1875,  as  before,  each  poor- 
master  has  kept  his  own  records  and  these  are  very  incomplete.  At 
the  end  of  the  poor-master’s  term  of  office  the  record  was  either  pur¬ 
posely  destroyed  or  often  thrown  away  as  valueless.  I  have  been 
unable,  therefore,  to  make  complete  research  into  the  amount  of  out¬ 
door  relief  given  to  the  Jukes  in  their  homes  during  the  past  forty 
years.  The  amount  of  almshouse  care  is  taken  from  official  records. 
When  poor  relief  is  noted  in  the  description,  the  data  come  from 
official  records  or  the  memory  of  poor-masters  or  other  reliable  persons. 
The  statistical  summary  gives  129  Jukes  and  48  of  "X”  blood  re¬ 
ceiving  poor  relief  to  the  extent  of  eight  hundred  and  fifteen  years, 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 


38.3 


and  170  Jukes  and  19  of  "X7’  blood  receiving  almshouse  care  to  the 
extent  of  four  hundred  and  ninety-five  years.  Dugdale  estimated  the 
cost  of  poor  relief  to  1875  $20,680.  As  outdoor  relief  now  averages 

$30  a  year  per  recipient  in  the  Juke  region,  and  almshouse  or  institu¬ 
tional  care  (for  children)  will  average  $150  per  year,  the  total  cost 
of  the  poor  relief  since  that  time  is  estimated  at  $2430  for  outdoor 
relief  and  $60,600  in  almshouse  care,  making  a  total  of  $83,710  of 
public  money  disbursed  for  poor  relief. 

Intemperance.  The  Jukes  have  no  distinctive  or  characteristic 
groups  of  alcoholics,  such  as  characterized  the  Nams.  Of  the  Jukes 
181,  and  of  "X77  blood  10 1,  are  classed  as  intemperate,  and  the  occa¬ 
sional  drunkards,  as  well  as  the  steady  drinkers,  are  included  in  this 
total.  These  are  scattered  through  the  whole  Juke  family. 

Crime.  There  are  118  criminals  of  Juke  blood  and  53  of  "X77 
blood  in  the  Juke  study.  The  amount  of  crime  in  the  Jukes  has  not 
increased  relatively  as  fast  as  the  population,  and  there  are  not  as 
many  vicious  criminals  to-day  as  at  the  time  when  Dugdale  studied 
them.  The  marked  criminality  in  Dugdale’s  time,  which  led  to  his 
study  of  this  family  and  which  has  characterized  the  Jukes  as  distinc¬ 
tive  from  other  families,  is  now  no  longer  found.  The  dispersal  of  the 
family  in  1880  has  prevented  the  congregate  stealing,  and  so  the 
crimes  which  are  now  committed  are  more  often  the  product  of  a 
single  brain  than  formerly  and  not  so  daring.  The  illegitimate  group 
of  Ada’s  descendants  are  to-day  more  criminal  than  the  rest  of  the 
family,  yet  even  among  these,  many  families  of  law-abiding  citizens 
may  be  found. 

The  offspring  are  classified  according  to  the  mating  of  the  parents. 
Six  matings  of  criminal  X  criminal  produce  58  per  cent  criminals, 
16  per  cent  sex  offenders,  6  per  cent  criminalistic,  while  19  per  cent 
are  self-controlled. 

If  criminality  is  a  recessive  trait,  a  C  x  C  mating  should  produce 
100  per  cent  criminal  offspring.  If  self-control  is  recessive,  then  an 
H  X  H  mating  should  give  100  per  cent  honest  offspring.  The  two 
groupings  above  show  that  neither  the  C  X  C  nor  H  X  H  matings 
give  100  per  cent  of  that  trait  in  the  offspring,  irrespective  of  whether 
the  sex  offenders  are  classed  with  the  criminal  or  the  controlled. 
There  is,  indeed,  no  good  reason  for  regarding  criminality  as  a  unit 
biological  trait. 


384 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Changed  Environment 

Voluntary  removals  to  a  new  country.  The  home  of  the  first  Jukes 
was  a  rock-rimmed  area  of  a  few  acres.  In  1850  the  population  of 
this  area  had  gradually  become  more  dense  and  some  of  the  more 
energetic  and  active  Jukes  migrated  to  neighboring  communities  and 
settled  there.  The  cement  mines  closed  in  1870,  and  the  remaining 
Jukes  in  the  ancestral  area  left,  since  no  steady  occupation  remained 
for  anyone.  The  more  feeble-minded  and  shiftless  ones  removed  to 
other  localities  physiographically  similar  to  the  one  in  which  they  had 
lived,  but  rather  nearer  the  centers  of  population  and  the  prosperous 
farming  areas.  The  energetic  ones  went  into  good  farming  sections 
or  into  the  cities.  At  this  time  several  groups  went  to  Connecticut, 
others  to  New  York  City  or  its  environs,  while  others  went  to 
New  Jersey. 

Ella,  of  Juke  blood,  married  Homer,  of  outside  blood,  went  West 
in  1850,  as  mentioned  above,  and  finally  settled  in  Minnesota,  where 
they  reared  seven  children,  who  in  turn  have  produced  many  offspring. 

The  descendants  of  the  Ella-Homer  marriage  have  all  been  brought 
up  in  Minnesota,  in  a  community  entirely  unlike  the  Juke  home 
community  and  where  they  were  not  handicapped  on  account  of  their 
family  name.  Only  two  of  the  descendants  of  Ella  can  be  called 
socially  good  citizens.  The  rest  are  either  mentally  defective,  licen¬ 
tious,  semi-industrious,  or  dishonest.  The  only  explanation  of  this 
is  heredity :  the  common  ancestor  of  this  western  group,  Ella,  herself 
not  anti-social,  had  brothers  and  sisters  who  were  the  most  vicious 
and  depraved  of  all  the  Jukes.  These  same  traits  have  appeared  in 
her  children,  though  not  to  such  a  marked  degree  and  consequently 
not  so  capable  of  social  damage.  Not  one  of  this  western  group  has 
ever  been  arrested,  although  several  are  dishonest  and  have  stolen 
money,  and  many  are  licentious.  Here  heredity  has  been  more  potent 
than  the  environment,  but  the  behavior  of  the  anti-social  individuals 
produced  in  this  group  has  been  tempered  by  an  improved  environ¬ 
ment.  The  future  of  this  group  looks  more  hopeful,  as  the  younger 
generation  is  marrying  into  better  stocks,  and  so  the  general  mental 
and  social  average  of  this  family  will  gradually  rise. 

Involuntary  removals.  Society,  through  its  charity  organizations, 
has  taken  many  Juke  children  from  poor  living  conditions  and  trans- 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 


385 


f erred  them  to  distant  homes.  Out  of  118  individuals,  33  have  been 
placed  in  foster  homes  either  in  the  Juke  region,  in  New  York  State, 
or  in  the  Middle  West;  16  of  these  33  have  been  placed  in  foster 
homes  in  the  Middle  West,  where  there  is  little  chance  that  they  will 
return  to  their  Juke  brethren ;  7  of  these  are  doing  well ;  9  are  doing 
poorly.  A  child  is  classed  as  doing  poorly  if  he  is  three  or  more  years 
retarded  in  his  school  work  (providing  he  has  attended  school  regu¬ 
larly  for  several  years)  and  does  not  respond  to  the  customs  and  rules 
of  the  home  in  which  he  is  placed.  There  were  17  placed  in  foster 
homes  in  or  near  New  York  State ;  trace  of  2  of  these  has  been  lost, 
8  are  doing  well,  while  7  have  done  poorly.  When  it  is  considered  that 
in  all  probability  all  of  these  would  have  been  poor  citizens  had  they 
remained  in  the  environment  from  which  they  were  taken,  the  result 
would  seem  to  approve  the  action  of  society  in  removing  them  from 
their  poor  surroundings.  But  such  approval  can  not  be  given  un¬ 
reservedly.  All  of  them,  with  perhaps  the  exception  of  three  or  four, 
must  carry  in  their  germ-plasm  the  determiners  for  certain  undesirable 
traits,  such  as  alcoholism,  epilepsy,  and  licentiousness.  This  is  shown 
by  a  study  of  their  immediate  ancestors.  Unless  these  individuals 
mate  intelligently  with  a  thought  to  their  future  offspring  much  social 
damage  may  be  done  by  introducing  into  new  localities  germ-plasms 
such  as  these  of  the  Jukes.  A  member  of  this  family  (VI  226), 
whose  parents  were  criminal,  was  placed  out  in  the  Middle  West  when 
nine  years  old  and  adopted  into  a  good  family.  At  forty-two  he  is 
married  and  procreating  children  who,  though  young,  already  show 
retardation  in  their  school  work.  It  would  have  been  better  for  the 
future  race  had  these  parents  been  kept  under  some  sort  of  super¬ 
vision  and  their  capacity  for  reproduction  restricted.  The  nine  so¬ 
cially  unfit,  now  in  the  Middle  West,  will  likely  mate  with  others  like 
themselves  and  so  start  new  Juke  strains.  The  seven  now  in  the 
West  who  are  doing  well  will  mate  higher  than  the  others,  but  their 
hidden  defects,  present  in  the  germ-plasm,  may  crop  out  and  so  cause 
social  and  mental  deficiency.  Not  even  the  improved  environment 
counteracts  the  innate  defects  of  the  Jukes. 

Insanity.  Only  four  cases  of  insanity  have  been  found  among  the 
Jukes.  In  comparison  with  the  general  population  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  where  all  the  insane  Jukes  live,  there  is  less  insanity  among 
the  Jukes  pro  rata  than  in  the  whole  population.  There  is  approxi- 


386 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


mately  i  insane  person  to  every  300  of  the  population  in  the  State 
at  large,  while,  among  the  Jukes  there  is  only  1  to  500,  or  1  to  400,  if 
the  Jukes  who  died  in  infancy  are  deducted  from  the  total. 

Epilepsy.  Nine  cases  of  epilepsy  are  recorded  among  the  Jukes. 
As  no  survey  of  New  York  State  has  been  made  for  the  frequency  of 
this  disease  in  the  population  it  is  impossible  to  make  a  comparison 
between  the  amount  of  epilepsy  in  this  group  and  in  the  general 
population.  In  New  Jersey  a  partial  survey  indicates  1  epileptic  to 
every  1100  of  the  population.  The  proportion  in  the  Jukes  is  1 
epileptic  to  every  230.  Of  these  cases  7  are  scattered,  while  2  are 
closely  related,  being  grandmother  and  granddaughter.  The  mating  of 
epilepsy  in  Adelaide  and  of  alcoholism  in  Lester  produced  1  female 
with  migraine,  1  neurotic  and  now  addicted  to  drugs,  1  eccentric,  3 
persons  with  no  nervous  affections,  and  3  dead.  The  first  of  these, 
with  severe  migraine,  married  an  alcoholic  and  produced  1  epileptic, 
1  sex  offender,  and  1  who  died  in  infancy.  Here  the  epilepsy  is  clearly 
inherited.  On  one  side  of  the  ancestry  is  a  neuropathic  strain,  on  the 
other,  alcoholism. 

Eugenic  matings.  A  rough  classification  of  the  399  fertile  marriages 
among  the  Jukes  gives  176  eugenic  matings  and  223  cacogenic  mat¬ 
ings.  In  the  opinion  of  the  writer,  who  has  studied  the  people  and 
their  offspring,  55  per  cent  of  the  matings  are  detrimental  to  the 
forward  progress  of  the  Juke  family,  while  45  per  cent  may  be  con¬ 
sidered  eugenic  or  beneficial.  The  standard  of  a  eugenic  mating  has 
been  put  low,  as  it  is  desired  to  give  everyone  the  benefit  of  the  effect 
of  environment.  Had  these  cacogenic  matings  been  forbidden  or  if 
offspring  had  been  prevented  by  sterilization,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  in 
the  next  generation  less  than  5  per  cent  of  the  whole  offspring  would 
have  shown  undesirable  traits.  As  it  is  now,  with  unrestricted  re¬ 
production,  over  half  the  offspring  either  is  mentally  defective  or  has 
anti-social  traits. 

Social  damage.  Dugdale  estimated  a  loss  to  society  of  $1,250,000 
by  the  Juke  family  from  1800  to  1875,  not  including  the  drink  bill. 
The  loss  to  society  caused  by  mental  deficiency,  crime,  prostitution, 
syphilis,  and  pauperism  of  these  2800  people  is  estimated  now  at 
$2,093,685.  If  the  drink  bill  is  added,  this  total  becomes  $2,516,685. 
It  is  estimated  that  $648,000  of  pension  money  has  been  paid  to  the 
Jukes.  Much,  if  not  most  of  this,  has  been  spent  for  whisky  and  the 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY  387 

rest  has  furnished  support  which  in  most  cases  would  otherwise  have 
been  furnished  by  pauper  relief. 

To  counterbalance  this  co^Jt,  the  earnings  of  three  individuals  (num¬ 
bered  V  106,  VI  89,  and  VI  140)  total  Si 60,000,  and  some  of  the  other 
Jukes  are  self-supporting,  but  the  earning  power  of  the  few  industrious 
Jukes  cannot  overbalance  this  deficit  to  society. 


Table  XVI.  Financial  Estimate  of  Cost  of  Jukes  to  Society 


(Statement  modeled  after  that  of  Dugdale,  for  comparison  with  his.) 


Total  number  of  persons . 

Number  of  pauperized  adults . 

Cost  of  almshouse  relief,  $150  per  year . 

Cost  of  outdoor  relief . 

Number  of  criminals . 

Years  of  imprisonment  ....  * . 

Cost  of  maintenance,  at  $200  per  year . 

Cost  of  Willett-Lillie  murder . 

Number  of  arrests  and  trials . 

Cost  $100  each . 

Number  of  habitual  thieves . 

Number  of  years  of  depredation,  at  twelve  years  each  . 

Cost,  at  $120  per  year . 

Number  of  lives  sacrificed  by  murder . 

Value,-  $1200  each . 

Number  of  prostitutes . 

Average  number  of  years  of  debauch . 

Total  number  of  years  of  debauch . 

Cost  of  maintenance,  at  $300  each  per  year  .... 

Number  of  women  specifically  diseased . 

Average  number  of  men  each  woman  contaminated  with 

permanent  disease . 

Total  men  contaminated . 

Wives  contaminated  by  above  men . 

Total  number  of  persons  contaminated . 

Cost  of  treatment  rest  of  life,  $50  each . 

Loss  of  wages  by  550  men,  three  years  each  . 

Loss,  at  $400  per  year . 

Total  number  of  years  lost  from  productive  industry  by 

courtesans,  five  years  each . 

Loss,  at  $125  per  year . 

Loss  in  curtailment  of  life  of  660  people,  equivalent  to  65 

people,  at  $1200 . 

Aggregate  of  children  who  died  prematurely  .  .  .  . 

Cash  cost,  $50  each  child . 


2820 

366 

$70,200 

• 

13,510 

171 

375 

75,000 

13,000 

300 

30,000 

80 

960 

115,200 

10 

1 2 ,000 

175 

15 

2625 

787,500 

55 

10 

55o 

55 

660 

33,ooo 

1650 

660,000 

875 

109,375 

78,000 

378 

18,900 

aThis  figure  is  based  on  the  estimate  of  Dugdale,  The  Jukes  (4th  ed.),  p.  29. 


-88  THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Number  of  prosecutions  in  bastardy .  4° 

Cost,  at  $100  each .  $4,000 

Cost  of  property  destroyed  in  brawls .  20,000 

Capital  in  brothels . 6,000 

Compound  interest,  twenty-six  years,  at  6  per  cent  .  .  18,000 

Charity  distributed  by  church .  20,000 

Charity  obtained  by  begging .  10,000 

Total .  $2,093,685 

Drink  bill,  282  intemperate,  losing  an  average  of  $50  per  year 

for  thirty  years .  423,000 

•  - 

Grand  total .  $2,516,685 

Note.  Pension  money  paid  to  Jukes  as  Civil  War  soldiers  or 

soldiers’  widows .  $648,000 

Note.  Total  earnings  of  three  productive  Jukes: 

Earnings  of  V  106 . * . $100,000 

Earnings  of  VI  140 . 10,000 

Earnings  of  VI  89 . 50,000 

Total  earnings  of  three  well-to-do  Jukes .  $160,000 


Statistical  summaries  oj  the  Jukes.  Twelve  hundred  and  fifty-eight 
individuals  descended  from  the  five  original  Juke  sisters  are  living  in 
1915  ;  186  of  these  are  under  the  age  of  six,  the  majority  of  whom  are 
in  average,  good,  moral  homes,  i.e.,  under  good  environment.  It  will 
be  of  value  to  eugenics  to  study  these  after  they  have  reached  ma¬ 
turity.  Three  hundred  and  twenty-four  Jukes  are  between  the  ages  of 
six  and  fifteen. 

A  study  of  all  males  of  the  Jukes  who  are  now  living  over  the  age 
of  nineteen,  and  all  females  over  the  age  of  fifteen,  shows  that  65  are 
classed  as  good  citizens,  255  as  "fair”  in  their  social  reaction,  while 
305  are  anti-social  in  their  behavior,  a  detriment  to  society.  Three 
hundred  and  five,  or  43  per  cent,  of  a  total  of  705  in  this  group  are 
inimical  to  the  general  welfare  of  the  community ;  51  of  these  are  pros¬ 
titutes  at  present,  while  82  others  have  been  prostitutes  at  one  time  or 
another  but  are  not  now  so;  41  are  criminal,  and  103  are  marked 
cases  of  mental  defect ;  83  are  intemperate ;  152  are  industrious. 

General  summary.  The  primary  aim  of  this  work  is  to  present  the 
facts  of  the  lives  of  the  Jukes.  For  the  past  one  hundred  and  thirty 
years  they  have  increased  from  five  sisters  to  a  family  which  numbers 
2094  people,  of  whom  1258  were  living  in  1915.  One  half  of  the  Jukes 


HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY 


389 


were  and  are  feeble-minded,  mentally  incapable  of  responding  nor¬ 
mally  to  the  expectations  of  society,  brought  up  under  faulty  environ¬ 
mental  conditions  which  they  consider  normal,  satisfied  with  the 
fulfillment  of  natural  passions  and  desires,  and  with  no  ambition  or 
ideals  in  life.  The  other  half,  perhaps  normal  mentally  and  emo¬ 
tionally,  has  become  socially  adequate  or  inadequate,  depending  on 
the  chance  of  the  individual  reaching  or  failing  to  reach  an  environ¬ 
ment  which  would  mold  and  stimulate  his  inherited  social  traits. 

This  study  demonstrates  the  following : 

1.  Cousin-matings  in  defective  germ-plasms  are  undesirable,  since 
they  produce  defective  offspring  irrespective  of  the  parents’  somatic 
make-up. 

2.  There  is  an  hereditary  factor  in  licentiousness,  but  there  are 
those  among  the  Jukes  who  are  capable  of  meeting  the  requirements 
of  the  mores  in  sex  matters  if  only  great  social  pressure  is  brought  to 
bear  upon  them. 

3.  Pauperism  is  an  indication  of  weakness,  physical  or  mental. 

4.  All  of  the  Juke  criminals  were  feeble-minded,  and  the  eradica¬ 
tion  of  crime  in  defective  stocks  depends  upon  the  elimination  of 
mental  deficiency. 

5.  Removal  of  Jukes  from  their  original  habitat  to  new  regions  is 
beneficial  to  the  stock  itself,  as  better  social  pressure  is  brought  to 
bear  on  them,  and  there  is  a  chance  of  mating  into  better  families. 

6.  One  in  four  of  the  Jukes  is  improved  socially  by  care  in  Chil¬ 
dren’s  Institutions. 

7.  Penal  institutions  have  little  beneficial  influence  upon  persons 
of  defective  mentality. 

The  natural  question  which  arises  in  the  reader’s  mind  is,  What  can 
be  done  to  prevent  the  breeding  of  these  defectives?  Two  practical 
solutions  of  this  problem  are  apparent.  One  of  these  is  the  permanent 
custodial  care  of  the  feeble-minded  men  and  all  feeble-minded  women 
of  child-bearing  age.  The  other  is  the  sterilization  of  those  whose 
germ-plasm  contains  the  defects  which  society  wishes  to  eliminate. 

The  first  is  practicable,  since  there  are  now  many  custodial  institu¬ 
tions  for  the  feeble-minded  and  epileptic,  and  in  some  of  these  the 
patients  are  partially  self-supporting.  These  institutions  should  be 
increased  in  number  and  capacity  to  receive  all  the  defectives  now  at 
large.  Out  of  approximately  six  hundred  living  feeble-minded  and 


390 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


epileptic  Jukes,  there  are  now  only  three  in  custodial  care.  It  is  esti¬ 
mated  that  at  the  end  of  fifty  years  the  defective  germ-plasm  would  be 
practically  eliminated  by  the  segregation  of  all  of  the  six  hundred. 

Note  on  the  Heredity  of  Feeble-Mindedness1 

Evidence  is  daily  accumulating,  even  if  it  is  not  yet  entirely  convincing, 
that  feeble-mindedness  is  to  a  great  extent  an  hereditary  condition.  The 
following  table  summarizing  Goddard’s  data2  shows  how  accurately  this  is 
borne  out  by  actual  field  investigations: 


HEREDITY  OF  FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  (MENDELIAN) 


Feeble-Minded 

Normal 

Type  of 

Number 

Total 

Dead  and 
Mental- 

Offspring 

Offspring 

OF 

Matings 

Mating3 

Offspring 

ity  Unde¬ 
termined 

Actual 

Findings 

Theoretical 

Expecta¬ 

tion 

Actual 

Findings 

Theoretical 

Expecta¬ 

tion 

FF-FF 

144 

749 

267 

476 

482 

6 

none 

FF-NF 

122 

698 

327 

193 

VH 

00 

i85;4 

FF-NN 

18 

66 

32 

none 

none 

34 

34 

NF-NF 

33 

212 

66 

39 

364 

107 

1 09  V 

NF-NN 

7 

27 

4 

none 

none 

23 

23 

Totals 

324 

1752 

696 

708 

704 

348 

352 

The  close  correspondence  between  actual  findings  and  theoretical  ex¬ 
pectation  in  the  above  table  is  most  remarkable  and  strongly  confirms  the 
assumption  that  feeble-mindedness  is  a  distinct  hereditable  condition.  On 
the  one  hand,  708  feeble-minded  individuals  were  found,  when  one  would 
theoretically  expect  704,  and  on  the  other  hand,  348  normals  were  found, 
when  one  would  theoretically  expect  352.  No  controlled  experiments  could 
yield  any  greater  conformity  between  accepted  theory  and  actual  results. 

1From  "The  Borderlines  of  Mental  Deficiency,”  by  Samuel  C.  Kohs,  Psy¬ 
chologist  in  the  Chicago  House  of  Correction,  Proceedings  of  the  National  Con¬ 
ference  of  Charities  and  Correction ,  iqi6,  p.  282. 

2H.  H.  Goddard,  Feeble-mindedness :  its  Causes  and  Consequences.  The  Mac¬ 
millan  Company,  New  York,  1Q14.  59Q  pages. 

3FF  indicates  an  individual  who  is  feeble-minded.  None  of  the  sperm  or  egg 
cells  produced  possess  the  determiner  or  the  combination  of  determiners  or  fac¬ 
tors  which  makes  for  normal-mindedness.  NF  represents  a  normal  individual, 
half  of  Whose  germ  cells  are  capable  of  transmitting  normality,  and  half  not. 
NN  represents  a  normal  individual,  all  of  whose  germ  cells  transmit  the  potential¬ 
ity  for  normal  mental  development. 


CHAPTER  XV 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 

49.  The  Feeble-Minded  in  Institutions,  1910 1 

Feeble-mindedness  has  been  broadly  defined  as  comprising  all  de¬ 
grees  of  mental  defect  due  to  arrested  or  imperfect  mental  development 
as  a  result  of  which  the  person  so  affected  is  incapable  of  compet¬ 
ing  on  equal  terms  with  his  normal  fellows,  or  of  managing  himself 
or  his  affairs  with  ordinary  prudence.  The  feeble-minded  as  thus 
defined  range  in  mental  development  from  those  whose  mentality  does 
not  exceed  that  of  a  normal  child  of  two  years  to  those  whose  men¬ 
tality  is  as  high  as  that  of  a  child  of  twelve.  The  great  majority  of 
the  feeble-minded  are  not  confined  in  institutions  but  live  at  large; 
many  are  inmates  of  prisons  and  reformatories ;  many  others  are  in 
almshouses,  and  some  are  confined  in  hospitals  for  the  insane.  Only 
a  small  fraction  of  the  feeble-minded  are  taken  care  of  in  special 
institutions  designed  for  that  class,  but  the  development  of  recent 
years  is  in  the  direction  of  providing  such  institutions,  and  for  that 
reason  the  statistics  in  this  report  which  deals  with  the  inmates  of  this 
class  of  institutions  have  a  timely  social  significance.  In  1904  and 
again  in  1910  the  census  was  restricted  to  the  inmates  of  special 
institutions  for  this  class. 

As  late  as  1890  only  sixteen  states  had  provided  separate  institu¬ 
tions  for  the  feeble-minded,  and  the  number  of  such  institutions 
was  only  24.  In  1904  the  number  of  institutions  had  increased  to 
42,  and  the  number  of  states  making  such  provision  was  twenty-five. 
In  1910  there  were  63  institutions  reported  by  thirty-one  states. 
At  the  present  writing  (1914)  there  are  only  seven  states  which 
make  no  special  provision  for  this  class  of  defectives ;  and  in  an 
increasing  number  of  states  the  statutes  provide  for  their  transfer 

^rom  "The  Insane  and  Feeble-Minded  in  Institutions,”  pp.  183,  184,  190. 
Department  of  Commerce,  Bureau  of  the  Census,  iqio.  Government  Printing 
Office,  Washington,  1914. 

39i 


392 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


from  almshouses  to  separate  institutions  as  rapidly  as  possible.  In 
the  1890  census  the  institutional  population,  enumerated  as  feeble¬ 
minded,  included  5254  in  special  institutions  and  2469  in  hospitals 
for  the  insane;  and  in  addition  to  these  7811  inmates  of  almshouses 
were  returned  as  "idiots,”  making  a  total  of  15,534  feeble-minded  or 
idiots.  On  January  1,  1904,  a  total  of  30,898  feeble-minded  persons 
were  either  in  special  institutions  or  in  almshouses,  and  on  January  1, 
1910,  a  total  of  33,969. 

An  indication  of  the  situation  as  to  the  feeble-minded  in  a  single 
state  is  furnished  by  the  report  of  the  Massachusetts  state  board  of 
insanity,  which  has  charge  of  institutions  for  this  class.  According 
to  the  report  of  this  board  for  1912,  the  results  of  a  special  census  of 
the  feeble-minded  showed  a  total  of  5007  feeble-minded  enumerated 
in  the  general  population  (2640  males  and  2367  females).  In  addition, 
245  were  reported  by  overseers  of  the  poor,  making  5252  not  in  insti¬ 
tutions.  The  number  in  institutions  was  2587,  including  1915  in  two 
state  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded  and  672  in  state  hospitals  and 
asylums.  According  to  this  census  the  total  number  of  feeble-minded 
in  the  state  was  therefore  7839.  The  census  was  not  regarded  as  be¬ 
ing  complete,  but  it  is  of  interest  to  note  that  if  the  number  of  feeble¬ 
minded  in  proportion  to  total  population  was  the  same  for  the  entire 
United  States  as  it  was  in  Massachusetts  according  to  this  census,  the 
total  number  of  feeble-minded  would  be  over  200,000.  Probably  this 
may  be  regarded  as  a  conservative  estimate  of  the  number  of  feeble¬ 
minded  in  the  United  States.  It  would  indicate  that  not  over  one- 
tenth  of  the  feeble-minded  are  being  cared  for  in  special  institutions. 

A  large  proportion  of  the  feeble-minded  are  physically  defective — 
that  is,  blind,  deaf,  crippled,  maimed  or  deformed,  paralytic  or  epi¬ 
leptic.  Out  of  a  total  of  20,731  persons  enumerated  on  January  1, 
1910,  in  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded,  5246,  or  25.3  per  cent,  are 
reported  as  thus  defective,  while  of  the  3825  admitted  to  the  institu¬ 
tions  during  the  year,  910,  or  23.8  per  cent,  were  defective.1 

1  These  figures  will  be  displaced  by  the  census  of  the  feeble-minded  for  1922 
which  is  being  prepared  for  publication  by  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  as  this 
volume  goes  to  press. — Ed. 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


393 


50.  Education  of  the  Feeble-Minded1 

The  first  recorded  attempt  to  educate  an  idiot  was  made  about  the 
year  1800  by  Itard,  the  celebrated  physician-in-chief  to  the  National 
Institution  for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  at  Paris.  His  subject  was  a  boy 
found  wild  in  a  forest  in  the  centre  of  France  and  known  as  the 
"savage  of  Aveyron.”  "This  boy  could  not  speak  any  human  tongue, 
and  was  devoid  of  all  understanding  and  knowledge.”  Believing  him 
to  be  a  savage,  for  five  years  Itard  endeavored  with  great  skill  and 
perseverance  to  develop  at  the  same  time  the  intelligence  of  his  pupil 
and  the  theories  of  the  materialistic  school  of  philosophy.  Itard 
finally  became  convinced  that  this  boy  was  an  idiot  and  abandoned 
the  attempt  to  educate  him. 

In  1818  and  for  a  few  years  afterward,  several  idiotic  children  were 
received  and  given  instruction  at  the  American  Asylum  for  the  Deaf 
and  Dumb  at  Hartford,  and  a  fair  degree  of  improvement  in  their 
physical  condition,  habits,  and  speech  was  obtained. 

Ten  years  later  Dr.  Ferret,  physician  at  the  Bicetre  in  Paris,  at¬ 
tempted  to  teach  a  few  of  the  more  intelligent  idiots  who  were  con¬ 
fined  in  this  hospital  to  read  and  write  and  to  train  them  to  habits 
of  cleanliness  and  order.  In  1831  Dr.  Fabret  attempted  the  same 
work  at  the  Salpetriere;  and  in  1833  Dr.  Voisin  opened  his  private 
school  for  idiots  in  Paris.  None  of  these  attempts  was  successful 
enough  to  insure  its  continuance. 

In  1837  Dr.  E.  Seguin,  a  pupil  of  Itard  and  Esquirol,  began  the 
private  instruction  of  idiots  at  his  own  expense.  In  1842  he  was  made 
the  instructor  of  the  school  at  the  Bicetre  which  had  been  reopened 
by  Dr.  Voisin  in  1839.  Dr.  Seguin  remained  at  the  Bicetre  only  one 
year,  retiring  to  continue  the  work  in  his  private  school  in  the  Hospice 
des  Incurables.  After  seven  years  of  patient  work  and  experiments 
and  the  publication  of  two  or  three  pamphlets  describing  the  work,  a 
committee  from  the  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Paris  in  1844  examined 
critically  and  thoroughly  his  methods  of  training  and  educating  idiot 
children  and  reported  to  the  Academy,  giving  them  the  highest  com¬ 
mendation  and  declaring  that,  up  to  the  time  he  commenced  his  labors 

1By  Walter  E.  Fernald,  M.  D.,  Superintendent  of  the  Massachusetts  School  for 
the  Feeble-Minded.  From  "The  Growth  of  Provision  for  the  Feeble-Minded  in 
the  United  States,”  Mental  Hygiene ,  Vol.  I,  No.  1,  pp.  34-5Q. 


394 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


in  1837,  idiots  could  not  be  educated  by  any  means  previously  known  or 
practiced,  but  that  he  had  solved  the  problem.  His  work  thus  approved 
by  the  highest  authority,  Dr.  Seguin  continued  his  private  school  in 
Paris  until  the  Revolution  in  1848.  Then  he  came  to  America,  where 
he  was  instrumental  in  establishing  schools  for  idiots  in  various  States. 

In  1846  Dr.  Seguin  published  his  classical  and  comprehensive 
Treatise  on  Idiocy ,  which  was  crowned  by  the  Academy  and  has  con¬ 
tinued  up  to  the  present  time  to  be  the  standard  textbook  for  all 
interested  in  the  education  of  idiots.  His  elaborate  system  of  teaching 
and  training  idiots  consisted  in  the  careful  "  adaptation  of  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  physiology,  through  physiological  means  and  instruments,  to 
the  development  of  the  dynamic,  perceptive,  reflective,  and  spontane¬ 
ous  functions  of  youth.”  This  physiological  education  of  defective 
brains,  as  a  result  of  systematic  training  of  the  special  senses,  the 
functions  and  the  muscular  system,  was  looked  upon  as  a  visionary 
theory,  but  it  has  been  verified  and  confirmed  by  modern  experiments 
and  researches  in  physiological  psychology.  Dr.  Seguin’s  school  was 
visited  by  scientists  and  philanthropists  from  nearly  every  part  of  the 
civilized  world  and,  his  methods  bearing  the  test  of  experience,  schools 
were  soon  established  in  other  countries,  based  upon  these  methods. 

In  1842  Dr.  Guggenbuhl  established  a  school  upon  the  slope  of 
the  Abendenberg  in  Switzerland,  for  the  care  and  training  of  cretins, 
so  many  of  whom  are  found  in  the  valleys  of  the  Alps.  This  school 
was  so  successful  in  its  results  that  it  attracted  much  attention 
throughout  Europe.  At  Berlin,  in  1842,  a  school  for  the  instruction 
of  idiots  was  opened  by  Dr.  Saegert.  In  England  the  publication  of 
the  results  of  the  work  of  Drs.  Seguin,  Guggenbuhl,  and  Saegert  led, 
through  the  efforts  of  Drs.  Connolly  and  Reed,  to  the  establishment 
of  a  private  school  at  Bath  in  1846,  and  later  to  the  finely  appointed 
establishments  at  Colchester  and  Earlswood. 

The  published  description  of  the  methods  and  results  of  these 
European  schools  attracted  much  interest  and  attention  in  America. 
In  this  country  the  necessity  and  humanity  of  caring  for  and  scien¬ 
tifically  treating  the  insane,  the  deaf  and  dumb,  and  the  blind  had 
become  the  policy  of  many  of  our  most  progressive  States.  The  help¬ 
less,  neglected,  and  homeless  idiots  were  cared  for,  as  a  rule,  in  jails 
and  poorhouses.  A  few  who  had  been  received  at  the  special  schools 
for  the  deaf  and  dumb,  and  the  blind  showed  considerable  improve- 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


395 


ment  after  a  period  of  training.  Other  cases  who  were  especially 
troublesome  had  been  sent’  to  the  insane  hospitals,  where  it  was  shown 
that  the  habits  and  behavior  of  this  class  could  be  changed  very  much 
for  the  better.  In  their  reports  for  1845  Hrs.  Woodward  and  Brigham, 
superintendents  of  the  State  Insane  Hospitals  in  Massachusetts  and 
New  York  respectively,  urged  the  necessity  of  making  public  provision 
for  the  education  of  idiots  in  those  States.  On  the  13th  of  January, 
1846,  Dr.  F.  P.  Backus,  a  member  of  the  New  York  Senate,  made  the 
first  step  toward  any  legislative  action  in  this  country  in  behalf  of 
idiots  by  moving  that  the  portion  of  the  last  State  census  relating  to 
idiots  be  referred  to  the  committee  on  medical  societies,  of  which  he 
was  chairman.  On  the  following  day  he  made  an  able  report,  giving 
the  number  of  idiots  in  the  State,  a  brief  history  of  the  European 
schools,  with  a  description  of  their  methods  and  results,  and  showed 
conclusively  that  schools  for  idiots  were  a  want  of  the  age.  On  the 
25th  of  March  following  he  introduced  a  bill  providing  for  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  an  asylum  for  idiots.  The  bill  passed  the  Senate,  but  was 
defeated  in  the  Assembly. 

In  Massachusetts,  on  the  23d  of  January  in  the  same  year,  1846, 
Judge  Byington,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  moved 
an  order  providing  for  the  appointment  of  a  committee  to  "consider 
the  expediency  of  appointing  commissioners  to  inquire  into  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  idiots  in  the  Commonwealth,  to  ascertain  their  number,  and 
whether  anything  can  be  done  for  their  relief/7  This  order  was  passed 
and,  as  a  result,  a  board  of  three  commissioners  was  appointed,  of 
which  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe  was  chairman.  This  commission  made  a  report 
in  part  in  1847,  which  included  a  letter  from  Hon.  G.  S.  Sumner 
describing  in  glowing  terms  the  methods  and  results  of  the  school  of 
Dr.  Seguin  in  Paris.  In  March,  1848,  the  commission  made  a  com¬ 
plete  and  exhaustive  report,  with  statistical  tables  and  minute  details, 
and  recommended  the  opening  of  an  experimental  school.  This  report 
was  widely  circulated  throughout  America  and  Europe,  and  it  fur¬ 
nishes  to-day  the  basis  of  cyclopedic  literature  on  this  topic. 

By  a  resolve  passed  on  the  8th  of  May,  1848,  the  legislature  ap¬ 
propriated  $2500  annually  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  an  experi¬ 
mental  school,  with  the  proviso  that  ten  indigent  idiots  from  different 
parts  of  the  State  should  be  selected  for  instruction.  This  act  founded 
the  first  State  institution  in  America.  The  first  pupil  was  received  on 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


396 

the  1  st  of  October,  1848.  The  direction  of  the  school  was  undertaken 
by  Dr.  Howe  and  for  several  years  was  carried  on  in  connection  with 
the  Perkins  Institution  for  the  Blind,  of  which  he  was  the  director. 
Mr.  J.  B.  Richards  went  to  Europe  to  study  the  methods  of  the  foreign 
schools.  The  school  was  considered  so  successful  that  at  the  end  of  three 
years  the  legislature  doubled  the  appropriation  and  by  incorporation 
converted  the  experimental  school  into  a  permanent  one  under  the  name 
of  "The  Massachusetts  School  for  Idiotic  and  Feeble-minded  Youth.” 

Two  months  after  the  legislature  had  authorized  the  establishment 
of  this  institution,  a  private  school  was  opened  at  Barre,  Massachu¬ 
setts,  by  Dr.  H.  B.  Wilbur,  the  first  pupil  being  received  in  July,  1848. 
In  the  modest  announcement  of  the  project  Dr.  Wilbur  said,  "This 
institution  is  designed  for  the  education  and  management  of  all  chil¬ 
dren  who  by  reason  of  mental  infirmity  are  not  fit  subjects  for  ordi¬ 
nary  school  instruction.”  The  school  was  organized  on  the  family 
plan.  The  pupils  all  sat  at  the  same  table  with  the  principal,  and 
were  constantly  under  the  supervision  of  some  member  of  the  family 
in  the  hours  of  recreation  and  rest  as  well  as  of  training. 

In  the  State  of  New  York  the  legislative  attempt  which  was  de¬ 
feated  in  1846  was  renewed  in  1847,  when  the  bill  passed  the  Senate, 
to  be  again  defeated  in  the  Assembly.  The  necessity  for  action  was 
urged  in  the  governors’  annual  messages  in  1848,  J850,  and  1851. 
Finally,  in  July,  1851,  an  act  was  passed  appropriating  $6000  an¬ 
nually  for  two  years  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  an  experimental 
school  for  idiots.  A  suitable  building  near  Albany  was  rented  and 
the  school  opened  in  October,  1851.  The  trustees  selected  for  super¬ 
intendent  Dr.  H.  B.  Wilbur,  who  had  so  successfully  organized  and 
conducted  for  more  than  three  years  the  private  school  at  Barre.  In 
the  first  annual  report  of  the  trustees,  published  in  1851,  the  aims  and 
purposes  of  the  proposed  school  were  summed  up  as  follows : 

We  do  not  propose  to  create  or  supply  faculties  absolutely  wanting;  nor 
to  bring  all  grades  of  idiocy  to  the  same  standard  of  development  or  disci¬ 
pline  ;  nor  to  make  them  all  capable  of  sustaining  creditably  all  the  relations 
of  a  social  and  moral  life  ;  but  rather  to  give  to  dormant  faculties  the  great¬ 
est  possible  development,  and  to  apply  these  awakened  faculties  to  a  useful 
purpose  under  the  control  of  an  aroused  and  disciplined  will.  At  the  base 
of  all  our  efforts  lies  the  principle  that,  as  a  rule,  none  of  the  faculties  are 
absolutely  wanting,  but  dormant,  undeveloped  and  imperfect. 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


397 


This  school  attracted  much  attention  from  educators  and  others 
and  was  frequently  and  critically  inspected  by  the  members  of  the 
legislature  and  other  State  officials.  On  the  nth  of  April,  1853,  the 
.  legislature  authorized  the  erection  of  new  buildings.  The  citizens  of 
Syracuse  donated  the  land,  and  the  corner-stone  of  the  first  structure 
in  this  country  built  expressly  for  the  purpose  of  caring  for  and  train¬ 
ing  idiots  was  laid  September  8,  1854.  The  school  at  Syracuse  con¬ 
tinued  under  Dr.  Wilbur’s  direction  until  his  death  in  1883.  In  this 
school  the  physiological  method  of  education  was  most  thoroughly  and 
scientifically  carried  out  and  a  high  degree  of  success  attained. 

Pennsylvania  was  the  third  State  to  take  up  the  work.  In  the  win¬ 
ter  of  1852  a  private  school  for  idiots  was  opened  in  Germantown  by 
Mr.  J.  B.  Richards,  the  first  teacher  in  the  school  at  South  Boston. 
This  school  was  incorporated  April  7,  1853,  as  the  Pennsylvania 
Training  School  for  Idiotic  and  Feeble-minded  Children.  The  first 
money  received  for  its  support  was  raised  by  private  subscription. 
The  State  contributed  an  equal  sum.  In  1855  the  site  at  Elwyn  was 
secured  and  the  foundations  laid  for  the  present  magnificent  institu¬ 
tional  village  with  more  than  a  thousand  inmates. 

The  Ohio  Institution  at  Columbus  was  established  April  17,  1857, 
and  pupils  were  received  the  same  year.  The  State  of  Ohio  has  from 
the  beginning  provided  for  her  feeble-minded  children  on  a  liberal 
and  generous  scale.  The  institution  at  Columbus,  with  its  substantial 
buildings  and  splendid  equipment,  its  admirably  conducted  school 
and  industrial  departments,  has  been  made  one  of  the  best  institutions 
in  the  world  devoted  to  the  care  and  training  of  this  special  class. 

In  Connecticut,  in  1855,  a  State  commission  was  appointed  to 
investigate  the  conditions  of  the  idiotic  population  and  to  consider 
the  advisability  of  making  suitable  provision  for  the  education  of  this 
class.  The  report  of  this  commission  resulted  in  the  establishment  of 
the  Connecticut  School  for  Imbeciles  at  Lakeville  in  1858,  under  the 
superintendency  of  Dr.  H.  M.  Knight.  This  school,  although  aided 
by  the  State,  was  largely  supported  by  private  benevolence  and  pay¬ 
ments  from  private  pupils.  In  1913  the  property  was  taken  over  by 
the  State. 

The  Kentucky  institution  at  Frankfort  was  opened  in  i860.  For 
many  years  the  State  had  granted  an  allowance  of  $50  per  annum  to 
each  needy  family  afflicted  with  the  bucden  of  a  feeble-minded  child, 


39« 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


a  practice  which  is  still  continued.  In  Illinois  an  experimental  school 
for  idiots  and  feeble-minded  children  was  opened  in  1865  as  an  off¬ 
shoot  of  the  school  for  deaf-mutes  at  Jacksonville.  In  the  course  of  a 
few  years  this  school  obtained  a  separate  organization,  and  new  insti¬ 
tution  buildings  were  constructed  at  Lincoln  and  occupied  in  1873. 

Thus,  up  to  1874,  twenty-six  years  after  this  work  was  begun  in 
America,  public  or  semi-public  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded  had 
been  established  in  seven  States.  These  institutions  then  had  under 
training  a  total  of  1041  pupils.  There  were  also  two  private  institu¬ 
tions  in  Massachusetts  at  Barre  and  Fayville,  with  a  total  of  sixty- 
nine  inmates. 

The  early  history  of  these  pioneer  State  institutions  was  in  many  re- 
pects  very  similar.  They  were  practically  all  begun  as  tentative  experi¬ 
ments  in  the  face  of  great  public  distrust  and  doubt  as  to  the  value  of 
the  results  to  be  obtained.  In  Connecticut  the  commissioners  found  a 
"settled  conviction  of  a  large  majority  of  the  citizens  of  the  Common¬ 
wealth  that  idiots  were  a  class  so  utterly  helpless  that  it  was  a  waste  of 
time  even  to  collect  any  statistics  regarding  them.”  Very  little  was 
known  of  the  causes,  frequency,  nature,  or  varieties  of  idiocy,  or  of 
the  principles  and  methods  to  be  employed  in  successfully  training  and 
caring  for  this  class  of  persons.  The  annual  reports  of  the  early  super¬ 
intendents,  Howe,  Wilbur,  Brown,  Parrish,  and  Knight,  exhaustively 
considered  the  subject  in  all  its  phases,  and  graphically  presented  to 
legislators  and  the  public  convincing  and  unanswerable  reasons  as  to 
the  feasibility  and  necessity  of  granting  to  feeble-minded  children  the 
same  opportunities  for  education  according  to  their  ability  that  were 
given  to  their  more  fortunate  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  public  schools. 

All  these  schools  were  organized  as  strictly  educational  institutions. 
In  one  of  his  earlier  reports  Dr.  Howe  said,  "It  is  a  link  in  the  chain 
of  common  schools — the  last  indeed,  but  still  a  necessary  link  in 
order  to  embrace  all  the  children  in  the  State.”  Again  he  said,  "This 
institution,  being  intended  for  a  school,  should  not  be  converted  into 
an  asylum  for  incurables.”  Dr.  Wilbur  in  his  seventh  annual  report 
said,  "A  new  institution  in  a  new  field  of  education  has  the  double 
mission  of  securing  the  best  possible  results,  and  at  the  same  time  of 
making  that  depression  upon  the  public  mind  as  will  give  faith  in  its 
object.”  With  the  limited  capacity  of  these  schools,  it  seemed  best 
to  advocate  the  policy  of  admitting  only  the  higher-grade  cases,  where 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


399 

the  resulting  improvement  and  development  could  be  compared  with 
that  of  normal  children. 

It  was  hoped  and  believed  that  a  large  proportion  of  this  higher- 
grade  or  "improvable”  class  of  defectives  could  be  so  developed  and 
educated  that  they  would  be  capable  of  supporting  themselves  and 
of  creditably  maintaining  an  independent  position  in  the  community. 
It  was  maintained  that  the  State  should  not  assume  their  permanent 
care  but  that  they  should  be  returned  to  their  homes  after  they  had 
been  trained  and  educated.  It  was  the  belief  of  the  managers  that 
only  a  relatively  small  number  of  inmates  could  be  successfully  cared 
for  in  one  institution.  It  was  deemed  unwise  to  congregate  a  large 
number  of  persons  suffering  with  any  common  infirmity. 

Nearly  all  these  early  public  institutions  were  opened  at  or  near 
the  capitals  of  their  various  States,  in  order  that  the  members  of  the 
legislature  might  closely  watch  their  operations  and  personally  see 
their  need  and  the  results  of  the  instruction  and  training  of  the  chil¬ 
dren.  No  institution  has  ever  been  abandoned  or  given  up  after  hav¬ 
ing  been  established.  In  all  of  them  the  applications  for  admission 
have  always  been  far  in  excess  of  their  capacity. 

In  the  course  of  a  few  years  we  find  the  superintendents,  in  the 
annual  reports  of  these  institutions,  regretting  that  it  was  not  ex¬ 
pedient  to  return  to  the  community  a  certain  number  of  the  cases  who 
had  received  all  the  instruction  the  school  had  to  offer.  When  the 
limit  of  age  was  reached,  it  was  a  serious  problem  to  decide  what 
should  be  done  with  the  trained  boy  or  girl.  It  was  found  that  only 
a  small  proportion,  even  of  these  selected  pupils,  could  be  so  developed 
and  improved  that  they  could  go  out  into  the  world  and  support 
themselves  independently.  A  larger  number,  as  a  result  of  the  school 
discipline  and  training,  could  be  taken  home,  where  they  would  be¬ 
come  comparatively  harmless  and  unobjectionable  members  of  the 
family,  capable,  under  the  loving  and  watchful  care  of  their  friends, 
of  earning  by  their  labor  as  much  as  it  cost  to  maintain  them.  In 
many  other  cases,  however,  the  guardians  or  parents  of  these  children 
were  unwilling  to  remove  them  from  the  institutions  and  begged  that 
they  might  be  allowed  to  remain  where  they  could  be  made  happy 
and  kept  from  harm.  Many  were  homeless  and  friendless  and,  if  sent 
away  from  the  school,  could  be  transferred  only  to  almshouses,  where 
they  would  become  depraved  and  demoralized  by  association  with 


400 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


adult  paupers  and  vagrants  of  both  sexes.  It  was  soon  found  neither 
wise  nor  humane  to  turn  these  boys  and  girls  out  to  shift  for  them¬ 
selves.  The  placing  out  of  these  feeble-minded  persons,  except  under 
the  most  careful  supervision,  proved  unsatisfactory.  Even  those  who 
had  suitable  homes  and  relatives  able  and  willing  to  become  respon¬ 
sible  for  them  were,  by  the  death  of  these  relatives,  thrown  on  their 
own  resources  and  drifted  into  pauperism  and  crime.  It  gradually 
became  evident  that  a  certain  number  of  even  these  higher-grade  cases 
needed  lifelong  care  and  supervision,  and  that  there  was  no  suitable 
provision  for  this  permanent  custody  outside  special  institutions. 

Once  it  was  admitted  that  our  full  duty  toward  this  class  must 
include  the  retention  and  guardianship  of  some  of  those  who  had  been 
trained  in 'the  schools,  the  wisdom  and  necessity  of  still  further  broad¬ 
ening  the  work  became  apparent.  It  was  found  that  more  than  one-half 
of  the  applications  for  admission,  and  those  by  far  the  most  insist¬ 
ent,  were  in  behalf  of  the  "unimprovables,”  as  Dr.  Howe  described 
them.  This  lower  class  of  idiots,  many  of  them  with  untidy,  disgust¬ 
ing,  and  disagreeable  habits,  feeble  physically,  perhaps  deformed  and 
misshapen,  often  partially  paralyzed  or  subject  to  epilepsy,  cannot  be 
given  suitable  care  at  home.  There  is  no  greater  burden  possible  in 
a  home  or  a  neighborhood.  It  has  been  well  said  that  by  institutional 
care,  for  every  five  idiots  cared  for  we  restore  four  productive  persons 
to  the  community ;  for,  whereas  at  home  the  care  of  each  of  these 
children  practically  requires  the  time  and  energies  of  one  person,  in 
an  institution  the  proportion  of  paid  employees  is  not  over  one  to 
each  five  inmates.  The  home  care  of  a  low-grade  idiot  consumes  so 
much  of  the  working  capacity  of  the  wage-earner  of  the  household 
that  often  the  entire  family  becomes  pauperized.  Humanity  and 
public  policy  demand  that  families  should  be  relieved  of  the  burden 
of  helpless  idiots.  From  the  nature  of  their  infirmities  it  is  evident 
that  the  care  of  this  class  must  last  as  long  as  they  live.  As  nearly 
every  low-grade  idiot  eventually  becomes  a  public  burden,  it  is  better 
to  assume  this  care  when  they  are  young  and  susceptible  of  a  certain 
amount  of  training  than  to  receive  them  later  on,  undisciplined,  help¬ 
less,  destructive,  adult  idiots. 

The  brighter  classes  of  the  feeble-minded,  with  their  weak  will 
power  and  deficient  judgment,  are  easily  influenced  for  evil  and  are 
prone  to  become  vagrants,  drunkards,  and  thieves.  The  modern  scien- 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


401 


tific  study  of  the  dependent  and  delinquent  classes  as  a  whole  has 
demonstrated  that  a  large  proportion  of  our  criminals,  inebriates, 
and  prostitutes  are  really  congenital  defectives,  who  have  been  allowed 
to  grow  up  without  any  attempt  being  made  to  improve  or  discipline 
them.  Society  suffers  the  penalty  of  this  neglect  in  an  increase  of 
pauperism  and  vice  and  finally,  at  greatly  increased  cost,  is  compelled 
to  take  charge  of  adult  idiots  in  almshouses  and  hospitals  and  of 
mentally  defective  criminals  in  jails  and  prisons,  generally  during  the 
remainder  of  their  natural  lives.  As  a  matter  of  mere  economy,  it  is 
now  believed  that  it  is  better  and  cheaper  for  the  community  to  assume 
the  permanent  custody  of  such  persons  before  they  have  carried  out 
a  long  career  of  expensive  crime. 

The  tendency  to  lead  dissolute  lives  is  especially  noticeable  in  the 
females.  A  feeble-minded  girl  is  exposed  as  no  other  girl  in  the  world 
is  exposed.  She  has  not  sense  enough  to  protect  herself  from  the  perils 
to  which  women  are  subjected.  Often  sunny  in  disposition  and  physi¬ 
cally  attractive,  they  either  marry  and  bring  forth  in  geometrical 
ratio  a  new  generation  of  defectives  and  dependents,  or  become  irre¬ 
sponsible  sources  of  corruption  and  debauchery  in  the  communities 
where  they  live.  There  is  hardly  a  poorhouse  in  this  land  where  there 
are  not  two  or  more  feeble-minded  women  with  from  one  to  four 
illegitimate  children  each.  There  is  every  reason  in  morality,  human¬ 
ity,  and  public  policy  that  these  feeble-minded  women  should  be  under 
permanent  and  watchful  guardianship,  especially  during  the  child¬ 
bearing  age.  A  feeble-minded  girl  of  the  higher  grade  was  accepted 
as  a  pupil  at  the  Massachusetts  School  for  the  Feeble-minded  when 
she  was  fifteen  years  of  age.  At  the  last  moment  the  mother  refused 
to  send  her  to  the  school,  as  she  "could  not  bear  the  disgrace  of 
publicly  admitting  that  she  had  a  feeble-minded  child.’7  Ten  years 
later  the  girl  was  committed  to  the  institution  by  the  court,  after  she 
had  given  birth  to  six  illegitimate  children,  four  of  whom  were  still 
living  and  all  feeble-minded.  The  city  where  she  lived  had  supported 
her  at  the  almshouse  for  a  period  of  several  months  at  each  confine¬ 
ment,  had  been  compelled  to  assume  the  burden  of  the  life-long  sup¬ 
port  of  her  progeny,  and  finally  decided  to  place  her  in  permanent 
custody.  Her  mother  had  died  broken-hearted  several  years  earlier. 

The  recognition  of  the  characteristics,  limitations,  and  needs  of 
these  various  classes  and  the  results  of  experience  in  their  training, 


402 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


care,  and  guardianship  have  materially  modified  and  broadened  the 
scope  and  policy  of  our  American  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded. 
To-day  the  advantages  of  these  public  institutions  are  not  confined  to 
the  brighter  cases  needing  school  training  especially,  but  have  been 
gradually  extended  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  in  the  different  States 
to  all  the  grades  and  types  of  idiocy.  With  all  these  various  classes 
pleading  for  admission,  it  is  not  strange  that  many  of  these  institutions 
have  become  far  more  extensive  than  their  founders  dreamed  of  or 
hoped  for.  Successive  legislatures  have  been  ready  to  enlarge  existing 
institutions  when  they  would  not  grant  appropriations  for  establishing 
new  ones.  The  evil  effects  feared  from  congregating  a  large  number 
of  this  class  have  not  been  realized,  or  have  been  minimized  by  careful 
classification  and  separation  of  the  different  groups.  In  fact,  Are  find 
we  must  congregate  them  to  get  the  best  results.  In  order  to  have 
companionship,  that  most  necessary  thing  in  the  education  of  all 
children,  we  must  have  large  numbers  from  which  to  make  up  our 
small  classes  of  those  who  are  of  an  equal  degree  of  intelligence. 

The  essentially  educational  character  of  the  earlier  institutions  has 
been  maintained  but  the  relations  of  the  different  parts  of  instruction 
are  now  better  understood.  The  strictly  school  exercises,  in  the  early 
days  the  most  prominent  feature,  still  perform  their  necessary  and 
proper  functions  but  now  in  harmony  with  but  subsidiary  to  the  more 
practical  objects  of  the  institution.  Education,  as  applied  to  the 
development  of  these  feeble-minded  children,  is  now  understood  in 
its  broadest  sense,  not  as  mere  intellectual  training  but  as  uniform 
cultivation  of  the  whole  being,  physically,  mentally,  and  morally. 
The  end  and  aim  of  all  our  teaching  and  training  is  to  make  the  child 
helpful  to  himself  and  useful  to  others. 

Sir  W.  Mitchell  says: 

It  is  of  very  little  use  to  be  able  to  read  words  of  two  or  three  letters,  but 
it  is  of  great  use  to  teach  an  imbecile  to  put  his  clothes  on  and  take  them  off, 
to  be  of  cleanly  habits,  to  eat  tidily,  to  control  his  temper,  to  avoid  hurting 
others,  to  act  with  politeness,  to  be  truthful,  to  know  something  of  numbers, 
to  go  with  messages,  to  tell  the  hour  by  the  clock,  to  know  something  of  the 
value  of  coins,  and  a  hundred  other  such  things. 

As  now  organized,  our  American  institutions  for  the  feeble-minded 
are  broadly  divided  into  two  departments,  the  school  or  educational, 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


403 


and  the  custodial.  In  the  school  department,  the  children  arc  in¬ 
structed  in  the  ordinary  branches  of  the  common  schools.  As  com¬ 
pared  with  the  education  of  normal  children,  the  difference  is  one  of 
degree  and  not  of  kind.  The  progressive  games  and  occupations  of 
the  kindergarten,  object  teaching,  educational  gymnastics,  manual 
training,  and  the  other  graphic  and  attractive  methods  now  so  success¬ 
fully  applied  in  the  education  of  normal  children  are  especially 
adapted  to  the  training  of  the  feeble-minded.  These  principles  of 
physiological  training  of  the  senses  and  faculties,  of  exercising  and 
developing  the  power  of  attention,  perception,  and  judgment  by 
teaching  the  qualities  and  properties  of  concrete  objects  instead  of 
expecting  the  child  to  absorb  ready-made  knowledge  from  books,  of 
progressively  training  the  eye,  the  hand,  and  the  ear — these  were 
the  methods  formulated  by  Seguin  and  elaborated  and  applied  by 
Richards,  Wilbur,  and  Howe  years  before  the  era  of  the  kindergarten 
and  the  dawn  of  the  new  education.  It  would  be  difficult  properly 
to  estimate  the  influence  of  these  original  and  successful  methods  of 

instructing  the  feeble-minded  in  suggesting  and  shaping  the  radical 

• 

changes  that  have  been  made  in  the  methods  of  modern  primary  teach¬ 
ing  of  normal  children.  With  feeble-minded  children  the  instruction 
must  begin  on  a  lower  plane;  the  progress  is  slower  and  the  pupil 
cannot  be  carried  so  far.  In  a  school  with  several  hundred  children  a 
satisfactory  gradation  of  classes  can  be  made  if  the  small  proportion 
of  children  showing  irregular  and  unusual  deficiencies  is  assigned  to 
special  classes  for  instruction  through  individual  methods. 

Most  of  the  pupils  of  this  grade  learn  to  read  and  write,  to  know 
something  of  numbers,  and  acquire  a  more  or  less  practical  knowledge 
of  common  affairs.  Careful  attention  is  paid  to  the  inculcation  of  the 
simple  principles  of  morality,  the  teaching  of  correct  habits  and 
behavior,  and  the  observance  of  the  ordinary  amenities  of  life. 

The  most  prominent  feature  of  our  educational  training  to-day 
is  the  attention  paid  to  instruction  in  industrial  occupations  and 
manual  labor.  In  this  "  education  by  doing  ”  we  not  only  have  a  very 
valuable  means  of  exercising  and  developing  the  dormant  faculties 
and  defective  bodies  of  our  pupils,  but  at  the  same  time  we  are  train¬ 
ing  them  to  become  capable  and  useful  men  and  women.  The  recent 
reports  of  these  institutions  show  in  detail  the  large  variety  and 
amount  of  work  done  by  these  children.  Carpentering,  painting, 


404 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


printing,  brick-making,  stock-raising,  gardening,  farming,  domestic 
work,  the  manufacture  of  clothing,  boots  and  shoes,  brooms  and 
brushes,  and  other  industries  are  now  successfully  and  profitably 
carried  on  by  the  pupils  in  these  schools  in  connection  with  the 
strictly  mental  training. 

Each  year  a  certain  number  of  persons  of  this  class  go  out  from 
such  institutions  and  lead  useful,  harmless  lives.  Some  of  the  insti¬ 
tutions  where  only  the  brightest  class  of  imbeciles  are  received  and 
where  the  system  of  industrial  training  has  been  very  carefully  carried 
out,  report  that  from  20  to  30  per  cent  of  the  pupils  are  discharged  as 
absolutely  self-supporting.  In  other  institutions,  where  the  lower- 
grade  cases  are  received,  the  percentage  of  cases  so  discharged  is  con¬ 
siderably  less.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  not  over  10  to  15  per  cent  of  our 
inmates  can  be  made  self-supporting  in  the  sense  of  going  out  into  the 
community,  securing  and  retaining  a  situation,  and  prudently  spend¬ 
ing  their  earnings.  With  all  our  training  we  cannot  give  our  pupils 
that  indispensable  something  known  as  good,  plain  "common  sense.” 
The  amount  and  value  of  their  labor  depend  upon  the  amount  of 
oversight  and  supervision  practicable ;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  over 
50  per  cent  of  the  adults  of  the  higher  grade  who  have  been  under 
training  from  childhood  are  capable,  under  intelligent  supervision,  of 
doing  a  sufficient  amount  of  work  to  pay  for  the  actual  cost  of  their 
support,  whether  in  an  institution  or  at  home. 

The  custodial  department  includes  the  lower  grades  of  idiots  and 
the  epileptics.  Some  of  these  children  are  as  helpless  as  infants,  in¬ 
capable  of  standing  alone,  of  dressing  or  feeding  themselves,  or  of 
making  their  wants  known.  Other  cases  are  excitable  and  noisy,  with 
markedly  destructive  tendencies.  The  chief  indication  with  these 
lower-grade  cases  is  to  see  that  their  wants  are  attended  to,  and  to 
make  them  comfortable  and  happy  as  long  as  they  live ;  but  even  with 
these  cases  much  improvement  is  possible  through  teaching  them  to 
wait  on  themselves,  to  dress  and  undress,  to  feed  themselves,  and  by 
attention  to  personal  cleanliness  and  habits  of  order  and  obedience. 
As  a  result  of  the  kindly  but  firm  discipline,  the  patient  habit-teaching, 
and  the  well-ordered  institution  routine,  a  large  proportion  of  these 
children  become  much  less  troublesome  and  disgusting,  so  much  so 
that  the  burden  and  expense  of  their  care  and  support  are  materially 
and  permanently  lessened. 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


405 


Requiring  permanent  care  also  are  the  moral  imbeciles  and  the 
adults  of  both  sexes  who  have  graduated  from  the  school  department, 
or  are  past  school  age,  but  cannot  safely  be  trusted,  either  for  their 
own  good  or  the  good  of  the  community,  where  not  under  strict  and 
judicious  surveillance.  For  these  classes  the  institution  provides  a 
home  where  they  may  lead  happy,  harmless,  useful  lives. 

The  daily  routine  work  of  a  large  institution  furnishes  these  trained 
adults  with  abundant  opportunities  for  doing  simple  manual  labor, 
which  otherwise  would  have  to  be  done  by  paid  employees.  Outside 
of  an  institution  it  would  be  impossible  to  secure  the  experienced  and 
patient  supervision  and  direction  necessary  to  obtain  practical,  re¬ 
munerative  results  from  the  comparatively  unskilled  labor  of  these 
feeble-minded  people.  In  the  institution  the  boys  assist  the  baker, 
the  carpenter,  and  the  engineer.  They  do  much  of  the  shoemaking, 
the  tailoring,  and  the  painting.  They  drive  teams,  build  roads,  and 
dig  ditches.  Nearly  all  of  the  institutions  have  large  farms  and  gar¬ 
dens  which  supply  enormous  quantities  of  milk  and  vegetables  for  the 
consumption  of  the  inmates.  This  farm  and  garden  work  is  largely 
done  by  the  adult  male  imbeciles.  The  females  do  the  laundry  work, 
make  the  clothing  and  bedding,  and  do  a  large  share  of  all  the  other 
domestic  work  of  these  immense  households.  Many  of  these  adult 
females,  naturally  kind  and  gentle,  have  the  instinctive  feminine  love 
for  children,  and  are  of  great  assistance  in  caring  for  the  feeble  and 
crippled  children  in  the  custodial  department.  These  simple  people 
are  much  happier  and  better  off  in  every  respect  when  they  know  they 
are  doing  some  useful  and  necessary  work.  Some  of  the  restless  per¬ 
sons  of  the  delinquent  type  could  hardly  be  controlled  and  managed 
if  their  surplus  energies  were  not  worked  off  by  a  reasonable  amount 
of  manual  labor. 

In’  the  early  days  of  public  provision  for  the  mentally  defective  the 
tendency  seemed  to  be  to  enlarge  the  institutions  symmetrically  as 
the  demands  for  admission  increased,  without  much  attempt  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  certain  groups  which  might  be  cared  for  more  advantageously 
in  an  entirely  different  manner.  Experience  has  shown  that  there 
is  a  form  of  care  which  not  only  greatly  improves  the  physical  and 
mental  condition  of  one  group  of  the  feeble-minded  but  also  reduces 
to  practically  nothing  the  actual  cost  of  their  maintenance.  I  refer  to 
so-called  "colony”  care.  Colony  care  does  not,  of  course,  do  away 


406 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


with  the  necessity  for  "institutional”  care.  Practically,  it  means  that 
an  institution  may  have  its  capacity  increased  many  fold  at  almost 
no  increase  in  total  cost  for  maintenance. 

In  brief,  the  plan  includes,  first,  a  "parent”  institution  for  young 
children,  the  bed-ridden,  infirm,  and  strictly  custodial  cases.  Into 
this  parent  institution  should  be  received  the  new  admissions  for 
purposes  of  classification  and  preliminary  training.  These  parent 
institutions  are  advantageously  located  fairly  near  large  centers  of 
population.  The  colonies,  subsidiary  to  the  parent  institution,  should 
be  located  in  the  country  at  distances  of  from  twenty  to  fifty  miles 
and  on  land  suitable  for  cultivation.  Temporary  or  permanent  colo¬ 
nies  may  also  be  established  on  wild  state  lands  for  the  purpose  of 
clearing  them  and  maintaining  them  in  such  condition  that,  from  their 
lumber  or  other  products,  they  may  return  to  the  State  a  maximum 
revenue.  In  these  colonies  are  placed  the  men  and  large  boys  who 
are  able  or  who  can  be  taught  to  do  the  necessary  work. 

During  the  past  decade  this  form  of  care  has  rapidly  grown,  so 
that  now  there  is  general  approval  of  the  formation  of  colonies  for 
adult  male  feeble-minded  persons  in  good  physical  condition.  Such 
colonies,  when  connected  with  "parent”  institutions,  can  be  made  self- 
supporting  and  seem  to  offer  a  most  hopeful  means  of  providing  for  a 
greatly  increased  number  of  cases  at  a  minimum  expense  to  the  State. 

Such  has  been  the  development  of  the  care  of  the  feeble-minded  in 
the  United  States.  The  next  step,  it  seems  to  me,  in  state  care  for 
mental  defectives  will  be  the  development  of  plans  for  the  supervised 
care  of  suitable  cases,  usually  those  who  have  had  a  period  of  institu¬ 
tional  observation  and  training,  in  the  communities.  Many  such 
patients  can  get  on  in  their  own  homes,  while  others  may  be  "boarded- 
out”  in  carefully  selected  families  in  rural  communities,  subject  of 
course  to  strict  supervision  by  officers  of  the  parent  institution.  With 
this  development  the  capacity  of  any  institution  would  practically  be 
limited  only  by  the  supply  of  suitable  cases,  the  topography  of  the 
country,  the  character  of  the  general  population,  and  the  ability  of 
the  executive,  as  the  cost  of  maintenance  would  be  reduced  to  the 
minimum  and  the  necessity  and  difficulty  of  securing  continually 
enlarged  legislative  appropriations  would  be  eliminated. 

The  material  growth  and  separate  history  of  the  older  institutions 
and  the  numerous  public  and  private  schools  that  have  been  opened 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


407 


in  this  country  since  1874  are  too  comprehensive  to  be  considered  in 
detail  in  this  article.  There  were  15,599  feeble-minded  and  epileptic 
persons  under  state  care  in  the  United  States  on  January  1,  1904,  an 
increase  of  290  per  cent  over  the  corresponding  figure  (4001)  for 
June  1,  1890.  At  the  end  of  the  next  six  years  they  had  increased  to 
23,358,  a  growth  of  50  per  cent,  and  six  years  later,  or  on  January  1, 
1916,  there  were  34,137,  an  increase  in  that  period  of  46  per  cent. 
In  other  words,  from  June  1,  1890,  to  January  1,  1916,  the  number 
of  feeble-minded  and  epileptic  persons  under  state  care  in  the  United 
States  had  risen  from  4001  to  34,137,  or  an  increase  of  753  per  cent. 

The  reports  of  the  United  States  Census  Bureau  show  that  the 
general  population  of  the  United  States  increased  29  per  cent  from 
June  1,  1890,  to  January  1,  1904;  14  per  cent  in  the  next  six  years, 
and  10  per  cent  in  the  six  years  ending  January  1,  1916.  The  increase 
in  general  population  from  June  1,  1890,  to  January  1,  1916,  was 
62  per  cent. 

To  one  not  familiar  with  the  facts  it  might  seem  at  first  sight  that 
feeble-mindedness  and  epilepsy  were  increasing  enormously  in  the 
United  States  in  comparison  with  the  general  population.  That  is  not 
the  case,  however,  or  at  least  these  figures  do  not  prove  it  to  be  so. 
What  they  do  show  is  the  greater  proportionate  amount  of  state  care 
provided  in  recent  years  for  a  class  that  hitherto  had  been  abandoned 
in  the  jails  and  almshouses,  or  had  roamed  the  country,  a  menace  to 
the  community  as  well  as  to  itself.  Nor  should  this  enormous  increase 
in  state  care  throughout  the  United  States — 753  per  cent  in  twenty- 
six  years — obscure  the  fact  that  the  present  state  provision  for  this 
class  in  the  country  at  large  is  far  below  what  it  should  be.  How 
great  the  lack  is  can  be  seen  in  the  figures  of  January  1,  1916, 
where  it  is  shown  that  twenty  states  have  a  higher  ratio  of  provision 
than  the  United  States  as  a  whole,  and  that  one  of  them — Massa¬ 
chusetts — is  caring  for  nearly  three  times  as  many  feeble-minded  and 
epileptics  per  100,000  population  as  are  being  cared  for  in  the  country 
at  large.  And  yet  Massachusetts  acknowledges  that  it  is  doing  but  a 
small  part  of  what  it  should  do  to  give  these  defectives  the  care  they 
need.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  increase  of  753  per  cent  in  twenty-six 
years  is  really  an  index  of  the  lack  of  appreciation  on  the  part  of 
former  generations  of  the  great  part  played  by  mental  deficiency  in 
dependency,  crime,  and  delinquency. 


4o8  THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 

51.  A  State  Program  for  the  Care  of  the  Mentally 

Defective1 

It  is  now  generally  understood  that  the  feebleminded  and  the  prog¬ 
eny  of  the  feebleminded  constitute  one  of  the  great  social  and  eco¬ 
nomic  burdens  of  our  modern  civilization.  We  have  much  accurate 
knowledge  as  to  the  prevalence,  causation,  social  significance,  preven¬ 
tion,  and  treatment  of  feeblemindedness,  its  influence  as  a  source  of 
unhappiness  to  the  defective  himself  and  to  his  family,  and  its  bearing 
as  a  causative  factor  in  the  production  of  crime,  prostitution,  pauper¬ 
ism,  and  other  complex  social  diseases.  The  literature  on  the  subject 
has  developed  to  enormous  proportions.  An  intelligent  democracy 
can  not  consistently  ignore  a  condition  involving  such  a  vast  number 
of  persons  and  families  and  communities,  so  large  an  aggregate  of 
suffering  and  misery,  and  so  great  economic  cost  and  waste. 

Nearly  every  state  in  the  Union  has  already  made  a  beginning  in 
the  way  of  a  program  for  dealing  with  the  mentally  defective,  either 
directly  or  indirectly.  The  development  of  this  program  in  the  differ¬ 
ent  states  varies  greatly  in  degree  and  methods.  Even  the  most  ad¬ 
vanced  states  have  not  yet  formulated  a  plan  for  reaching  all  of  the 
feebleminded  of  the  state.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  no  state  has  yet 
officially  taken  cognizance  of  io  per  cent  of  the  mentally  defective 
persons  in  that  state.  No  state  has  even  ascertained  the  number  of 
feebleminded  in  the  state,  their  location,  or  the  nature  and  expression 
of  their  defect.  The  great  majority  of  these  defectives  receive  no 
education  or  training  and  no  adequate  protection  and  supervision. 
We  know  that  feeblemindedness  is  highly  hereditary,  but  in  most 
states  there  is  no  legal  obstacle  to  the  marriage  of  the  moron,  the  most 
numerous  class  of  the  feebleminded. 

There  are  many  reasons  for  the  lack  of  a  formal  accepted  program. 
The  problem  can  not  be  solved  by  a  simple  formula,  which  can  be 
expressed  in  one  definite  piece  of  legislation.  It  is  an  infinitely  com¬ 
plex  problem,  varied  according  to  age,  sex,  degree  and  kind  of  defect, 
presence  or  absence  of  hereditary  traits  or  criminal  and  antisocial 
proclivities,  home  conditions,  etc.  The  idiot,  imbecile,  and  moron 
present  different  needs  and  dangers.  Each  of  these  groups  has  different 

1From  Mental  Hygiene ,  Vol.  Ill,  No.  4,  pp.  566-574,  by  Walter  E.  Fernald, 
M.  D.,  Superintendent  of  the  Massachusetts  School  for  the  Feebleminded. 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


409 


troubles,  according  to  age  and  sex.  Rural,  sparsely  settled  communi¬ 
ties,  with  homogeneous  racial  populations,  have  conditions  pertaining 
to  the  defective  which  differ  from  those  of  urban  industrial  centers, 
with  cosmopolitan  racial  complications. 

The  first  step  in  a  rational  program  would  be  the  beginning  of  a 
complete  and  continuing  census  of  the  uncared-for  feebleminded  of 
the  whole  state — this  would  state  and  define  the  problem.  Many  pri¬ 
vately  conducted  surveys  show  the  feasibility  of  such  a  census.  The 
data  for  this  census  would  be  furnished  by  physicians,  clinics,  court 
and  jail  officials,  social  workers,  town  officials,  teachers,  etc.  No 
doubtful  case  should  be  registered.  Only  those  persons  whose  mental 
defect  has  been  scientifically  diagnosed  should  be  registered.  The 
register  should  be  highly  confidential  and  accessible  only  to  properly 
accredited  persons. 

This  coordination  of  existing  records  would  be  available  for  social 
workers,  school  authorities,  and  other  agencies,  and  would  be  of  enor¬ 
mous  service  in  the  solution  of  the  individual  problems  which  the 
feebleminded  constantly  present.  This  alone  would  mean  a  great 
saving  in  time,  effort,  and  money.  This  official  census  would  give  a 
logical  basis  for  intelligent  management  of  the  mental  defectives  of 
the  state. 

A  census  of  the  feebleminded  would  make  possible  and  desirable 
some  provision  for  a  central  governmental  authority  responsible  for 
the  general  supervision  and  assistance  and  control  of  the  uncared-for 
feebleminded  of  the  state  who  do  not  need  immediate  institutional 
commitment.  This  state  supervision  of  the  feebleminded  should  be 
directed  by  a  state  commission  for  the  feebleminded,  or  a  properly 
constituted  state  board  of  health,  or  other  similar  body.  Its  respon¬ 
sible  officer  should  be  a  psychiatrist,  with  special  knowledge  of  mental 
deficiency  and  its  many  social  expressions. 

The  local  administration  of  this  supervision  could  be  carried  out 
by  the  use  of  existing  local  public  organizations,  existing  local  private 
organizations  and  societies,  or  by  properly  qualified  volunteers  in 
each  community.  These  peripheral  workers  could  be  made  efficient 
by  the  use  of  suitable  manuals,  etc.  This  systematic  supervision  of 
the  feebleminded  could  easily  be  made  to  cover  the  entire  state,  with 
a  local  representative  in  each  community,  but  all  under  the  direction 
of  the  central  authority. 


4io 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Each  defective  could  be  regularly  visited  and  kept  under  observa¬ 
tion  by  the  local  visitor.  The  reports  of  these  visitors,  covering  the 
life  histories  and  the  family  histories  of  many  cases,  would  soon  con¬ 
stitute  an  invaluable  treasury  of  information  as  a  basis  for  scientific 
research  and  study  in  the  search  for  practical  methods  of  prevention. 
The  official  visitor  would  advise  the  parents  as  to  the  care  and  man¬ 
agement  of  the  defective,  and  would  have  opportunity  to  inform  the 
family,  the  local  officials,  and  the  community  generally  as  to  the 
hereditary  nature  and  the  peculiar  dangers  of  feeblemindedness. 

The  registration  of  every  feebleminded  person,  and  the  regular 
visitations,  especially  of  children  of  school  age,  would  make  it  possible 
to  inform  the  parents  of  the  condition  of  the  child,  of  the  probable 
necessity  of  lifelong  supervision,  and  of  the  possible  need  for  future 
segregation.  Suitable,  tactful  literature  should  be  prepared,  which 
could  be  gradually  presented  to  the  parents  in  a  way  that  would  have 
great  educational  value.  Sooner  or  later,  the  parents  would  probably 
be  willing  to  allow  their  child  to  be  cared  for  and  trained  in  an  institu¬ 
tion  if  he  needed  such  care.  In  suitable  cases  parents  should  be  al¬ 
lowed  to  have  the  custody  of  their  child,  with  the  understanding  that 
he  shall  be  properly  cared  for  and  protected  during  his  life,  that  he 
shall  not  be  allowed  to  become  immoral  or  criminal,  and  that  he  shall 
be  prevented  from  parenthood.  Whenever  the  parents  or  friends  are 
unwilling  or  incapable  of  performing  these  duties,  the  law  should 
provide  that  he  shall  be  forcibly  placed  in  an  institution  or  otherwise 
safeguarded.  The  local  representatives  of  the  central  bureau  would 
officially  serve  as  advisers  and  sponsors  for  pupils  graduated  from  the 
special  school  classes,  for  court  cases  under  probation  and  observation, 
and  for  institutional  inmates  at  home  on  visit  or  on  trial. 

Under  this  plan  there  would  be  a  person  in  every  locality  familiar 
with  the  opportunities  for  mental  examination  and  methods  of  perma¬ 
nent  commitment.  The  extra-institutional  supervision  and  observation 
of  cases  in  their  homes  would  do  away  with  the  necessity  of  institu¬ 
tional  care  of  many  persons  who  would  otherwise  have  to  go  to  an 
institution,  thus  reducing  the  expense  of  buildings  and  maintenance. 

There  should  be  legal  provision  for  the  commitment  of  uncared-for 
defective  persons  to  the  permanent  custody  of  the  central  authority. 
This  commitment  should  formally  recognize  the  actual  mental  age  and 
degree  of  responsibility  of  the  defective  person  so  committed.  The 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


411 

legal  status  of  a  defective  should  be  that  of  a  normal  child  with  a 
mental  age  of  eight,  nine,  or  ten  years.  The  permanent  eight-  or  nine- 
or  ten-year  mentality  of  the  defective  should  be  legally  acknowledged. 

The  extra-institutional  supervision  should  include  cases  dismissed 
from  institutions,  so  that  the  defective  who  has  spent  many  years  in  an 
institution  would  not  be  thrown  out  into  the  world  with  a  freedom 
which  he  does  not  know  how  to  utilize.  In  these  cases,  the  super¬ 
vision  would  constitute  a  permanent  parole  which  would  be  most 
effective.  This  provision  would  enable  the  defective  to  be  returned  to 
the  institution  if  he  did  not  properly  conduct  himself  in  the  com¬ 
munity.  Such  provision  for  registration  of  the  feebleminded  and  for 
extra-institutional  supervision  would  insure  that  those  defectives  who 
most  need  institutional  training  and  protection  would  be  sent  to  the 
institutions,  and  that  those  who  can  live  safely  and  happily  in  the 
community  would  be  allowed  to  do  so. 

The  keynote  of  a  practical  program  for  the  management  of  mental 
defectiveness  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  which  seems  to  have  been 
proved,  that  those  defectives  whose  defects  are  recognized  while  they 
are  young  children,  and  who  receive  proper  care  and  training  during 
their  childhood,  are,  as  a  rule,  not  especially  troublesome  after  they 
have  been  safely  guided  through  the  period  of  early  adolescence. 

Every  child  automatically  comes  under  the  control-  of  the  school 
authorities  between  the  ages  of  six  and  fourteen.  Every  case  of 
mental  defect  can  be  easily  recognized  during  this  period.  Present 
methods  of  health  examination  of  school  children  could  easily  be 
extended  so  as  to  insure  and  require  a  mental  examination  of  every 
child  obviously  retarded  in  school  accomplishment.  It  would  not  be 
necessary  to  give  a  mental  examination  to  all  the  school  children.  It 
would  be  sufficient  to  examine  only  those  children  who  are  three  or 
four  or  more  years  retarded  in  school  work — perhaps  2  or  3  per  cent 
of  the  primary-school  population. 

In  the  large  cities,  the  mental  examinations  could  be  made  by  special 
examiners  and  at  mental  clinics.  The  rapid  development  of  out¬ 
patient  mental  clinics  all  over  the  country  will  soon  furnish  facilities 
for  such  examinations  in  all  the  large  cities.  Rural  communities  and 
small  towns  could  be  served  by  a  traveling  mental  clinic,  as  a  part  of 
the  state  government.  This  clinical  group,  or  even  a  single  clinician, 
could  examine  the  presumably  defective  children  over  a  very  large 


412 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


area.  A  visit  to  each  small  town  once  each  year  would  be  sufficient. 
Every  institutional  school  for  the  feebleminded  should  conduct  out¬ 
patient  mental  clinics  at  the  institution  and  in  the  various  cities  and 
towns  served  by  the  school.  At  the  time  of  the  mental  examination, 
the  parents  should  be  informed  as  to  the  mental  condition  of  the  child 
and  of  his  need  for  special  training  and  protection. 

Suitable  manuals  should  be  prepared  by  the  state  board  of  educa¬ 
tion,  which  could  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  every  teacher,  especially 
in  the  rural  schools,  describing  the  methods  of  training  and  manage¬ 
ment  that  should  be  applied  to  these  cases.  It  should  be  recognized 
that  the  defective  child  is  entitled,  even  more  than  a  normal  child,  to 
education  according  to  his  needs  and  capacity.  The  defective  chil¬ 
dren  who  cannot  be  taught  in  the  regular  schools  should  be  referred  to 
the  special  classes  or  the  institutional  schools. 

Cities  and  towns  of  over  five  thousand  population  are  likely  to  have 
groups  of  at  least  ten  or  more  defective  children.  Such  communities 
should  be  required  to  establish  special  classes  for  defective  children. 
The  proper  authorities  should  decide  upon  the  courses  of  study  and 
the  equipment  of  school  materials  which  are  necessary  for  these  special 
school  classes.  Provision  should  be  made  in  the  normal  schools  for 
training  teachers  of  defective  children.  Every  normal  training  school 
for  teachers  should  be  required  to  give  suitable  instruction  to  teachers 
to  enable  them  to  recognize  probable  cases  of  mental  defect  and  to 
give  them  a  general  idea  as  to  the  training  and  discipline  of  such  chil¬ 
dren.  The  state  board  of  education  or  some  other  branch  of  the  state 
government  should  prepare  simple  manuals  of  facts  for  the  use  of  the 
parents  of  feebleminded  children.  This  literature  should  be  prepared 
in  series,  with  special  articles  for  young  boys,  for  young  girls,  for  older 
boys,  for  older  girls,  and  for  other  groups,  and  should  kindly  and 
tactfully  instruct  the  parents  as  to  the  limitations  of  these  children 
in  the  way  of  scholastic  acquirements,  and  emphasize  the  importance 
of  the  development  of  habits  of  obedience  and  industry  and  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  protection  against  evil  influences  and  companions  during  the 
formative  period,  and  of  the  possible  need  of  institutional  care  in 
the  future. 

The  great  majority  of  mental  defectives  are  of  the  moron  group. 
If  the  plan  suggested  for  the  early  recognition  and  the  intelligent 
education  and  training  of  the  moron  in  public  schools  and  at  home  is 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


413 


carried  out,  many  of  this  class  can  be  safely  cared  for  at  home.  We 
have  begun  to  recognize  the  fact  that  there  are  good  morons  and  bad 
morons,  and  that  it  is  often  possible  in  early  life  to  recognize  the  moron 
with  antisocial  and  criminalistic  tendencies,  who  will  probably  need 
institutional  care.  Morons  from  families  unable  properly  to  protect 
and  control  their  children  will  need  institutional  training  and  care. 
The  fact  should  be  emphasized  that  the  neglected  moron  is  the  defec¬ 
tive  who  makes  trouble  later  in  life,  and  that  during  the  formative 
period  of  his  life  he  should  receive  proper  care  and  training  either  at 
home,  with  the  special  help  of  the  regular  teacher  or  the  special  class, 
or  in  an  institutional  school. 

The  special  public-school  classes  also  serve  as  clearing-houses  for 
the  recognition  of  defective  children  who  are  markedly  antisocial 
and  immoral,  and  who  need  permanent  institutional  care.  It  is  an 
easy  step  from  the  special  class  to  the  institution.  The  children  who 
graduate  from  the  special  school  classes  should  have  the  benefit  of 
follow-up  or  after-care  assistance  and  help. 

In  the  majority  of  states,  the  only  provision  for  mental  defectives  is 
furnished  by  an  institutional  school  for  the  feebleminded,  providing 
care  and  protection  for  a  limited  number  of  idiots  and  imbeciles, 
education  and  industrial  training  for  morons,  with  permanent  segre¬ 
gation  for  a  certain  number  of  defectives,  and  with  special  emphasis 
upon  the  lifelong  segregation  of  feebleminded  women  of  the  hereditary 
group.  It  was  formerly  believed  that  it.  was  possible  and  desirable 
to  provide  institutional  care  for  practically  all  the  mental  defectives 
of  the  state.  This  was  before  the  actual  extent  of  the  problem  was 
known  and  its  cost  computed,  and  before  the  difficulty  of  securing 
the  commitment  to  an  institution  of  many  of  these  cases  was  realized. 
In  practice  it  has  been  found  very  difficult  to  insure  the  lifelong  segre¬ 
gation  of  the  average  moron.  The  courts  are  as  ready  to  release  the 
defective  as  they  are  to  commit  him  in  the  first  place.  However 
proper  and  desirable  it  may  be  in  theory  to  insure  the  lifelong  institu¬ 
tional  segregation  of  large  numbers  of  the  moron  class,  it  is  a  fact  that 
there  is  a  deep-seated  prejudice  on  the  part  of  lawyers,  judges,  and 
legislators  towards  assuming  in  advance  that  every  moron  will  neces¬ 
sarily  and  certainly  misbehave  to  such  an  extent  that  he  should  be 

deprived  of  his  liberty.  That  such  misgivings  are  well-founded  is 

* 

apparently  shown  by  the  studies  made  of  discharged  patients  at  Rome 


414 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


and  Waverley.  At  Waverley,  a  careful  study  of  the  discharges  for 
twenty-five  years  showed  that  a  very  small  proportion  of  the  dis¬ 
charged  male  morons  had  committed  crimes,  or  had  married,  or  had 
become  parents,  or  had  failed  to  support  themselves,  or  had  been 
bad  citizens. 

It  has  been  fairly  well  demonstrated  that  the  average  male  moron, 
without  naturally  vicious  tendencies,  who  has  been  properly  trained 
in  habits  of  obedience  and  industry,  and  who  is  protected  from  temp¬ 
tation  and  evil  associations  during  his  childhood,  can  be  safely  re¬ 
turned  to  the  community  when  he  has  passed  early  adolescence,  if 
his  family  are  able  to  look  after  him  and  give  him  proper  supervi¬ 
sion.  A  very  much  larger  proportion  of  these  trained  male  defectives 
would  be  suitable  for  community  life  if  the  above-described  extra- 
institutional  control  and  supervision  could  be  provided. 

The  average  citizen  is  not  yet  convinced  that  he  should  be  taxed  to 
support  permanently  an  individual  who  is  capable  of  30  or  50  or  70 
per  cent  of  normal  economic  efficiency,  on  the  mere  theory  that  he  is 
more  likely  than  a  normal  individual  to  become  a  social  problem. 
Thousands  of  morons  never  give  any  trouble  in  the  community. 

The  after-care  studies  of  the  female  morons  who  have  received  train¬ 
ing  in  the  institutions  were  not  so  favorable,  but  many  of  these,  too, 
led  moral  and  harmless  and  useful  lives  after  their  return  to  the 
community.  The  study  of  discharged  female  cases  at  Waverley 
showed  a  surprisingly  small  number  who  became  mothers  or  who  mar¬ 
ried.  While  it  is  true  that  defectives  with  undesirable  habits  and 
tendencies  are  not  easily  controlled,  it  is  equally  true  that  defectives 
who  are  obedient  and  moral  and  industrious  are  apt  to  continue  these 
traits  permanently.  It  is  as  difficult  for  them  to  unlearn  as  it  was  to 
learn.  Those  defectives  whose  tendencies  are  such  as  to  make  them 
undesirable  members  of  the  community  should  not  be  allowed  their 
liberty,  but  should  be  permanently  segregated  in  institutions.  No 
other  class  of  human  beings  so  surely  avenge  neglect  in  their  child¬ 
hood,  socially,  morally,  economically,  and  eugenically. 

Defectives  who  develop  markedly  immoral  or  criminalistic  tend¬ 
encies  in  the  institutional  schools  for  the  feebleminded  should  not  be 
retained  permanently  in  the  institutions  devoted  to  the  care  and 
training  of  the  average  defective,  for  the  feebleminded  are  most  sug¬ 
gestible  and  easily  influenced  and  should  be  protected  from  the  com- 


MENTAL  DEFICIENCY 


4i5 


panionship  and  influence  of  the  defective  with  criminalistic  tendencies.- 
These  "bad”  defectives  should  be  committed  to  and  cared  for  in  an 
institution  especially  for  that  type,  where  the  discipline  could  be 
made  more  rigid,  and  permanent  detention  more  certain. 

If  25  per  cent  or  more  of  the  inmates  of  our  penal  and  correctional 
institutions  are  feebleminded,  as  has  been  shown,  it  should  be  required 
that  a  mental  examination  should  be  made  of  all  inmates  of  such 
institutions,  and  that  those  criminals  who  are  found  to  be  mentally 
defective  should  not  be  automatically  discharged,  to  return  to  the 
community,  but  should  be  committed  to  a  special  institution  for 
defective  delinquents,  and  should  be  permanently  segregated,  and 
discharged  only  under  the  strictest  sort  of  supervised  parole.  Pro¬ 
vision  should  be  made  for  the  mental  examination  of  all  persons 
accused  of  crime  when  there  is  any  suspicion  as  to  the  mentality  of 
the  accused. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  every  state  in  the  Union  needs  greatly  in¬ 
creased  institutional  facilities  for  the  care  of  the  feebleminded,  not 
only  as  a  matter  of  justice  and  fairness  to  the  feebleminded  themselves 
and  to  their  families,  but  as  an  investment  that  would  repay  the  cost 
many  times  over. 

There  is  no  panacea  for  feeblemindedness.  There  will  always  be 
mentally  defective  persons  in  the  population  of  every  state  and  coun¬ 
try.  All  of  our  experience  in  dealing  with  the  feebleminded  indicates 
that  if  we  are  adequately  to  manage  the  individual  defective,  we  must 
recognize  his  condition  while  he  is  a  child,  protect  him  from  evil  in¬ 
fluences,  train  and  educate  him  according  to  his  capacity,  make  him 
industrially  efficient,  teach  him  to  acquire  correct  habits  of  living, 
and,  when  he  has  reached  adult  life,  continue  to  give  him  the  friendly 
help  and  guidance  he  needs.  These  advantages  should  be  accessible 
to  every  feebleminded  person  in  the  state.  Most  important  of  all,  so 
far  as  possible,  the  hereditary  class  of  defectives  must  not  be  allowed 
to  perpetuate  their  decadent  stock.  The  program  for  meeting  the 
needs  of  these  highly  varied  and  heterogeneous  groups  must  be  as 
flexible  and  complex  as  the  problem  itself.  It  will  be  modified  and 
developed  as  our  knowledge  and  experience  increase: 

To  sum  up,  the  program  now  possible  includes  the  mental  examina¬ 
tion  of  backward  school  children ;  the  mental  clinic ;  the  traveling 
clinic;  the  special  class;  directed  training  of  individual  defectives 


4i 6  THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 

in  country  schools;  instruction  of  parents  of  defective  children; 
after-care  of  special-class  pupils;  special  training  of  teachers  in 
normal  schools ;  census  and  registration  of  the  feebleminded ;  extra- 
institutional  supervision  of  all  uncared-for  defectives  in  the  commu¬ 
nity;  selection  of  the  defectives  who  most  need  segregation  for 
institutional  care ;  increased  institutional  facilities ;  parole  for  suitable 
institutionally-trained  adult  defectives ;  permanent  segregation  for 
those  who  need  segregation ;  mental  examinations  of  persons  accused 
of  crime  and  of  all  inmates  of  penal  institutions ;  and  long-continued 
segregation  of  defective  delinquents  in  special  institutions. 

The  above  program  would  require  teamwork  on  the  part  of  psychi¬ 
atrists,  psychologists,  teachers,  normal  schools,  parents,  social  workers, 
institution  officials,  parole  officers,  court  officials,  prison  officers,  etc. 
There  would  be  a  highly  centralized  formulation  of  plans  and  methods 
and  of  authority,  but  much  of  the  real  work  would  be  done  in  the  local 
community.  The  degree  of  development  of  the  program  in  a  given 
state  would  depend  upon  existing  knowledge  and  public  sentiment  on 
the  subject  in  that  state  and  this  in  turn  would  be  measured  by  the 
wisdom  and  experience  of  the  responsible  officials.  Nearly  every 
suggestion  in  the  proposed  program  is  already  being  followed  in  some 
state.  No  one  state  has  anything  like  a  complete  program. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 

52.  Serious  Cases  of  Mental  Disorder  or  So-Called 

"Insanity”1 

The  cases  of  mental  disease  in  which  the  symptoms  become  marked 
are  characterized  by  the  laity  as  instances  of  insanity.  It  should  be 
thoroughly  understood  that  from  the  medical  standpoint  insanity  is 
a  useless  term.  However,  let  us  briefly  review  the  types  of  mental 
disease  with  symptoms  of  such  a  nature  that  it  frequently  becomes 
necessary  to  secure  medical  supervision  in  an  institution.  The  cases 
may  be  divided  into  two  major  groups:  (A)  those  cases  in  which  a 
definite  recognizable  organic  disorder  exists,  from  which  disorder  the 
mental  symptoms  arise ;  and  ( B )  those  cases  in  which  no  such  organic 
disorder  has  been  demonstrated,  and  which  we  are  prone  to  consider 
as  a  group  of  functional  psychoses,  that  is,  not  organic  disorders. 

A.  The  organic  group  consists  of  cases  in  which  there  is  either : 

1.  A  pathological  process  having  its  primary  seat  in  the  central  nervous 

system,  as : 

a.  General  paresis. 

b.  Brain  tumor. 

c.  Cerebral  arteriosclerosis. 

d.  Senile  dementia. 

e.  Other  degenerative  lesions  of  the  brain. 

/.  Multiple  sclerosis  and  the  like. 

g.  Injury  to  the  brain  as  from  a  blow  on  the  head,  a  gunshot  wound, 
etc. 

2.  An  injury  of  the  brain  secondary  to  disease  in  the  body,  such  as: 

a.  Febrile  delirium. 

b.  Uremic  toxemia. 

1By  Harry  C.  Solomon,  M.D.,  Chief  of  Therapeutic  Research  in  the  Boston 
Psychopathic  Hospital  and  Instructor  in  Psychiatry  and  Neuropathology  in  the 
Harvard  Medical  School.  From  The  Commonhealth ,  Vol.  IX,  No.  2,  pp.  42-44. 
Massachusetts  Department  of  Public  Health. 

4U 


418 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


c.  Injury  clue  to  disorders  of  the  endocrin  system,  as  exophthalmic 
goiter,  myxoedema. 

3.  An  injury  of  the  brain  due  to  exogenous  poison  taken  into  the  body,  as 
alcohol,  drugs,  metallic  poisons  (lead,  mercury). 

• 

The  consideration  of  the  diseases  of  this  group  takes  in  the  methods 
in  general  use  in  internal  medicine.  It  is  a  matter  of  treatment  of 
the  underlying  disease,  and  the  results  will  depend  largely  upon 
whether  or  not  the  disease  from  which  the  patient  is  suffering  is 
amenable  to  medical  or  surgical  treatment,  or  whether  the  body  is 
able  to  cope  with  the  poisons  if  no  more  are  added  to  the  system. 
Thus  the  treatment  of  mental  disease  arising  from  brain  tumor  is 
operation.  The  treatment  of  febrile  delirium  is  the  treatment  of  the 
disease  which  is  causing  the  fever  and  delirium.  The  treatment  of 
general  paresis  is  the  treatment  of  a  syphilitic  infection,  and  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  alcohol,  drugs,  and  other  exogenous  poisons  is  the  discontinu¬ 
ance  of  the  poisons  and  supportive  treatment. 

From  the  standpoint  of  prophylaxis  this  organic  group  offers  very 
little  theoretical  difficulty.  Some  of  the  conditions,  such  as  brain 
tumor,  senile  dementia,  and  the  other  degenerative  lesions,  we  are 
perfectly  helpless  to  prevent.  On  the  other  hand,  the  prevention 
or  adequate  treatment  of  acquired  syphilis  should  prevent  general 
paresis.  Abstinence  will  prevent  the  diseases  arising  from  alcohol 
and  drugs.  Hygiene  will  eliminate  the  possibility  of  metallic  poisons, 
and  the  reduction  of  infections  will  diminish  the  resultant  mental 
symptoms  pari  passu. 

B.  The  second  of  our  major  divisions  of  mental  disorder  is  that  in 
which  no  definite  organic  disease  can  be  demonstrated  as  the  cause  of 
the  mental  symptoms.  These  cases  must  be  considered  at  present 
from  the  psychological  standpoint. 

From  a  practical  standpoint  we  may  think  of  the  functional  dis¬ 
orders  under  two  headings:  ( 1 )  those  in  which  recovery  without  defect 
occurs,  and  (2)  those  in  which  there  is  a  tendency  to  chronicity  or 
deterioration,  or  improvement  with  defect. 

The  cases  with  good  prognosis  are  in  a  majority  of  instances  cases 
in  which  the  disorder  is  chiefly  in  the  emotional  ffield,  and  receive,  as 
a  rule,  the  medical  diagnosis  of  manic-depressive  psychosis  or  in¬ 
volutional  melancholia.  While  the  symptoms  may  be  exceedingly 


419 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  " INSANITY” 

marked  and  disturbing,  the  prognosis  is,  on  the  whole,  good ;  in  fact, 
complete  recovery  is  the  rule  in  cases  of  manic-depressive  psychosis. 
Although  there  is  a  tendency  for  a  recurrence  of  the  disorder,  there  is 
the  same  good  prognosis  as  to  recovery.  The  duration  of  an  attack 
varies  from  a  few  days  to  eighteen  months,  but,  on  the  average,  is  a 
matter  of  five  to  ten  months.  The  outlook  of  those  suffering  from 
this  form  of  disease  is,  therefore,  often  better  than  that  of  some 
patients  whose  mental  symptoms  are  very  much  milder,  but  whose 
incapacity  may  last  for  a  much  greater  period,  and  who  may,  there¬ 
fore,  suffer  more  and  be  less  efficient  as  units  in  the  social  structure. 

The  cases  of  involutional  melancholia  are  apt  to  last  longer  than 
those  of  manic-depressive  psychosis,  and  the  prognosis  is  not  as  satis¬ 
factory,  as  some  of  these  patients  do  not  recover.  In  the  majority  of 
cases,  however,  the  prognosis  is  good. 

The  second  large  group  of  functional  psychoses  are  those  which 
have  a  tendency  to  deterioration  and  chronicity,  and  are  usually 
considered  under  the  medical  diagnosis  of  dementia  praecox.  These 
cases  are  characterized  by  dissociation  or  splitting  of  the  psyche,  and 
tend  to  show  disorder  of  thought  (delusions,  hallucinations).  Begin¬ 
ning,  on  the  average,  at  the  adolescent  period  and  having  a  bad  prog¬ 
nosis,  these  cases  are  the  saddest  and  most  important  of  the  mental 
disorders.  They  likewise  represent  a  high  proportion  of  the  cases 
which  enter  the  State  hospitals  for  mental  diseases. 

Finally,  mention  should  be  made  of  paranoia,  which  is  a  condition 
characterized  by  the  development  of  a  delusional  system  which  makes 
the  patient  unfit  for  ordinary  social  intercourse  and  which  progresses 
slowly  and  insidiously.  This  condition  represents  the  progressive  de¬ 
velopment  of  a  twist  of  the  mind  rather  than  a  distinct  mental  disease. 

As  the  so-called  functional  psychoses  have  no  known  anatomical 
basis,  they  must  be  considered  on  a  psychological  plane.  This  does 
not  mean  that  continued  search  for  a  physical  basis  should  not  be 
made,  but  rather  that  from  a  practical  standpoint  they  must  be  studied 
and  treated  from  a  purely  mental  point  of  view.  While  heredity  and 
constitutional  factors  have  a  bearing  upon  the  development  of  these 
psychoses,  they  are  so  intangible  that  they  cannot  be  considered  of 
any  great  practical  application.  Mental  factors,  life  experiences  are 
the  elements  that  must  be  studied  in  these  cases.  Prophylaxis  should 
be  directed  toward  the  early  development  of  the  individual.  Every 


420 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


case  should  be  considered  on  its  own  merits  and  studied  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  individual  himself,  his  personal  endowments,  the 
past  experiences  and  difficulties  he  has  encountered. 

53.  Mental  Disorders  Reinforcing  or  Simulating 
Physical  Invalidism,  "Neurasthenia/ ”  "Hysteria/’ 

and  "Nervousness”1 

There  are  certain  diseases  which  are  dreaded  by  every  one  largely 
because  they  threaten  life, — such  diseases  as  tuberculosis,  cancer, 
heart  disease,  pneumonia,  etc.  Contrasted  with  these  are  diseases 
whose  main  and  outstanding  threat  is  to  happiness  and  efficiency  since 
life  itself  is  not  shortened  nor  threatened  by  them.  These  diseases  are 
lumped  together  in  the  lay  mind  under  the  term  "nervousness,”  which 
like  many  another  widespread  term  has  no  real  scientific  standing. 
The  term  "psychoneurosis”  is  used  by  medical  men  to  include  this 
group  of  diseases,  and  the  term  itself  implies  that  here  are  nervous 
and  mental  disorders  in  which  no  alteration  can  be  found  in  any  part 
of  the  nervous  system.  In  this  particular,  these  conditions  differ  from 
such  diseases  as  locomotor  ataxia,  cerebral  hemorrhage,  and  tumor 
of  the  brain,  because  there  are  marked  changes  in  the  structure  of  the 
nervous  system  in  the  latter  troubles.  One  might  compare  the  psycho¬ 
neuroses  to  a  watch  which  needed  oiling  or  cleaning,  or  merely  a 
winding  up,  as  against  one  in  which  a  vital  part  was  broken. 

These  psychoneuroses  are  divided  by  physicians  into  three  kinds, 
neurasthenia,  psychasthenia,  and  hysteria.  Without  going  too  ex- 
tensively  into  the  symptoms  of  each  of  these  three  groups  of  diseases, 
it  may  be  stated  that  fundamentally  neurasthenia  is  marked  by  an  in¬ 
creased  liability  to  fatigue.  The  tired  feeling  that  comes  on  with  a 
minimum  of  exertion,  worse  on  arising  than  on  going  to  bed,  is  its 
distinguishing  mark.  Sleep,  which  should  remove  the  fatigue  of  the 
day,  does  not ;  the  victim  takes  half  of  his  day  to  get  going ;  and  at 
night,  when  he  should  have  the  delicious  drowsiness  of  bedtime,  he 
is  wideawake  and  disinclined  to  go  to  bed  or  sleep.  This  fatigue  enters 

aBy  Abraham  Myerson,  M.D.,  Assistant  Professor  of  Neurology  in  the  Tufts 
Medical  School  and  Consulting  Neurologist  of  the  Boston  Psychopathic  Hospital. 
From  The  Commonwealth ,  Vol.  IX,  No.  2,  pp.  47-52.  Massachusetts  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Public  Health. 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


421 

into  all  functions  of  the  mind  and  body.  Fatigue  of  mind  brings 
about  lack  of  concentration,  an  inattention,  and  this  brings  about  an 
inefficiency  that  worries  the  patient  beyond  words  as  portending  a 
mental  breakdown.  Fatigue  of  purpose  brings  a  listlessness  of  effort, 
a  shirking  of  the  strenuous,  the  more  distressing  because  the  victim  is 
often  enough  an  idealist  with  overlofty  purposes.  Fatigue  of  mood 
is  marked  by  depression  of  a  mild  kind,  a  liability  to  worry,  a  lack  of 
enthusiasm  for  those  one  lives  with  or  for  the  things  formerly  held 
dearest.  And,  finally,  the  fatigue  is  often  marked  by  a  lack  of  control 
over  the  emotional  expression  so  that  anger  blazes  forth  more  easily 
over  trifles,  and  the  tears  come  upon  even  a  slight  vexation.  To  be  neu¬ 
rasthenic  is  to  magnify  the  pins  and  pricks  of  life  into  calamities,  and 
to  be  the  victim  of  an  abnormal  state  that  is  neither  health  nor  disease. 

In  addition  to  this  central  group  of  symptoms  are  (1)  pains  and 
aches  of  all  kinds  which  are  really  more  often  disagreeable  feelings 
rather  than  true  pains,  (2)  changes  in  the  appetite  and  in  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  bowels,  (3)  insomnia  or  disturbed  restless  slumber.  We 
look  to  the  bed  as  a  refuge  from  our  troubles,  as  a  sanctuary  wherein 
is  rebuilded  our  strength.  We  may  link  work  and  sleep  as  the  two 
complementary  functions  necessary  for  happiness.  If  sleep  is  dis¬ 
turbed,  so  is  work,  and  with  that  our  purposes  are  threatened.  So 
disturbed  sleep  has  not  only  its  bodily  effects  but  has  marked  results 
in  the  effect  on  happiness. 

Fundamental  in  the  symptoms  of  neurasthenia  is  fear.  This  fear 
takes  two  main  forms:  first,  the  worry  over  the  life  situation  in 
general,  fear  which  extends  to  all  the  comings,  goings,  and  doings  of 
life,  a  form  of  fear-thought  which  is  both  a  cause  of  neurasthenia  and 
a  symptom;  and,  second,  a  special  form  of  worry  called  hypochon- 
driacism,  which  essentially  is  fear  about  one’s  own  health.  The  hypo¬ 
chondriac  magnifies  every  flutter  of  his  heart  into  heart  disease,  every 
stitch  in  his  side  into  pleurisy,  every  cough  into  tuberculosis,  every 
pain  in  the  abdomen  into  cancer  of  the  stomach,  and  every  headache 
into  the  possibility  of  brain  tumor  or  insanity. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  main  symptoms  of  neurasthenia.  It  may 
range  from  mere  fatigue,  pain,  and  insomnia  to  a  profound  loss  of 
energy,  with  fear,  anxiety,  and  almost  complete  prostration. 

By  the  term  psychasthenia  is  understood  a  group  of  conditions  in 
which  the  bodily  symptoms,  as  fatigue,  sleeplessness,  loss  of  appetite, 


4  22 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


etc.,  are  either  not  so  marked  as  in  neurasthenia  or  else  are  over¬ 
shadowed  by  other  more  distinctly  mental  symptoms.  These  mental 
symptoms  are  three  main  types :  first,  a  tendency  to  recurring  fears  of 
all  kinds  and  descriptions,  fears  which  have  received  formidable  Greek 
names  but  which  are  fears  of  open  places,  of  closed  places,  of  being 
alone,  of  dirt,  of  disease,  of  all  kinds  and  manners  of  situations.  Second, 
there  is  a  tendency  to  obsessive  ideas  and  doubts  which  persist  in  com¬ 
ing  against  the  will  of  the  patient.  In  extreme  psychasthenia  the  dif¬ 
ficulty  of  making  up  the  mind,  of  deciding,  becomes  so  great  that  a 
person  may  suffer  an  agony  of  internal  debate  about  crossing  the 
street,  putting  on  the  clothing,  eating  the  meals,  in  fact  about  every 
detail  of  acting  and  thinking.  Third,  there  is  a  group  of  impulsions 
and  habits.  The  impulsions  are  sometimes  absurd,  as  when  a  person 
feels  compelled  to  step  over  every  crack,  to  touch  the  posts  along  the 
journey,  or  to  take  three  steps  at  a  time.  The  habits  range  from  the 
desire  to  bite  one’s  nails  to  the  quick,  which  is  so  common  in  children 
and  which  persists  in  the  psychasthenic  adult,  to  the  odd  grimaces, 
facial  contortions,  blinking  of  the  eyes,  and  crackling  of  the  joints  of 
the  inveterate  "tickeur.” 

The  third  great  psychoneurosis  is  hysteria,  which  almost  defies  a 
short  account.  I  shall  very  briefly  mention  the  main  types  of  symp¬ 
toms.  In  the  first  place  there  is  a  hysteric  temperament  and  an 
emotional  instability,  with  a  tendency  to  prolonged  and  freakish 
manifestations.  Fundamental  in  the  personality  of  the  hysteric  is 
this  unstable  emotionality,  which  is,  however,  secondary  to  an  egotistic, 
easily  wounded  nature,  craving  sympathy  and  respect,  admiration  and 
achievement,  but  unable  legitimately  to  earn  them.  Next  is  a  group 
of  symptoms,  the  so-called  paralyses,  which  may  involve  any  part  of 
the  body  and  persist  in  certain  cases  for  years.  These  paralyses  yield 
remarkably  to  any  energizing  influence  like  good  fortune,  the  com¬ 
pelling  personality  of  a  physician,  clergyman,  or  healer  (the  miracle 
cure),  or  a  serious  danger. 

Comparable  to  the  paralyses  are  queer  losses  in  sensation  which 
sometimes  take  the  form  of  hysterical  blindness,  of  deafness,  and 
which  like  the  paralyses  yield  at  times  in  bizarre  manner  to  bizarre 
influences.  In  the  days  of  witch  hunting  these  anaesthesias  were  called 
stigmata  and  considered  the  diabolical  marks  of  the  witch.  Especially 
striking  in  hysteria  are  the  curious  changes  in  consciousness  that  take 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


423 


place.  These  range  from  what  seem  to  be  fainting  spells  to  trances 
sometimes  lasting  for  a  long  time.  These  trances  have  been  used  by 
mystics  of  all  kinds  and  play  an  important  part  in  the  history  of  man¬ 
kind.  In  olden  days  the  Delphian  oracles  were  people  who  had  the 
power  of  throwing  themselves  into  these  hysteric  states,  and  to-day 
their  descendants  in  hysteria  are  the  crystal  gazers,  the  mediums,  the 
automatic  writers,  that  by  a  mixture  of  hysteria  and  faking  deceive 
the  simple  and  credulous. 

We  may  discuss  as  causative  of  these  three  conditions  certain  funda¬ 
mental  situations.  We  must  start  with  the  statement  that  mind  and 
body  are  one,  that  what  happens  to  one  physically  may  change  the 
whole  trend  of  thinking,  feeling,  and  acting,  and  what  happens  to  one 
mentally,  either  as  an  idea  or  emotion,  may  change  the  workings  of 
the  body,  disturbing  sleep,  digestion,  and  the  coordinated  action  of  the 
great  organs  of  the  body.  All  mankind  knows  this  in  the  sense  that 
all  language  crystallizes  these  beliefs,  but  it  is  rarely  taken  into 
account  either  by  medical  men  or  the  laity.. 

Thus  we  may  establish  as  causative  of  these  states  certain  physical 
situations.  They  may  follow  exhausting  illness,  surgical  operation, 
difficult  childbirth,  and  in  any  situation  which  drains  the  energy  and 
resources  of  the  organism.  Such  conditions  are  common  after  influ¬ 
enza,  pneumonia,  and  after  those  surgical  operations  where  the  patient 
is  allowed  too  quickly  to  get  back  to  his  duties.  One  of  the  crying 
needs  of  every  community  is  an  institution  where  people  may  rest 
after  an  exhausting  illness. 

Just  as  surely  as  physical  situations  may  cause  neurasthenia, 
psychasthenia,  or  hysteria,  so  mental  situations  may  cause  them,  and, 
in  fact,  are  undoubtedly  more  important  in  the  majority  of  cases  in 
their  genesis.  There  are  situations  in  which  fear  arises  as  a  sudden 
and  overpowering  emotion,  such  as  the  battlefield  or  in  the  perilous 
places  in  industry  or  on  the  streets  of  the  cities,  and  occasionally 
even  in  the  safest  and  coziest  nook  of  the  home.  The  traumatic 
neurosis,  so  called,  has  its  origin,  at  least  in  part,  in  the  de-energizing 
result  of  fear,  and  in  the  persistence  of  the  emotion  for  many  and 
many  a  day  to  come.  For  fear  may  act  as  a  most  potent  drug,  and  its 
physical  effects  range  from  the  cold  chill,  the  rapid  heart,  the  sharp, 
painful  respiration,  and  the  all-gone  feeling  in  the  abdomen,  to  the 
most  complete  unconsciousness.  Indeed,  all  emotions  are  as  much 


424 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


physical  as  mental,  and  he  is  a  shallow  thinker  and  a  poor  physician 
who  dismisses  the  emotional  state  of  the  patient  as  unworthy  his  most 
careful  and  detailed  attention. 

But  in  addition  to  these  sudden  overpowering  emotional  states 
there  are  more  constant  mental  situations  of  a  disagreeable  kind. 
Whether  there  is  a  subconsciousness  or  not,  this  can  be  affirmed — 
that  every  human  being  is  a  pot  boiling  with  desires,  passions,  lusts, 
wishes,  purposes,  ideas,  and  emotions,  some  of  which  he  clearly  recog¬ 
nizes  and  clearly  admits,  and  some  of  which  he  does  not  clearly  recog¬ 
nize  and  which  he  would  deny.  These  desires,  passions,  purposes,  etc., 
are  not  in  harmony  one  with  another ;  they  are  often  irreconcilable, 
and  one  has  to  be  smothered  for  the  sake  of  the  other.  Thus  a  sex 
feeling  that  is  not  legitimate,  an  illicit  forbidden  love,  has  to  be  con¬ 
quered  for  the  sake  of  the  purpose  to  be  religious  or  good,  or  the  desire 
to  be  respected.  So  one  may  struggle  against  a  hatred  for  a  person 
whom  one  should  love, — a  husband,  a  wife,  an  invalid  parent,  or  child 
whose  care  is  a  burden,— rand  one  refuses  to  recognize  that  there  is 
such  a  struggle.  So  one  may  seek  to  suppress  jealousy,  envy  of  the 
nearest  and  dearest ;  soul-stirring,  forbidden  passions ;  secret  revolt 
against  morality  and  law  which  may  (and  often  does)  rage  in  the 
most  puritanical  breast. 

In  the  theory  of  the  subconscious  these  undesired  thoughts,  feelings, 
passions,  wishes,  are  repressed  and  pushed  into  the  innermost  recesses 
of  the  being,  out  of  the  light  of  the  conscious  personality,  but,  never¬ 
theless,  acting  on  the  personality,  distorting  it,  wearying  it. 

However  this  may  be,  there  is  struggle,  conflict  in  every  human 
breast  and  especially  difficult  and  undecided  struggles  in  the  case  of 
the  psychoneurotic.  Literally,  secretly  or  otherwise  he  is  a  house 
divided  against  himself,  de-energized  by  fear,  disgust,  revolt,  and 
conflict.  It  is  in  these  conflicts  and  their  results  that  the  major  part 
of  neurasthenia,  psychasthenia,  and  hysteria  arises,  in  disgust,  dissat¬ 
isfaction,  impotent  revolt,  and  the  splitting  of  the  personality  that 
comes  when  one  part  of  us  cannot  live  harmoniously  with  other  parts. 

The  task  of  the  physician  in  these  cases  is  first  of  all  to  diagnose 
the  situation,  to  make  sure  that  he  is  not  dealing  with  organic  disease 
masked  by  a  psychoneurosis.  Thus  it  must  be  emphasized  as  funda¬ 
mental  that  in  no  case  should  the  diagnosis  be  made  until  organic 
situations  are  excluded. 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


425 


Second,  the  physician  must  then  discover  the  physical  factors  out 
of  which  the  condition  has,  in  part,  its  origin :  in  bad  habits  of  eating 
or  sleeping,  in  bad  habits  of  work  and  play,  in  poorly  conducted 
organic  habits,  such  as  the  care  of  the  bowels.  He  must  take  whatever 
steps  seem  necessary  to  cure  loss  of  appetite,  disturbed  sleep,  and 
must  prescribe  medicines,  fresh  air,  massage,  and  exercise  according 
to  the  physical  situation. 

Third,  he  must  do  far  more  than  these  things.  He  must  probe  into 
the  life  of  the  patient  and  discover  the  mental  causes,  the  dissatisfac¬ 
tions,  the  revolts,  the  disgusts,  the  forbidden  desires,  and  the  dis¬ 
sociations  and  conflicts  that  are  back  of  the  symptoms.  He  must 
harmonize  the  personality  of  the  patient,  must  reconcile  the  one  phase 
to  another,  and  bring  about  a  philosophy  of  life,  either  of  renunciation 
or,  achievement,  that  will  meet  the  situation.  He  must  teach  control 
of  emotions  and  inculcate  new  purposes  and  ambitions,  or  restore  the 
old  ones  if  these  have  disappeared.  His  is  a  task  formerly  relegated 
to  priest  and  pastor,  to  teacher  and  philosopher,  but  he  must  be  all  of 
these  things  when  he  deals  with  the  psychoneuroses,  and  from  his 
capacity  for  understanding  human  nature,  and  from  his  ability  to 
probe  successfully  into  the  dark,  fiercely  guarded  corners  of  the  human 
mind,  will  come  the  ability  to  deal  with  these  conditions. 

54.  The  Insane  in  Institutions1 

Question  of  the  increase  of  insanity.  The  ratio  of  total  insane 
enumerated  in  1880,  when  the  enumeration  is  believed  to  have  been 
more  complete  than  at  any  other  census,  was  183.3  Per  100,000  of  the 
total  population.  In  1910  the  insane  in  hospitals  alone  represented 
a  ratio  of  204.3  Per  ioq,ooo  population.  As  compared  with  the  total 
population,  therefore,  the  number  of  insane  in  institutions  in  1910 
was  relatively  greater  than  the  total  number  of  insane  enumerated 
in  1880. 

Insanity  among  negroes  and  foreign-born  whites.  The  187,791  in¬ 
sane  in  hospitals  enumerated  on  January  1,  1910,  included  12,910 
negroes,  and  the  60,769  insane  admitted  to  hospitals  in  the  year  1910, 

iFrom  "The  Insane  and  Feeble-Minded  in  Institutions,  1910,”  pp.  13,  34,  36, 
53,  55,  56,  59,  61,  75,  76.  Department  of  Commerce, "Bureau  of  the  Census.  Gov¬ 
ernment  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1914. 


426 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


included  4384  negroes.  The  negroes  thus  constituted  about  6.9  per 
cent  of  the  insane  enumerated  on  January  1,  and  7.2  per  cent  of  the 
insane  admitted  during  the  year,  while  of  the  total  population  of 
the  United  States  they  constituted  a  little  over  10  per  cent.  Taking 
the  country  as  a  whole,  therefore,  the  negroes  in  proportion  to  their 
numbers  have  fewer  representatives  in  insane  asylums  than  the  whites. 

For  negroes  the  number  of  admissions  per  100,000  population  was 
44.6 ;  for  the  whites  it  was  68.7.  Equally  marked  is  the  contrast  as 
regards  the  ratio  of  inmates  present  on  January  1 :  13 1.4  per  100,000 
for  negroes  as  compared  with  213.2  per  100,000  for  whites. 

A  comparison  between  the  negroes  and  foreign-born  whites  as  re¬ 
gards  the  ratio  of  admissions  to  hospitals  for  the  insane  is  presented, 
by  geographic  divisions,  in  the  following  table: 


Admitted 

to  Hospitals  in  1910 

per  100,000  Population  of  Same 

Division 

Race  and  Nativity 

Native 

Foreign- 

Negro 

white 

bom  white 

United  States . 

57-9 

116.3 

44.6 

New  England . 

93-6 

134-4 

153-8 

Middle  Atlantic . 

61.8 

112.6 

105.1 

East  North  Central . 

61.9 

IO9.7 

IOI.I 

West  North  Central . 

52.1 

III.O 

107. 1 

South  Atlantic . 

56.8 

1 2 1. 1 

46.2 

East  South  Central . 

46.5 

97-9 

00 

VO 

PO 

West  South  Central . 

36.4 

65-9 

17-3 

Mountain . 

48.3 

117.9 

I35-I 

Pacific . 

60.7 

152.6 

195-2 

1  _ 

In  none  of  the  northern  or  southern  divisions,  except  New  England, 
is  the  ratio  of  admissions  to  hospitals  for  the  insane  as  high  for  negroes 
as  it  is  for  the  foreign-born  whites.  The  ratio  for  the  foreign-born 
whites  is  very  materially  affected  by  the  peculiar  age  composition  of 
that  class,  comprising  as  it  does  an  exceptionally  large  proportion  of 
adults  and  small  proportion  of  children.  This  factor  makes  the  ratio 
for  this  class  higher  than  it  would  be  if  the  age  distribution  was 
similar  to  that  of  either#the  negroes  or  the  native  whites.  When  the 
ratios  are  compared  by  age  groups  it  will  be  found  that  in  every  age 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


427 

group,  with  one  exception,  the  ratio  for  northern  negroes  is  higher 
than  that  for  the  foreign-born  whites.  The  exception  occurs  in  the 
age  group  fifty-five  to  fifty-nine  years,  in  which  for  some  reason — 
possibly  on  account  of  erroneous  age  returns — the  ratio  for  negroes 
is  comparatively  low. 

General  paralysis  and  alcoholic  psychosis.  On  the  schedule  for  re¬ 
porting  admissions  was  a  question  asking  whether  the  patient  was 
suffering  from  either  general  paralysis  or  alcoholic  psychosis.  Gen¬ 
eral  paralysis  of  the  insane  is  indicative  of  syphilis,  being  one  form  of 
syphilitic  brain  diseases,  while  alcoholic  psychosis  is  brought  on  by 
the  excessive  use  of  alcoholic  drinks.  The  instructions  for  filling 
out  the  schedules  contained  the  following  definition  regarding  the  use 
of  the  term  "alcoholic  psychosis”: 

By  "alcoholic  psychosis”  is  meant  one  of  the  mental  diseases  which,  by 
their  characteristic  symptoms,  are  known  to  be  the  direct  result  of  alcoholic 
intemperance.  Cases  of  mental  disease  in  which  alcoholic  intemperance  is 
only  one  of  the  etiological  factors  and  cases  merely  associated  with  alcoholic 
intemperance  should  not  be  reported  under  alcoholic  psychosis. 

Of  the  60,769  insane  admitted  to  hospitals  in  1910,  6122,  or  10. 1 
per  cent  of  the  total  number,  were  suffering  from  alcoholic  psychosis, 
and  3884,  or  6.4  per  cent,  from  general  paralysis.  In  the  aggregate, 
16.8  per  cent,  or  about  one-sixth,  of  the  insane  admitted  to  hospitals 
in  1910  were  victims  of  one  or  the  other  of  these  diseases. 

The  number  of  cases  of  general  paralysis  and  alcoholic  psychosis 
in  the  admissions  to  hospitals  in  1910  was  equivalent  to  a  ratio  of 

1 1. 1  per  100,000  population;  the  number  of  other  cases  of  insanity 
represented  a  ratio  of  55  per  100,000.  Of  course,  the  sum  of  these 
two  ratios  is  the  ratio  of  total  admissions  to  the  total  population, 

66.1  per  100,000. 

Sex.  As  would  probably  be  anticipated,  the  figures  show  that 
alcoholic  psychosis  and  general  paralysis  are  much  more  frequent 
causes  of  insanity  for  males  than  for  females.  Of  the  34,116  males 
admitted  to  hospitals  for  the  insane  in  1910,  2989,  or  8.8  per  cent, 
had  general  paralysis;  and  5220,  or  15.3  per  cent,  had  alcoholic 
psychosis.  Of  the  26,653  females  admitted,  895,  or  3.4  per  cent,  had 
general  paralysis;  and  902,  or  3.4  per  cent,  had  alcoholic  psychosis.1 

1 A  census  of  the  insane  in  the  United  States  for  the  year  1922  is  being  compiled 
by  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  as  this  volume  goes  to  press. —  Ed. 


428 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


55.  A  Study  of  Heredity  in  Insanity  in  the 
Light,  of  the  Mendelian  Theory1 

From  the  earliest  times  physicians  have  recorded  observations  of 
the  transmission  of  nervous  diseases  by  heredity. 

In  modern  times  the  accumulation  of  large  amounts  of  material  in 
the  shape  of  clinical  statistics  published  by  hospitals  has  established 
beyond  question  the  fact  that  heredity  plays  an  essential  part  in  the 
etiology  of  certain  neuropathic  conditions.  Table  I  shows  some  statis¬ 
tical  figures  selected  at  random. 


Table  I 


• 

Total 
Number  of 
Cases  with 
Known 
Histories 

Cases  Showing 
Heredity 

Number 

Per  cent 

Report  of  New  York  State  Commission  in  Lunacy 

for  the  year  ending  September  30,  1909  . 

2467 

1259 

Si-o 

Report  of  Michigan  Asylum  for  the  Insane  at  Kala- 

mazoo  for  the  years  1859-1908 . 

8531 

4800 

56-3 

Report  of  Rhode  Island  State  Hospital  for  the  In- 

sane  for  the  year  ending  December  31,  1910  . 

250 

137 

54-8 

Figures  such  as  these  are  for  all  forms  of  insanity,  including  those 
which  occur  on  a  basis  of  exogenous  causes ;  yet  even  as  they  are, 
their  significance  becomes  quite  apparent  when  they  are  compared 
with  figures  representing  the  frequency  of  a  neuropathic  family  his¬ 
tory  among  normal  subjects :  3  per  cent  according  to  Jost,  7.5  per  cent 
according  to  Nacke.2 

Aside  from  statistical  data,  studies  of  individual  cases  have  re¬ 
vealed,  on  the  one  hand,  the  facts  of  atavistic  and  collateral  heredity, 
and  on  the  other  hand,  the  fact  of  the  frequent  failure  of  transmission 
of  neuropathic  traits.  In  other  words,  there  seemed  to  be  no  regularity 
in  the  working  of  heredity,  and  the  generally  accepted  conclusion  on 
the  subject  has  been  well  voiced  by  Kraepelin:  "We  must  therefore 
regard  the  statistics  of  heredity  in  insanity  merely  as  facts  of  experi- 

1  By  A.  J.  Rosanoff,  M.  D.,  and  Florence  I.  Orr,  B.  S.,  Bulletin  No.  5,  pp.  221- 
222,  225-228.  Eugenics  Record  Office,  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  New  York,  October, 
I9H-  2 Cited  by  Kraepelin,  Psychiatric  (7th  ed.),  Vol.  I,  p.  116. 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY”  429 

ence  without  finding  in  them  the  expression  of  a  Taw’  which  should 
hold  in  every  case.”1 

In  recent  years,  however,  it  has  been  shown  that  human  heredity, 
at  least  as  far  as  certain  traits  are  concerned,  is  subject  to  general 
biological  laws.  Special  mention  may  be  made  of  color  of  eyes,2  color 
of  hair,3  form  of  hair,4  brachydactyly,5  some  forms  of  cataract,0 
and  retinitis  pigmentosa,7  as  human  traits  which  have  been  shown  to 
be  transmitted  from  generation  to  generation  in  accordance  with  the 
Mendelian  theory. 

As  regards  insanity  and  allied  neuropathic  conditions,  the  facts  to 
which  we  have  already  referred,  namely,  the  facts  of  atavistic  and 
collateral  heredity,  direct  heredity,  and  the  frequent  failure  of  trans¬ 
mission  seem  to  point  plainly  to  alternative  inheritance.  This  suggests 
the  likelihood  of  a  mechanism  of  inheritance  according  with  the  Men¬ 
delian  theory,  and  the  present  study  has  been  undertaken  with  a  view 
to  determining  whether  indeed  the  neuropathic  constitution  is  trans¬ 
mitted  in  the  manner  of  a  Mendelian  trait.  .  .  . 

Description  of  Material 

The  total  amount  of  psychiatric  material  which  is  available  at  this 
hospital8  is  very  large.  We  found,  however,  that  for  various  reasons, 
to  be  spoken  of  presently,  the  greater  part  of  the  material  could  not 
be  utilized  in  our  study. 

In  selecting  cases  our  aim  has  been  to  exclude  all  those  forms  of 
insanity  in  the  causation  of  which  exogenous  factors,  such  as  traumata, 
alcoholism,  and  syphilis,  are  known  to  play  an  essential  part ;  and 
we  have  also  systematically  excluded  psychoses  which  occur  upon  a 
basis  of  organic  cerebral  affections,  such  as  tumors,  arteriosclerosis, 
apoplexy,  and  the  like.  We  are  not  inclined  to  dispute  the  possible 
influence  of  heredity  in  these  conditions ;  we  have  excluded  them 

1Kraepelin,  Psychiatrie  (7th  ed.),  Vol.  I,  p.  116. 

2Davenport,  Science  (N.  S.),  Vol.  XXVI,  November  1,  1907;  Hurst,  Proceed¬ 
ings  of  the  Royal  Society,  Vol.  LXXX  B.,  1908. 

3 Davenport,  The  American  Naturalist,  Vol.  XLIII,  April,  1909. 

4  Ibid.  Vol.  XLII,  May,  1908. 

5Farabee,  Papers  of  Peabody  Museum,  Vol.  Ill,  1905. 

uNettleship,  Report  of  the  Royal  London  Ophthalmic  Hospital,  Vol.  XVI,  1905. 

7  Ibid.  Vol.  XVII,  Parts  I-III. 

8  Kings  Park  State  Hospital,  Kings  Park,  New  York. 


430 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


merely  for  the  purpose  of  simplifying  our  problem  by  avoiding  the 
necessity  of  dealing  with  a  complicating  factor  in  the  shape  of  an 
essential  exogenous  cause.  Moreover  there  seemed  to  be  reason  to 
believe  that  the  so-called  functional  psychoses  and  neuroses  are  more 
closely  related  to  each  other  than  to  the  conditions  which  we  have 
sought  to  exclude ;  and  since  our  material  had  to  be  largely  massed 
together  for  statistical  treatment  it  was  important  that  it  should  be  as 
homogeneous  as  possible. 

More  than  half  the  patients  at  this  hospital  are  either  themselves 
foreign  born  or  the  children  of  foreign-born  parents ;  and  among  those 
who  were  born  in  this  country  of  American  parents  there  are  many 
whose  homes  are  in  distant  states;  thus  but  a  small  proportion  re¬ 
mained  whose  families  had  for  two  or  three  generations  resided  in 
this  country  and  were  accessible  to  investigation. 

Other  difficulties  in  obtaining  our  data  were  due  to  the  ignorance 
of  some  of  our  informants  or  to  their* reluctance  or  refusal  to  co-operate 
in  the  investigation ;  and  in  many  cases  the  investigation  had  to  be 
discontinued  and  the  data  already  collected  had  to  be  discarded  owing 
to  incompleteness. 

In  the  actual  analysis  of  the  data  collected  in  the  course  of  our 
investigation  the  problem  in  each  case  was  to  distinguish,  on  the  basis 
of  the  information  obtained  by  questioning  the  relatives,  neuropathic 
states  from  the  normal  state  and  in  the  case  of  a  neuropathic 
state  to  identify,  if  possible,  the  special  variety.  Such  diagnosis  often 
enough  presents  great  difficulty  when  there  is  opportunity  for  direct 
observation,  but  when  it  has  to  be  based  upon  observations  of  un¬ 
trained  informants  related  from  memory  the  difficulty  is,  of  course, 
greatly  increased  and  with  it  the  chance  of  error.  We  have  endeavored 
to  reduce  the  amount  of  error  from  this  source  by  interviewing  person¬ 
ally  as  many  as  possible  of  the  nearest  relatives  of  the  patients  whose 
pedigrees  were  being  investigated,  and  by  the  practice  of  tracing 
almost  all  the  families  not  farther  than  to  the  generation  of  grand¬ 
parents,  for  the  farther  back  our  inquiries  extended  the  more  scant 
and  more  vague  was  the  information  which  we  were  able  to  obtain. 

To  the  difficulty  of  diagnosis  is  added  the  further  difficulty  which 
results  from  the  impossibility  in  the  present  state  of  psychiatry  of 
precisely  delimiting  the  conception  of  the  neuropathic  constitution. 
To  this  matter  we  shall  have  occasion  to  revert  in  subsequent  sections. 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


43i 


In  the  analysis  of  data  it  was  often  necessary  in  the  case  of  a  normal 
subject  to  determine  whether  the  case  was  one  of  duplex  or  of  simplex 
inheritance,  it  having  appeared  early  in  the  course  of  our  study  that 
the  normal  condition  was  dominant  over  the  neuropathic  condition. 
The  fact  of  simplex  inheritance  we  were  able  in  some  cases  to  estab¬ 
lish  on  the  basis  of  the  existence  of  neuropathic  manifestations  in  the 
ancestors  or  collateral  relatives  of  the  subject;  in  other  cases  this 
evidence  was  lacking  as  our  information  did  not  extend  to  the  more 
remote  generations,  so  that  it  was  necessary  to  assume  the  fact  of 
simplex  inheritance  on  the  basis  of  the  existence  of  neuropathic  off¬ 
spring:  the  two  types  of  material  have  been  treated  separately.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  fact  of  duplex  inheritance  was  in  every  case  based 
upon  the  absence  of  neuropathic  manifestations  in  ancestors  and  col¬ 
lateral  relatives,  as  far  as  known,  as  well  as  in  the  offspring;  but 
inasmuch  as  in  scarcely  any  case  was  the  family  history  traced  farther 
back  than  the  third  generation  it  is  clear  that  the  possibility  of  simplex 
inheritance  was  in  no  case  positively  excluded ;  we  have  here,  there¬ 
fore,  another  source  of  error  which,  fortunately,  is  slight,  and  affects 
the  least  important  part  of  our  material,  namely,  the  cases  of  matings 
from  which  no  neuropathic  offspring  have  resulted. 

On  the  whole,  no  pretension  is  made  here  of  total  elimination  of 
error;  but  we  believe  that  whatever  errors  remain  they  are  not  suf¬ 
ficient  to  invalidate  the  material  as  a  basis  for  our  study. 

Statistical  Analysis  of  Material 

In  the  Preliminary  Report,  Bulletin  No.  3,  Eugenics  Record  Office, 
which  was  based  upon  an  analysis  of  the  pedigrees  of  twelve  families, 
it  was  shown  that  the  neuropathic  constitution  is  transmitted  by 
heredity  probably  in  the  manner  of  a  trait  which  is,  in  the  Mendelian 
sense,  recessive  to  the  normal  condition. 

Sixty  other  families  have  since  been  investigated ;  the  entire  mate¬ 
rial  now  includes  the  pedigrees  of  seventy-two  families,  representing 
206  different  matings,  with  a  total  of  1097  offspring.  In  Table  II  this 
mass  of  data  has  been  arranged  so  as  to  show  the  proportions  of 
normal  and  neuropathic  offspring  which  resulted  from  the  various 
types  of  mating  alongside  of  figures  representing  theoretical  expecta¬ 
tion  according  to  the  Mendelian  theory. 


432 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Table  II 


Types  ok  Mating 

Number  of  Matings 

1 

Total  Number  of  Offspring 

Died  in  Childhood 

Data  Unascertained 

Neuropathic 

Offspring 

Normal 

Offspring 

Actual  Findings 

Theoretical  Expectation 

Actual  Findings 

1 

Theoretical  Expectation 

a. 

RR  x  RR  oo  RR  .  .  .  • 

i7 

75 

II 

0 

54 

64 

10 

O 

b. 

DR  X  RR  oo  DR  +  RR  .  . 

37 

216 

46 

I 

84 

842 

8.5 

00 

bv 

DR  X  RR  oo  DR  +  RR  .  . 

56 

284 

20 

4 

106 

130 

154 

130 

c. 

DDXRRooDR  .  .  .  . 

i4 

61 

13 

3 

0 

0 

45 

45 

d. 

DR  X  DR  oo  DD  +  2DR  +  RR 

7 

34 

5 

0 

8 

7t 

21 

2lf 

dr 

DR  X  DR  oo  DD  +  2DR  +  RR 

55 

335 

39 

3 

99 

73* 

194 

2194 

e. 

DD  X  DR  oo  DD  +  DR  .  . 

20 

92 

12 

3 

0 

0 

77 

77 

f. 

DD  X  DD  oo  DD  .  .  .  . 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

Totals . 

206 

;  1097 

146 

14 

35i 

359 

586 

578 

Some  of  the  data  represented  in  the  table  require  special  ex¬ 
planation. 

Among  the  offspring  which  resulted  from  matings  of  the  first  type, 
RR  X  RR,  ten  are  recorded  as  being  normal,  although  theoretically 
all  should  be  neuropathic.  Of  these  ten  one  died  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
eight  years  in  an  accident,  during  life  suffered  from  asthma,  had  a 
son  who  died  in  convulsions ;  another  is  described  as  being  easy  going, 
is  somewhat  odd  and  possibly  abnormal  in  make-up,  is  twenty-nine 
years  of  age ;  the  rest  are  from  eight  to  twenty-two  years  of  age.  In 
other  words,  in  two  of  the  ten  subjects  the  neuropathic  constitution 
is  not  positively  excluded  and  the  remaining  eight  have  not  reached 
the  age  of  incidence. 

The  matings  of  the  second  and  fourth  types,  DR  X  RR  and 
DR  X  DR  respectively,  have  been  divided  into  two  groups  each,  as 
already  explained  in  the  preceding  section :  thus  groups  b  and  d  in 
the  chart  include  the  matings  in  which  the  simplex  condition  of  either 
or  both  mates,  as  the  case  may  be,  is  definitely  ascertained,  the  exist- 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


433 


ence  of  neuropathic  manifestations  either  in  ancestors  or  in  collateral 
relatives  of  the  subjects  appearing  in  the  pedigrees ;  groups  b ,  and  dx> 
on  the  other  hand,  include  the  matings  in  which  the  simplex  condition 
of  either  or  both  mates  is  assumed  to  exist  on  the  basis  of  the  charac¬ 
ter  of  the  offspring.  It  is  perhaps  not  surprising  that  groups  bx  and  dx 
are  larger  than  b  and  d  respectively  when  we  consider  the  great  likeli¬ 
hood  of  neuropathic  taint,  derived  from  an  ancestor  of  a  remote 
generation,  being  transmitted  many  times  in  the  shape  of  a  simplex 
condition,  and  at  the  same  time  the  fact  that  our  investigations  ex¬ 
tended  in  almost  all  cases  no  farther  back  than  the  generation  of 
grandparents. 

As  is  shown  in  the  table  the  correspondence  between  theoretical 
expectation  and  actual  findings  is  in  some  cases  exact  and  in  all  cases 
remarkably  dose.  It  would  seem,  then,  that  the  fact  of  the  heredi¬ 
tary  transmission  of  the  neuropathic  constitution  as  a  recessive  trait, 
in  accordance  with  the  Mendelian  theory,  may  be  regarded  as  defi¬ 
nitely  established. 

56.  The  Causes  of  Insanity1 

The  term  "insanity”  is  essentially  of  legal  significance.  The  law 
is  chiefly  interested  in  determining  the  facts  of  responsibility  for  con¬ 
duct.  The  physician  and  sociologist  on  the  other  hand  are  interested 
not  only  in  the  responsibility  of  the  individual  for  any  conduct  on  his 
part,  but  also  in  the  reasons  why  such  odd  conduct  originated  regard¬ 
less  as  to  the  degree  of  responsibility  accompanying  it.  We  may  arrive 
at  a  more  comprehensive  viewpoint  of  this  subject  if  we  adopt  the 
attitude  of  looking  at  the  insane  as  simply  human  beings  who  from 
varying  causes  find  themselves  thinking  in  certain  ways  which  seem 
odd  or  unusual  to  the  rest  of  us.  The  queer  notions,  the  delusions 
and  hallucinations,  the  changes  in  the  feeling  tone  (the  affect)  which 
accompany  such  ideation  all  mirror  themselves  in  the  symptom- 
behavior  of  the  patient  and  hence  conduct  develops  which  has  in  view 
the  accomplishment  of  this  unusual  ideation,  or  in  other  words  the 
striving  to  attain  the  deep  wish-trends  of  the  personality.  These  wish- 

1From  "The  Causes  of  Dependency:  Based  on  A  Survey  of  Oneida  County” 
(pp.  378-381),  by  Chester  Lee  Carlisle,  M.D.  Eugenics  and  Social  Welfare  Bul- 
letin  No.  XV.  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities,  1918. 


434 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


trends  are  for  the  most  part  formulated  in  the  deep  sub-conscious 
mental  life  of  the  individual  and  their  influence  on  subsequent  conduct 
produces  results  which  often  appear  very  inconsistent  to  that  same 
individual’s  surface  personality.  This  accounts  for  the  change  in  talk, 
attitude,  and  behavior  such  an  individual  presents  when  he  appears 
before  us  as  a  patient  suffering  from  one  of  the  various  forms  of 
"insanity.” 

Insanity  or  mental  disorder  may  be  broadly  considered  to  fall  into 
two  categories:  (i)  those  cases  dependent  upon  actual  and  definite 
changes  in  the  brain  and  spinal  cord;  and  (2)  those  cases  which  de¬ 
velop  odd  ways  of  thinking  as  the  expression  of  inadequacy  of  reaction 
to  life  as  they  find  it ;  a  reaction  type  which  is  dependent  upon  innate 
constitutional  deviations  of  personality  or  individual  make-up.  In 
the  first  [organic]  group  fall  such  cases  of  insanity  as  are  due  essen¬ 
tially  to  bacterial  (micro-organism)  invasion  ;  or  to  the  breaking  down 
of  one  or  more  of  the  various  physical  "organs”  of  the  body,  [i.e. 
the  brain  and  cord  and  also,  notably,  the  blood-vessels,  heart,  kidneys, 
and  thyroid  gland  ]  ;  or  the  failure  in  function  of  other  organs  particu¬ 
larly  those  associated  with  metabolism  as  a  whole ;  and  the  effect  of 
poisons  originating  either  inside  the  body  from  perversion  of  organ 
function  or  those  which  are  taken  in  from  the  outside  as  alcohol  or 
other  drugs  and  chemicals.  There  is  another  organic  group  which 
comprises  cases  due  to  destructive  accident  or  "trauma”  whereby  the 
brain,  cord,  or  some  other  associated  organ  suffers  partial  or  complete 
loss  of  substance  with  resulting  disturbance  of  function.  When,  after 
trauma,  there  is  no  actual  organic  disturbance  of  organ  substance  yet 
nevertheless  a  psychosis  develops  we  feel  that  the  symptoms  are  due 
to  an  underlying  constitutional  peculiarity. 

The  insanity  (psychosis)  of  those  individuals  which  falls  into  the 
second  or  constitutional  group  may  be  spoken  of  as  the  expression  of 
inadequacy  of  reaction  to  life  as  their  environment  shapes  it.  This 
group  embraces  all  those  cases  whose  symptom-behavior  is  due  to 
constitutional  deviations,  or  twists  of  make-up  founded  upon  develop¬ 
mental  possibilities  |  unit  character  traits]  received  from  ancestors 
and  moulded  by  the  environment  in  which  that  person  lived  from  his 
first  moment  of  life. 

Of  the  causes  of  insanity  other  than  heredity  among  first  admis¬ 
sions  to  State  Hospitals  for  the  fiscal  year  of  nine  months  ending 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY”  435 

June  30,  1916,  for  the  whole  state  of  New  York  the  following  are 
listed  in  the  report  of  the  State  Hospital  Commission : 


Admissions,  total  cases . ..  4903 

Alcohol . 506 

Syphilis . 709 

Drugs .  20 

Abnormal  make-up . 1488 

Injury  to  head .  41 

Acute  illness . 13 

Childbirth .  44 

Senility . 498 

Arteriosclerosis . 586 

Epilepsy .  23 

Death  in  family .  64 

Loss  of  employment  and  financial  loss .  97 

Disappointment  in  love .  50 

Other  specified  causes . 607 

Unascertained . 1192 


The  outstanding  figure  in  this  list  is  1488 ;  the  number  of  cases 
due  to  "abnormal  make-up.”  It  would  seem  to  suggest  that  environ¬ 
mental  stress  finds  most  of  its  victims  in  those  who  are  constitutionally 
predisposed  to  mental  breakdown  through  having  innate  deviations 
of  make-up.  The  1916  report  of  the  State  Hospital  Commission 
has  shown  that  of  all  the  various  types  of  psychoses  diagnosed  on 
first  admissions,  the  percentage  of  cases  having  a  family  history  of 
insanity,  nervous  diseases,  neuropathic  or  psychopathic  traits  was 
49.9  per  cent  or  almost  exactly  one-half  of  the  total  number  treated 
and  states  further  that  "the  facts  set  forth  in  the  table  cannot  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  presenting  a  fair  statement  of  the  influence  of  heredity  in 
causing  the  various  psychoses.  The  histories  of  many  of  the  cases  are 
incomplete,  and  verification  of  data  received  from  relatives  and  patients 
is  in  most  cases  impossible.  .  .  .  It  is  probable  that  more  thorough  re¬ 
search  would  show  a  still  larger  percentage  of  cases  with  unfavorable 
family  history.” 

57.  Epilepsy1 

A  definition  of  epilepsy  is  difficult.  The  root  meaning  of  the  word 
conveys  very  little  idea  of  the  condition,  but  it  has  come  to  have  the 
applied  meaning  which  seems  to  be  all  that  is  necessary.  If  a  person 

1  By  Everett  Flood,  M.D.,  formerly  Superintendent  of  Monson  State  Hospital. 
From  the  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal ,  Vol.  CLXXV,  No.  12,  pp.  408-409. 


436 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


has  a  fit  of  any  degree,  mild  or  severe,  frequent  or  infrequent,  and  this 
fit  is  repeated  even  a  few  times  at  intervals,  we  say  that  the  person  is 
epileptic ;  but  it  ought  to  be  understood  that  epilepsy  is  not  a  disease. 
It  is  a  symptom,  or  a  collection  of  symptoms,  of  quite  a  variety  of 
conditions. 

It  is  probable  that  among  the  people  of  civilized  countries  there 
may  be  found  at  least  three  persons  in  every  thousand  who  perma¬ 
nently  have  recognized  attacks  of  epilepsy.  It  is  also  true  that  a  very 
large  number  never  come  to  light,  and  that  the  person  afflicted  goes 
on  through  life  with  real  epilepsy  but  is  never  counted  among  the 
epileptic  class.  In  the  whole  community,  about  one  child  in  twelve 
has  some  sort  of  a  fit  in  early  life.  A  few  have  them  repeated,  and 
yet  nearly  all  fail  to  become  epileptic. 

The  problems  connected  with  the  institutional  care  of  epileptics 
are  very  much  the  same  problems  as  those  connected  with  the  care* 
of  the  feeble-minded  and  insane.  In  500  cases  of  feeble-minded, 
11  per  cent  are  epileptic.  This  11  per  cent  are  essentially  like  the 
balance  that  do  not  have  fits.  They  do  not  even  rapidly  go  down  hill 
mentally  during  a  long  series  of  years.  Those  epileptics  who  do 
dement  come  from  the  classes  not  so  primarily  feeble-minded. 

Of  the  institutional  cases  which  come  to  autopsy,  78  per  cent  show 
gross  brain  lesions.  Probably  nearly  all  the  other  cases  show  micro¬ 
scopic  lesions.  There  is  no  way  of  knowing  whether  there  are  actual 
lesions  in  the  cases  of  those  who  as  a  rule  do  not  come  to  institutional 
care,  and  this  class  is  very  much  larger  than  the  class  that  does  come 
to  institutional  care. 

A  person  who  is  afflicted  with  epilepsy  may  be  engaged  in  any  occu¬ 
pation,  but  if  his  attacks  recur  many  times,  he  is  sure  to  lose  his 
position ;  and  I  doubt  if  there  is  often  a  case  where  the  epileptic 
symptom  is  at  all  prominent  without  some  manifestation  in  conduct 
which  is  different  from  the  absolutely  normal. 

Of  institutional  cases,  184  epileptic  children  were  examined  with 
great  care.  Fifty-three  per  cent  of  these  were  distinctly  feeble¬ 
minded  ;  44  per  cent  were  on  the  road  to  dementia ;  2  per  cent  only 
were  without  very  positive  mental  symptoms.  Among  1033  cases, 
including  the  184  young  persons  cited  above,  631  are  feeble-minded, 
377  insane,  and  25  normal.  All  the  normal  but  two  are  among  the 
children. 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY” 


•  437 


In  a  group  of  221  cases.,  30  per  cent  presented  active  mental  symp¬ 
toms  such  as  mania,  delusions,  and  hallucinations.  This  agrees  some¬ 
what  with  the  44  per  cent  who  finally  dement. 

When  we  find  that  so  many  of  the  cases  in  which  epilepsy  occurs 
are  among  those  who  are  defective,  it  is  natural  to  assign  this  enfeebled 
mental  condition  as  in  some  way  a  cause  of  their  epilepsy.  How  this 
occurs  in  a  few  of  the  feeble-minded,  and  in  a  majority  does  not,  I 
think  would  be  impossible  to  say.  We  may  assume  that  there  is  some 
inherited  tendency  which  produces  this  epileptic  symptom,  and  this 
seems  to  be  as  far  as  we  can  venture. 

A  large  number  of  cases  of  epilepsy  have  an  inheritance  of  either 
feeble-mindedness,  epilepsy,  migraine,  alcohol,  or  insanity.1 

A  certain  number  of  cases  of  epilepsy  are  of  course  caused  by  in¬ 
juries  to  the  head,  and  some  follow  such  conditions  as  scarlet  fever 
and  measles,  but  it  seems  almost  necessary  in  these  cases  to  assume  a 
predisposing  cause,  as  an  immense  number  of  head  injuries  and  scarlet 
fever  attacks  are  not  followed  by  epilepsy. 

If  parents  can  know  the  tendency  to  epilepsy,  or  the  liability  of  a 
certain  condition  coming  about,  they  can  care  for  their  children,  pro¬ 
vided  they  have  the  proper  intelligence  and  suitable  surroundings,  and 
so  guard  the  child  in  the  way  of  wholesomeness  of  living,  diet,  self- 
restraint,  etc.,  as  to  tide  them  over  the  critical  periods  of  childhood 
to  maturity  without  their  manifesting  this  symptom.  This  has  ap¬ 
parently  been  done  in  many  cases,  and  parents  should  certainly  be 
taught  how  to  take  care  of  children  who  are  especially  liable.  After 
the  fit  has  once  occurred,  the  matter  is  one  of  difficulty ;  if  it  occurs 
at  intervals  for  quite  a  number  of  times,  then  it  is  one  of  extreme  dif- 

1  Epilepsy  in  the  of  spring  of  epileptics.  Dr.  D.  A.  Thom,  former  pathologist, 
and  Gerna  S.  Walker,  former  social  service  worker  of  the  Monson  State  Hospital, 
present  a  paper  in  the  April,  1922,  issue  of  the  American  Journal  of  Psychiatry , 
in  which  they  conclude : 

1.  Epilepsy  as  a  disease  is  not  transmitted  directly  from  parent  to  offspring,  but 

rather,  we  believe,  that  it  is  the  nervous  system  lacking  in  the  normal  stability  that  is 
inherited  and  the  manifestations  of  this  instability  may  be  mental  deficiency  of  all 
degrees,  insanity  of  various  types,  neurological  and  psychopathic  disorders,  convulsions 
from  various  exciting  causes,  which  would  have  little  or  no  effect  on  a  normally  devel¬ 
oped  nervous  system.  ♦ 

2.  These  mental  and  nervous  disorders  are  less  frequently  found  in  the  offspring  of 
the  so-called  epileptic  than  we  have  heretofore  believed,  and  the  future  of  the  offspring 
born  of  epileptic  parents  is  not  as  hopeless  as  the  pessimistic  authorities  on  heredity  record. 

3.  Maternal  defects  are  more  frequently  manifested  in  some  form  or  other  in  the 
offspring  than  are  the  paternal  defects  and,  when  present,  are  more  likely  to  appear 
at  an  earlier  age. 


438 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


faculty.  However,  even  then  it  is  not  hopeless  in  all  cases  and  very 
much  can  be  done  in  the  way  of  home  care,  which  is  superior  to  institu¬ 
tional  care,  if  properly  conducted. 

58.  Purposes  and  Advantages  of  the  Colony  System1 

We  can  outline  the  purposes  and  advantages  of  ideal  colonies: 

1.  They  provide  home  life,  simple  and  elemental  in  form,  for  they 
take  the  individual  from  his  own  home,  unsuited  to  his  peculiar  needs, 
to  a  home  especially  designed  to  supply  such  needs. 

2.  They  tend  strongly — and  this  is  the  best  feature  of  all — to 
preserve  individuality,  the  one  thing  institutions  are  apt  to  submerge 
or  destroy.  In  ideal  colonies,  individuals,  not  units  and  numbers,  are 
integral,  essential  parts  of  the  whole.  There  is  in  them  no  pressing 
and  moulding  of  a  great  mass  of  humanity  in  small  spaces  through 
routine  life  until  all  are  essentially  alike. 

3.  The  ideal  colony  provides  vocations  of  all  kinds  and  degrees  for 
all  who  require  them — vocations  ranging  from  the  simplest  to  the 
most  complex,  from  weeding  the  cabbage  patch  to  the  making  of  brick 
and  the  construction  of  houses ;  provides  education  that  begins  at  the 
alphabet  and  ends  in  some  profession  that  guarantees  self-support ; 
provides  amusements  and  recreations  that  are  not  bound  by  rules  of 
necessity,  regularity,  or  formality ;  provides  for  the  organization  of 
homes  in  a  way  to  throw  congenial  spirits  into  pleasant  companion¬ 
ship,  and  places  the  less  fortunate,  the  less  desirable,  in  a  class  apart ; 
ideal  colonies  provide,  in  short,  for  the  infinity  of  simple,  daily, 
homely  necessities  that  go  to  create  and  keep  cemented  together  the 
best  types  of  communal  life.  In  doing  this,  they  are  more  than  homes 
in  that  they  provide  the  highest  treatment  for  disease,  training  along 
all  lines,  encouragement  wherever  required,  upbuilding  of  character, 
and  the  necessary  healthful  restraint  for  all  who  need  it ;  and  less 
than  institutions  in  that  they  do  not  destroy  the  individuality  that 
counts  for  more  than  all  the  rest,  but  single  it  out  and  base  all  help 
upon  its  character. 

The  epileptic,  the  chronic  insane,  and  the  feeble-minded  can  all  be 
successfully  colonized.  The  system  is  not  one  of  rigid  requirements 

iFrom  "An  Ideal  Colony  for  Epileptics,”  by  William  E.  Sprattling,  M.D., 
formerly  Medical  Superintendent  of  the  Craig  Colony  for  Epileptics,  Sonyea,  New 
York.  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections,  1903. 


MENTAL  DISORDER  OR  "INSANITY’7 


439 


in  little  ways,  and  may  be  suitably  modified  to  meet  the  peculiar 
needs  of  the  three  classes  named.  But  in  the  care  of  all  classes,  its 
fundamental  features  are  the  same.  To  modify  these  would  be  fatal 
to  the  system  itself. 

The  chronic  insane  and  the  feeble-minded  can  be  cared  for  in  other 

0 

ways ;  in  a  few  buildings,  or  what  is  less  desirable,  in  a  single  large 
building ;  but  epileptics  cannot  be  cared  for  successfully,  or  even  with 
partial  success,  in  any  other  way  than  under  the  colony  plan.  For 
the  epileptic  it  is  ideal ;  for  the  insane  and  feeble-minded  it  would  be 
a  long  step  in  advance  of  methods  now  in  use,  and  would  ultimately 
prove  as  valuable  as  it  has  for  the  epileptic. 

Summary  of  Results  Colonies  Accomplish 

This  summary,  while  applying  particularly  to  what  the  s}^stem  does 
for  the  epileptic,  applies  in  many  ways  to  the  manner  in  which  other 
defectives  would  be  benefited  under  the  same  system,  the  proof  of 
which  is  found  in  part  in  the  many  colonies  abroad  for  the  chronic 
insane,  notably  those  at  Alt  Scherbitz  and  at  Gheel. 

First,  it  effects  cures  in  a  larger  proportion  of  cases  than  can  be 
effected  under  any  other  form  of  treatment. 

Second,  it  brings  about  a  reduction  of  the  frequency  and  severity 
of  attacks  in  the  majority  of  all  cases,  a  large  per  cent  being  sufficiently 
improved  to  permit  them  to  go  into  the  outside  world  and  earn  their  liv¬ 
ing,  the  knowledge  of  how  to  do  this  having  been  acquired  in  the  colony. 

Third,  it  provides  special  education  for  a  class  in  the  special  man¬ 
ner  they  require  it  to  make  them  self-helpful,  such  education  as  they 
cannot  get  outside  the  colony. 

Fourth,  it  promotes  individual  happiness  in  a  large  proportion  of 
cases,  due  to  living  in  an  atmosphere  of  congeniality,  an  atmosphere 
saturated  with  a  kindly  feeling  and  a  desire  to  help  each  other. 

Fifth,  it  provides  skilled  forms  of  treatment  by  those  who  do  no 
work  but  this,  and  gives  opportunity  for  scientific  research  that  can 
nowhere  else  be  found. 

Sixth,  segregating  epileptics  in  colonies  has  a  too  often  forgotten 
value  in  that  it  keeps  them  from  reproducing  a  progeny  defective  in 
the  same,  or  even  in  a  worse  way.  Epileptics  should  not  marry. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 
59.  Extent,  Causes,  and  Conditions  of  Blindness1 

The  blind  population  of  the  United  States:  igio.  The  census 
data  regarding  the  blind  population  of  the  United  States  in  1910  were 
obtained  in  part  from  the  schedule  employed  in  the  enumeration  of 
the  general  population,  which  contained  a  column  for  reporting  cases 
of  blindness,  and  in  part  from  a  special  schedule  mailed  to  each  person 
who  was  reported  as  blind. 

The  total  blind  population  enumerated  at  the  population  census  of 
1910  was  57,2 72, 2  representing  a  decrease  of  7491,  or  11.6  per  cent, 
as  compared  with  the  number  reported  for  1900  (64,763).  Owing  to 
changes  in  the  method  of  enumeration,  however,  as  well  as  for  other 
reasons,  it  is  difficult  to  determine  how  far  this  represents  an  actual 
decrease.  It  is  probable  that  the  extra  compensation  paid  in  1900, 
by  stimulating  the  zeal  of  the  enumerators,  may  have  secured  a  much 
more  complete  return  of  the  blind  population  at  that  census  than 
in  1910.  The  definition  of  blindness  which  was  adopted  was  some¬ 
what  more  restrictive  than  that  which  appears  to  have  been  followed 
in  1900,  with  the  result  that  many  persons  were  eliminated  in  1910 
who  would  probably  have  been  classed  as  blind  at  the  earlier  census. 
The  census  of  1910  was  the  ninth  at  which  statistics  in  regard  to  the 
blind  population  have  been  secured.  So  far  as  it  has  been  possible  to 

1  Adapted  from  "The  Blind  Population  of  the  United  States,”  1910,  pp.  9,  11, 
14,  16,  23,  35,  37.  Bulletin  No.  130  of  the  Department  of  Commerce,  Bureau  of 
the  Census.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1915. 

2 The  Bureau  of  the  Census  announces  that  52,617  blind  persons  were  enumer¬ 
ated  in  the  census  of  1920.  In  1910  the  number  was  57,272.  Although  this  de¬ 
crease  of  4655,  it  is  said,  may  be  in  some  degree  the  result  of  a  change  in  the 
method  of  reporting  the  blind,  it  probably  indicates  at  least  in  part  an  actual 
decrease  in  the  amount  of  preventable  blindness,  consequent  upon  the  improve¬ 
ment  in  medical  knowledge  and  the  education  of  the  public  regarding  the  pos¬ 
sibility  and  duty  of  preventing  blindness. 

440 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAL-MUTISM 


441 


determine,  the  United  States  was  the  first  country  to  make  an  enu¬ 
meration  of  the  blind  a  permanent  feature  of  its  official  statistical 
activities,  and  apparently  the  first  to  take  any  official  census  of  the 
blind  whatever,  although  it  is  possible  that  one  or  two  European 
countries  may  have  made  earlier  enumerations. 

Comparison  with  foreign  countries.  The  total  blind  population  for 
most  of  the  foreign  countries  taking  censuses  of  the  blind  is  1,194,346. 
The  total  population  of  these  countries  being  874,376,489,  the  ratio 
of  blind  in  the  aggregate  is  136.6  per  100,000  population.  The  coun¬ 
tries  specified  comprise  about  one-half  of  the  estimated  total  popula¬ 
tion  of  the  globe,  and  on  that  basis  it  might  be  estimated  that  the  total 
number  of  blind  persons  in  the  world  is  about  2,390,000.  It  is  of 
interest  to  observe  that  the  ratio  between  the  reported  blind  popula¬ 
tion  and  the  total  population  in  the  United  States  is  comparatively 
low,  the  only  important  countries  showing  lower  ratios  being  Belgium, 
Denmark,  Germany,  the  Netherlands,  Canada,  and  New  Zealand. 

Sex.  At  each  census  the  number  of  blind  males  has  been  consider¬ 
ably  in  excess  of  the  number  of  blind  females,  the  number  of  males 
per  100  females  in  the  blind  population  in  1910  being  130.7.  The 
fact  that  the  ratio  of  males  to  females  in  the  blind  population  is  so 
much  higher  than  in  the  general  population  is  to  be  explained  by  the 
fact  that  certain  important  causes  of  blindness,  particularly  injuries  in 
mine  explosions  and  other  industrial  accidents  and  wounds  received 
in  military  service,  are  causes  affecting  the  male  population  almost 
exclusively. 

Age.  The  number  of  blind  persons  increases,  generally  speaking, 
with  each  succeeding  age  group,  while  in  the  general  population  the 
number  of  persons  enumerated  decreases  with  each  succeeding  group. 
Two  distinct  causes  contribute  to  bring  about  this  situation.  In  the 
first  place,  since  blindness  is  a  defect  which  may  occur  at  any  period 
of  life,  and  which  is  ordinarily  not  associated  with  any  physical  dis¬ 
order  likely  to  occasion  death,  the  number  of  blind  persons  in  any 
given  generation  will  under  normal  conditions  increase  steadily  with 
advancing  years  up  to  extreme  old  age.  A  second  and  more  important 
factor  contributing  to  an  increase  in  the  amount  of  blindness  in  the 
later  age  groups  as  compared  with  the  earlier  is  found  in  the  circum¬ 
stance  that  two  of  the  chief  causes  of  blindness — namely,  cataract, 
the  leading  single  cause,  and  glaucoma — are  peculiarly  affections  in- 


442 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


cident  to  advancing  years ;  cataract,  it  is  true,  may  occur  at  any  period 
of  life,  but  is  so  commonly  associated  with  old  age  that  the  term 
"senile  cataract”  is  employed  as  a  generic  designation  for  all  forms 
of  noncongenital  cataract  except  those  resulting  directly  from  trau¬ 
matism  or  disease.  As  a  result  of  these  two  important  factors  approxi¬ 
mately  one-half  (49.4  per  cent)  of  the  total  blind  population  reported 
in  1910  were  sixty  years  of  age  or  over,  while  the  corresponding  pro¬ 
portion  for  the  general  population  was  only  6.8  per  cent,  or  about 
one-sixteenth. 

Race  and  nativity.  Both  the  colored  and  the  foreign-born  whites 
form  a  somewhat  larger  percentage  of  the  blind  population  than  of 
the  general  population,  while  the  native  whites,  on  the  other  hand, 
represent  less  than  two-thirds  (65.7  per  cent)  of  the  blind  population, 
as  compared  with  nearly  three-fourths  (74.4  per  cent)  of  the  general 
population.  The  high  ratio  for  the  negroes  may  perhaps  be  explained 
to  some  extent  by  the  fact  that  the  negro  population  is  largely  illiterate 
and  resident  in  rural  districts,  where  medical  facilities  are  poor,  so 
that  eye  diseases  having  blindness  as  a  possible  consequence  are  prob¬ 
ably  allowed  to  run  their  course  unmolested  to  a  much  greater  extent 
relatively  in  this  class  of  the  population  than  among  the  whites.  In 
the  case  of  the  foreign-born  whites,  the  high  proportion  of  adults  who 
have  arrived  at  the  age  when  the  incidence  of  blindness  is  greatest, 
and  also  the  considerable  excess  of  males,  are  the  factors  chiefly 
responsible  for  the  high  ratio  shown  for  this  class  as  compared  with 
the  native  whites. 

Occupations.  Of  the  31,473  blind  males  ten  years  of  age  or  over 
in  1910,  only  7976,  representing  25.3  per  cent,  or  about  one-fourth, 
were  reported  as  being  gainfully  employed,  as  compared  with  a  corre¬ 
sponding  percentage  of  81.3  for  the  total  male  population  of  that  age, 
while  of  the  24,000  blind  females  of  the  same  age,  only  1345,  or  5.6 
per  cent,  were  reported  as  gainfully  employed,  the  corresponding  per¬ 
centage  for  the  general  population  being  23.4.  These  figures  do  not 
mean,  however,  that  even  as  many  as  nine  thousand  blind  persons 
were  earning  their  own  livelihood ;  the  actual  number  was  in  all 
probability  considerably  less.  Leaving  out  of  consideration  the  cir¬ 
cumstance  already  noted  that  blind  persons  frequently  were  incor¬ 
rectly  reported  by  the  population  enumerators  as  still  carrying  on  the 
occupation  in  which  they  were  engaged  at  the  time  when  they  became 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


443 


blind,  in  a  large  proportion,  possibly  the  great  majority,  of  cases 
where  an  occupation  was  reported  on  the  special  schedule  the  earnings 
received  from  it  fell  far  short  of  the  amount  necessary  to  make  the 
person  reporting  it  self-supporting,  in  many  instances  being  a  mere 
pittance  of  less  than  $100  a  year.  This  is  particularly  the  case  among 
the  female  blind,  a  large  number  of  the  blind  females  for  whom  an 
occupation  was  reported  merely  doing  a  little  knitting  or  fancy  work 
and  selling  the  articles  which  they  made. 

Practically  two-thirds  (67.1  per  cent)  of  the  blind  males  reporting 
an  occupation  were  employed  in  one  of  the  nine  leading  occupations.1 
Farmers  are  most  important  numerically,  representing  22.2  per  cent, 
or  more  than  one-fifth,  of  the  total  number  of  blind  males  gainfully 
employed ;  most  of  these,  of  course,  are  persons  who  were  already 
engaged  in  farming  at  the  time  when  they  lost  their  sight,  and  who 
continued  to  direct  the  operation  of  their  farms  even  though  prevented 
by  their  loss  of  vision  from  taking  any  active  part  in  the  farm  work. 
The  large  number  of  farmers  reported  is,  of  course,  due  to  the  fact 
that  farming  is  one  of  the  most  important  occupations  numerically  in 
the  general  population,  so  that  the  number  of  farmers  losing  their  sight 
by  reason  of  disorders  attendant  upon  advancing  years  will  normally 
be  relatively  large  ;  at  the  same  time  loss  of  sight,  as  already  indicated, 
does  not  constitute  so  much  of  a  handicap  to  persons  engaged  in  this 
occupation  as  it  does  in  most. 

Next  to  farming,  broom  making  is  the  most  important  occupation 
reported  for  blind  males,  the  number  of  broom  makers  reported  being 
665,  comprising  8.3  per  cent,  or  about  one-twelfth,  of  the  total  number 
gainfully  employed.  Musicians  and  teachers  of  music  rank  third, 
with  646,  or  8.1  per  cent  of  the  total ;  this  classification  covers  a  wide 
scope,  comprising  a  number  of  highly  trained  musicians,  who  are  able 
to  earn  a  substantial  income  by  means  of  their  profession,  and  also 
blind  street  singers,  accordion  players,  and  the  like,  whose  actual  pro¬ 
fession  could  in  many  cases  be  more  justly  characterized  as  begging. 

In  any  study  of  occupation  statistics  for  the  blind,  particular  in¬ 
terest  attaches  to  those  trades  which  have  been  found  especially  avail¬ 
able  as  a  means  of  employment  for  this  class  of  the  population  and  the 

1  These  include  farmers,  broom  makers,  musicians  and  teachers  of  music,  retail 
merchants,  hucksters  and  peddlers,  piano  tuners,  agricultural  laborers,  "laborers 
not  otherwise  specified,”  and  chair  caners. —  Ed. 


444  THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 

reporting  of  which  presumably  indicates  that  the  person  reporting  has 
received  special  vocational  training  since  the  loss  of  his  vision.  The 
nine  leading  occupations  for  the  male  blind,  as  shown  on  the  preceding 
page,  include  three  such  trades,  namely,  broom  making,  piano  tuning, 
and  chair  caning,  a  total  of  1256  blind  males,  or  about  one-sixth 
(15.7  per  cent)  of  the  entire  number  gainfully  employed,  being 
engaged  in  these  three  occupations.  Figures  as  to  the  number  em¬ 
ployed  in  other  trades  of  this  character  show  the  most  important  to 
be  basket  making,  which  gave  employment  to  fifty  blind  men,  mat¬ 
tress  making,  which  was  reported  by  forty-five,  and  carpet  and  rug 
making,  which  was  reported  by  thirty. 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the  fact  that  the  occupations 
reported  were  in  many  instances  merely  nominal.  This  is  particularly 
the  case  with  respect  to  two  of  the  leading  occupation  classes,  hucks¬ 
ters  and  peddlers  and  laborers  "not  otherwise  specified,”  the  former 
comprising  very  largely  persons  selling  lead  pencils,  matches,  shoe 
strings,  and  similar  articles  on  the  street,  who  might  perhaps  be  more 
accurately  described  as  beggars,  and  the  latter  persons  picking  up 
small  sums  now  and  then  by  the  performance  of  odd  jobs  and  chores. 
The  woodchoppers  and  wood  sawyers,  who  comprise  mainly  blind  men 
earning  a  trifling  amount  from  time  to  time  by  splitting  or  sawing 
wood  for  private  families,  also  come  under  this  general  heading,  as 
do  probably  the  greater  part  of  the  canvassers  and  agents. 

The  Causes  of  Blindness  in  the  United  States ,  iQ20x 

Schedules,  or  questionnaires,  were  mailed  to  all  persons  reported 
in  1920  as  blind.  Of  the  52,567  blind  enumerated,  there  were  40,913 
who  returned  these  schedules.  Of  these  35,788  reported  the  cause 
of  blindness. 

In  13,816,  or  38.6  per  cent,  of  these  35,788  cases  for  whom  the 
cause  was  reported,  the  blindness  was  caused  by  some  specific  disease 
of  the  eye  such  as  cataract  or  glaucoma  ;  and  in  5623  cases,  or  15.7  per 
cent,  it  was  a  result  of  some  general  disease  such  as  measles,  menin¬ 
gitis,  or  scarlet  fever.  Accidents  accounted  for  5913  cases,  or  16.5 
per  cent,  of  the  total.  There  were  1429  persons  in  this  number  whose 
blindness  was  caused  by  explosives  or  firearms. 

1From  news  release  by  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  the  Census,  dated  August  2,  1922. 


Causes  of  Blindness:  1920 


Per  Cent 

/  a  U 

Distribution 

Total  Blind  Persons  Returning  Schedules 

40,913 

Cause  reported . . 

35,788 

100.0 

Definitely  reported  causes . 

26,333 

73-6 

Specific  affections  of  the  eye . 

13,816 

38.6 

Cataract . 

4,896 

13-7 

Glaucoma . 

D932 

54 

Atrophy  of  the  optic  nerve . 

D756 

4.9 

Ophthalmia  neonatorum . 

1,198 

3-3 

Trachoma . 

555 

1.6 

Diseases  of  the  retina . 

497 

1.4 

Corneal  ulcer . 

264 

0.7 

Cancer  and  other  neoplasms . 

247 

0.7 

Diseases  of  the  iris . 

240 

0.7 

Other  specific  affections . 

2,231 

6.2 

General  diseases . 

5,623 

i5-7 

Measles . 

797 

2.2 

Meningitis . 

526 

1-5 

Scarlet  fever . 

416 

1.2 

Kidney  disease  and  diabetes . 

308 

0.9 

Influenza  (grippe) . 

282 

0.8 

Typhoid  fever . 

253 

0.7 

Syphilis  and  locomotor  ataxia . 

252 

0.7 

Smallpox . 

235 

0.7 

Other  general  diseases . 

'2,554 

7-i 

Accidents . 

5,9i3 

16.5* 

Explosives . . 

797 

2.2 

Firearms . . . 

632 

1.8 

Falls . 

445 

1.2 

Flying  objects  (not  from  explosions)  . 

380 

1. 1 

Cutting  or  piercing  instruments . 

335 

0.9 

Burns . 

113 

0.3 

All  other  accidental  injuries . 

3,211 

9.0 

Poisoning . 

3ii 

0.9 

Foreign  substances  in  the  eye . 

43i 

1.2 

All  other  definitely  reported  causes  .... 

195 

0.5 

Indefinitely  or  inaccurately  reported  causes  . 

9,119 

25-5 

Congenital  (not  otherwise  specified)  .... 

2,635 

74 

Neuralgia .  ... 

548 

1-5 

Exposure  to  heat . 

507 

14 

Sore  eyes . 

497 

1.4 

All  other . 

4,932 

138 

Combination  of  different  classes  of  causes  . 

380 

1. 1 

Cause  unknown  or  not  reported . 

5,i25 

445 


446 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Cataract,  the  leading  cause,  was  reported  by  4896,  or  13.7  per 
cent.  Glaucoma,  which  ranked  next,  was  reported  by  1932,  or  5.4 
per  cent.  Atrophy  of  the  optic  nerve  was  given  as  the  cause  by 
1756,  or  4.9  per  cent. 

Ophthalmia  neonatorum,  or  "babies’  sore  eyes,”  was  reported  by 
1198,  or  3.3  per  cent  of  the  total  number  reporting.  That  there  has 
been  a  marked  decrease  in  the  relative  amount  of  blindness  due  to 
this  disease  is  indicated  by  recent  statistics  of  admissions  to  schools 
for  the  blind,  which  show  that  only  14.7  per  cent  of  the  new  students 
admitted  in  1917-1918  were  reported  as  blind  from  ophthalmia,  as 
against  24.2  per  cent  of  the  students  then  attending  who  had  entered 
in  previous  years.  This  decrease  reflects  the  more  general  adoption 
of  scientific  methods  of  treatment,  and  especially  the  routine  use  of 
silver  nitrate  drops  in  the  eyes  of  infants.  The  campaign  to  eliminate 
trachoma  appears  also  to  be  meeting  with  success,  as  trachoma  and 
"sore  eyes”  (which  is  usually  in  fact  trachoma)  together  were  re¬ 
ported  by  only  3.0  per  cent  of  the  total  for  1920,  as  against  5.2  per 
cent  for  1910. 

60.  The  Prevention  of  Blindness1 

The  National  Committee  for  Prevention  oj  Blindness 

/ 

Organization.  The  National  Committee  for  the  Prevention  of 
Blindness  was  organized  on  January  1,  1915,  for  the  purpose  of  meet¬ 
ing  a  need  felt  by  workers  in  the  field  of  prevention  of  blindness  for 
some  central  agency  to  furnish  information  and  assistance  in  carrying 
forward  their  work.  It  enrolls  as  active  members  and  supporters  both 
physicians  and  laymen,  men  and  women,  interested  in  public  welfare, 
especially  in  the  public  health  movements,  not  only  officials  whose 
duty  it  is  to  take  measures  to  conserve  health  but  also  public-spirited 
humanitarians  to  whom  the  crime  of  letting  children  go  blind,  who 
might  be  saved  from  blindness  or  impaired  vision,  is  an  offense  which 
calls  for  action  looking  to  its  prevention ;  in  whom  pity  for  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  sightlessness  cries  out  for  means  to  avoid  it  whenever  possible. 
Half  of  all  blindness  is  preventable ;  hence  there  is  a  field  of  activity 
for  this  Committee  in  helping  to  create  by  agitation  and  education  a 

1From  the  National  Committee  for  the  Prevention  of  Blindness  Publications, 
No.  9.  Cited  to  show  how  private  agencies  meet  public  problems. —  Ed. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


447 

condition  of  watchfulness  and  care  that  this  great  calamity  to  individ¬ 
uals  and  to  society  shall  not  fall  upon  them  needlessly. 

Objects,  i.  To  endeavor  to  ascertain,  through  study  and  investi¬ 
gation,  any  causes,  whether  direct  or  indirect,  which  may  result  in 
blindness  or  impaired  vision. 

2.  To  advocate  measures  which  shall  lead  to  the  elimination  of 
such  causes. 

3.  To  disseminate  knowledge  concerning  all  matters  pertaining  to 
the  care  and  use  of  the  eyes. 

Program.  Service  which  the  Committee  proposes  to  render  is  in¬ 
cluded  under  the  following  heads : 

1.  Preparation  of  circulars  of  information  and  literature  for  gen¬ 
eral  distribution  and  furnishing  these  at  nominal  cost  to  workers  for 
the  conservation  of  vision. 

2.  Making  available  the  latest  authentic  information  relative  to 
this  special  subject. 

3.  Collecting  and  rendering  available  for  general  use  a  library  of 
literature,  photographs,  lantern  slides,  exhibits,  etc. 

4.  Rendering  assistance  and  expert  advice  in  formation  of  societies 
and  associations  for  the  prevention  of  blindness  and  for  the  advance¬ 
ment  of  those  already  formed. 

5.  Co-operation  with  educational  and  medical  authorities — {a)  in 
the  establishment  and  improvement  of  service  relating  to  eye  condi¬ 
tions;  (b)  in  the  establishment  of  sight  saving  classes  for  children  of 
such  limited  vision  that  they  cannot  profitably  use  the  books  and 
other  educational  equipment  provided  for  normally  sighted  children. 

6.  Co-operation  with  safety  and  illuminating  engineers  to  prevent 
eye  accidents  in  the  industries  through  the  installation  and  use  of 
safety  devices  and  of  adequate  lighting  systems. 

7.  Promoting  legislation  for  improving  the  means  of  preventing 
blindness  and  impaired  vision. 

8.  Publishing  from  time  to  time  news  of  the  movement  for  the 
encouragement  and  information  of  those  engaged  in  the  work.  In 
seeking  to  effect  its  objects  the  Committee  proposes  co-operation  with 
all  individuals  and  organizations,  both  official  and  voluntary,  when¬ 
ever  and  wherever  it  can  serve  them  or  be  served  by  them.  It  invites 
the  assistance  of  all  persons  interested  in  its  special  subjects  and  all 
organizations  for  social  improvement. 


448 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


General  statement.  The  function  of  the  National  Committee  for 
the  Prevention  of  Blindness  is  not  to  undertake  case  work,  but  to 
educate  the  public  to  an  understanding  of  eye  difficulties  in  such  a 
way  that  they  may  apply  the  knowledge  to  both  themselves  and  their 
children.  It  is  found  on  the  whole  that  general  health  organizations 
touch  very  lightly  upon  the  question  of  conservation  of  sight.  The 
Committee  prepares  a  large  quantity  of  literature,  has  a  loan  collec¬ 
tion  of  six  hundred  slides,  issues  posters,  helps  in  legislative  campaigns, 
and  arranges  for  lectures,  single  and  in  courses.  State  and  city  or¬ 
ganizations  undertaking  this  work  depend  chiefly  upon  the  national 
organization  for  material  and  for  help  in  solving  their  many  problems. 
So  far  as  the  legislative  work  is  concerned,  the  National,  Committee 
assists  in  drawing  up  bills  to  prevent  blindness  from  ophthalmia 
neonatorum,  from  the  use  of  the  roller  towel,  for  financial  state 
assistance  in  establishing  classes  for  conservation  of  vision,  for  the 
control  of  wood  alcohol,  for  making  certain  communicable  diseases, 
such  as  trachoma,  reportable.  Further,  upon  request,  it  sends  a  field 
secretary  into  the  State,  either  to  aid  in  appearing  before  legisla¬ 
tors  and  special  committees  or  in  making  an  educational  tour  of  the 
State  for  the  purpose  of  preparing  the  lay  mind  for  the  necessity 
of  such  law. 

State  Legislation  for  Prevention  of  Blindness 1 

There  are  two  types  of  laws  which  provide  for  either  direct  or 
indirect  work  in  the  prevention  of  blindness : 

Direct  preventive  legislation.  Laws  for  the  prevention  of  babies’ 
sore  eyes,  commonly  called  ophthalmia  neonatorum;  laws  providing 
for  the  control  and  elimination  of  trachoma  and  other  contagious 
eye  diseases;  laws  providing  for  the  establishment  of  a  state  com¬ 
mission  with  authority  and  appropriations  for  work  in  the  field  of 
prevention,  such  authority  usually  being  given  to  a  state  commission 
for  the  blind. 

Indirect  preventive  legislation.  School  medical  inspection  laws ; 
laws  providing  for  the  establishment  of  conservation  of  vision 
classes ;  factory  laws  providing  for  the  safeguarding  of  vision ;  laws 

1From  the  News  Letter  No.  38.  Published  by  the  National  Committee  for  the 
Prevention  of  Blindness. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


449 

governing  the  sale  of  wood  alcohol;  laws  governing  the  practice  of 
midwives. 

Ophthalmia  neonatorum }  State  legislation  for  the  prevention  of 
babies’  sore  eyes  should  include : 

1.  The  early  reporting  of  babies’  sore  eyes  to  health  authorities. 

2.  The  requirement  that  a  prophylactic  should  be  used  in  all  cases 
of  childbirth. 

3.  Free  distribution  of  a  selected  prophylactic. 

4.  The  insertion  of  an  inquiry  on  every  birth  certificate  as  to 
whether  a  prophylactic  has  or  has  not  been  employed. 

5.  Authority  for  securing  medical  attention  for  uncared-for  cases. 

6.  Adequate  authority  for  the  state  board  of  health  to  enforce 
the  Act. 

7.  Sufficient  appropriations  to  enable  the  state  board  of  health  to 
carry  on  an  educational  campaign  and  also  to  enforce  the  Act. 

Trachoma.  State  legislation  providing  for  the  control  and  elimina¬ 
tion  of  trachoma  should  include : 

1.  Making  trachoma  a  reportable  disease. 

2.  Providing  for  the  control  and  treatment  of  trachoma. 

3.  Establishing  traveling  clinics  which  may  reach  the  outlying 
districts  of  a  state. 

4.  Providing  for  prompt  isolation  of  persons  having  trachoma  in 
the  communicable  stage. 

5.  Granting  an  appropriation  for  the  state  board  of  health  to  carry 
out  the  Act. 

State  commission.1 2  There  should  be  established  in  practically  every 
state  a  commission  similar  to  the  commissions  for  the  blind  in  Mas¬ 
sachusetts,  Minnesota,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Ohio,  with  au¬ 
thority  and  responsibility  to  engage  in  activities  for  the  prevention  of 
blindness.  Such  laws  should  include : 

1This  is  the  most  prolific  cause  of  unnecessary  blindness,  about  10  per  cent  of 
all  blindness  being  due  to  this  disease.  It  is  caused  by  the  introduction  of  any  one 
of  several  pus-producing  germs  into  the  eyes  of  newborn  infants,  and  the  failure 
of  the  doctor  or  midwife  to  remove  or  destroy  these  germs. —  C.  C.  van  Blarcom, 
Saving  the  Sight  of  Babies.  National  Committee  for  the  Prevention  of  Blindness 
Publications,  No.  7. 

2  The  objects,  types,  extent,  scope,  and  organization  of  state  commissions  for 
the  blind  are  well  summarized  by  Harry  Best  in  chap,  xliv  of  his  excellent  book 
The  Blind ,  published  by  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York,  1919. —  Ed. 


450 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


1.  Definite  responsibility  conferred  upon  the  commission  in  pre¬ 
vention  activities. 

2.  Provision  for  the  employment  of  necessary  agents  or  field 
workers. 

3.  An  appropriation  sufficient  to  enable  the  work  to  be  carried  out 
effectively. 

School  medical  inspection.  While  medical  inspection  laws  do  not 
provide  direct  legislation  for  the  prevention  of  blindness,  nevertheless 
they  do  provide  for  the  conservation  of  vision.  The  following  are 
among  the  chief  points: 

1.  The  required  establishment  of  such  service  by  every  school 
board. 

2.  The  provision  for  periodic  physical  examinations. 

3.  Special  provision  for  examination  of  eyes  and  ears. 

4.  Authority  to  school  districts  to  establish  and  maintain  clinics. 

5.  Provision  for  the  instruction  of  prospective  teachers  in  best 
methods  of  testing  sight  and  hearing. 

6.  Establishment  of  a  state  agency  to  carry  out  such  laws. 

Laws  providing  for  the  establishment  of  conservation  of  vision 
classes.  1.  Provision  for  the  organization  of  conservation  of  vision 
classes  by  school  districts  with  an  adequate  state  subsidy. 

2 .  Provision  for  proper  state  administration,  including  the  appoint¬ 
ment  of  a  qualified  state  supervisor. 

Factory  laws.  Usually  such  laws  are  passed  in  co-operation  with 
state  labor  departments,  or  the  state  agency  concerned  with  safe¬ 
guarding  industrial  workers  from  accident  hazards.  The  forces  of  all 
interested  in  the  prevention  of  blindness  and  conservation  of  vision 
should  be  lined  up  with  any  agency  in  the  state  seeking  to  secure 
legislation  safeguarding  the  health  and  lives  of  employees. 

Wood  alcohol.  More  stringent  legislation  should  be  passed  in  every 
state. 

Training  of  midwives.  If  midwives  are  to  be  allowed  to  practise 
by  law,  certain  minimum  standards  should  be  required  by  legislation 
or  by  authority  given  to  a  state  board,  possibly  the  one  controlling 
entrance  to  the  medical  profession.  Such  legislation  should  include 
requirements  for  the  proper  registration  and  licensing  of  midwives. 
Society  must  protect  itself  by  establishing  schools  for  the  proper 
training  of  midwives. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


45i 


Summary  of  State  Laws  and  Rulings  Relating  to  the  Prevention 
of  Blindness  from  Babies'  Sore  Eyes 1 


Blindness  from  Babies’  Sore  Eyes  (Ophthalmia  Neonatorum)  would 
practically  never  occur  if  a  prophylactic  were  used  in  the  eyes  of  every 
infant  immediately  after  birth,  and  if  every  case  of  redness,  swelling, 
and  discharge  from  the  eyes  of  infants  were  promptly  and  adequately 
treated. 


The  prevention  of  blindness  from  this  cause  depends  upon  ( 1 )  the 
education  of  the  general  public  to  its  dangers,  (2)  the  use  of  a 
prophylactic  in  every  baby’s  eyes  immediately  after  birth,  and  (3) 
the  prompt  treatment  of  any  case  that  should  occur.  In  addition  to 


widespread  publicity,  certain  legal  provisions  are  necessary  to  accom¬ 
plish  the  desired  result.  To  ascertain  how  far  these  provisions  exist 
in  the  various  states,  the  National  Committee  for  the  Prevention  of 
Blindness  has  made  a  study  of  those  state  laws  and  regulations  which 
relate  to  the  control  of  ophthalmia  neonatorum — those  from  each 
state  having  been  approved  by  its  Commissioner  of  Health  as  correct 
to  January,  1922.  County  and  city  ordinances  and  rulings  are  not 
included.  This  material,  briefly  summarized,  shows  the  following: 


I 


1.  The  reporting  of  babies’  sore  eyes  to  the  local  health 

officer  or  to  a  physican  is  compulsory  in  . 

2.  The  reporting  law  is  printed  on  the  birth  certificate  in 

3.  Local  health  officers  are  authorized  and  required  to 

secure  medical  attention  for  uncared-for  cases,  or  to 
warn  parents  of  the  dangers  and  advise  immediate 
treatment  in . 

4.  Births  are  reported  early  enough  to  be  of  assistance  in 

prevention  of  blindness  work  in . 

5.  The  question  as  to  whether  or  not  precautions  were 

taken  against  ophthalmia  neonatorum  is  included  on 
the  birth  certificate  in . 

6.  Free  prophylactic  outfits  are  distributed  in  . 

7.  The  use  of  a  prophylactic  by  physicians  and  midwives 

is  compulsory  in . 

By  physicians  only  in . 

By  midwives  and  attendants  only  in . 

Strongly  recommended  in  an  additional  . 

8.  Popular  educational  leaflets,  relating  in  whole  or  in 

part  to  prevention  of  infantile  blindness,  are  distrib¬ 
uted  by  State  Departments  of  Health  in  . 


44  states 
13  states 


36  states 
1 7  states 


25  states 
28  states 

24  states 
2  states 
2  states 
5  states 


35  states 


1  From  the  National  Committeefor  the  Prevention  of  Blindness  Publications,  No.  9. 


452 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


A  comparison  with  the  Summary  of  State  Laws  and  Rulings  on  this 
subject,  issued  December,  1918,  by  this  Committee,  indicates  a  most 
gratifying  improvement  in  legislative  action. 

The  first  statutory  requirement  which  should  be  made  by  all  the 
states  would  seem  to  be  the  compulsory  reporting  of  all  cases  of 
babies’  sore  eyes  to  the  local  health  officer,  with  a  penalty  attached 
for  not  doing  so.  Medical  attention  could  then  be  provided  for  all 
uncared-for  cases,  while  the  information  secured  regarding  babies  who 
are  attended  by  physicians,  as  well  as  those  who  are  not,  would  be 
valuable  in  showing  the  frequency  with  which  this  disease  occurs  and 
the  frequency  with  which  injury  results  from  its  neglect. 

61.  Extent,  Causes,  and  Conditions  of  Deaf-Mutism1 

This  report  summarizes  the  data  relating  to  the  deaf  and  dumb  in 
the  United  States  in  1910  obtained  in  connection  with  the  Thirteenth 
Decennial  Census  of  population.  It  consists  mainly  of  an  intensive 
study  of  the  statistics  for  the  19,153  deaf-mutes  who  returned  a  special 
schedule  of  inquiry  which  was  sent  out  to  every  person  reported  as 
deaf  and  dumb  by  the  population  enumerators.  The  enumeration  of 
the  deaf  and  dumb  population  of  the  United  States  in  1910  was  made 
through  the  medium  of  a  separate  column  on  the  general  population 
schedule.  The  instructions  given  to  the  population  enumerators  were 
as  follows: 

Whether  deaf  and  dumb.  If  a  person  is  both  deaf  and  dumb,  write 
"DD.”  For  all  other  persons  leave  the  column  blank.  Persons  who  are 
deaf  but  not  dumb,  or  persons  who  are  dumb  but  not  deaf,  are  not  to 
be  reported. 

Under  these  instructions  a  total  of  44,519  persons  were  reported  by 
the  enumerators  as  being  deaf  and  dumb ;  in  addition,  189  persons  not 
entered  as  deaf  and  dumb  on  the  population  schedules  were  subse¬ 
quently  reported  to  the  office,  either  by  themselves  or  by  other  in¬ 
terested  persons,  as  suffering  from  the  defects  stated,  making  the 
total  number  reported  as  deaf  and  dumb  44,708.  To  each  of  these 
persons,  as  already  stated,  a  special  schedule  of  inquiry  was  sent  by 

1  Adapted  from  Deaf  Mutes  in  the  United  States.  Department  of  Commerce, 
Bureau  of  the  Census.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1918.  Also  news¬ 
paper  releases  of  the  Department  of  Commerce  of  July  19  and  August  n,  1922. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUT1SM 


453 


mail,  asking  for  data  on  a  number  of  subjects  which  it  was  felt  would 
be  of  interest  in  connection  with  a  statistical  study  regarding  deaf- 
mutism. 

Sex.  Of  the  19,153  deaf  and  dumb  persons  for  whom  schedules 
were  returned  10,507  were  males  and  8646  females,  the  number  of 
males  to  each  100  females  being  12 1.5.  This  pronounced  excess  of 
males  among  deaf-mutes  is  a  well-recognized  statistical  phenomenon, 
for  which,  however,  no  satisfactory  explanation  has  yet  been  found. 
To  a  certain  extent,  of  course,  it  is  due  to  the  preponderance  of  male 
births,  but  as  the  number  of  males  per  100  females  in  the  general 
population  under  ten  years  of  age,  the  period  of  life  when  most  deaf- 
mutes  lose  their  hearing,  is  only  102.2  it  is  obvious  that  there  must  be 
some  other  factor  involved,  especially  as  the  higher  death  rate  among 
infant  males  tends  normally  to  equalize  the  number  of  the  sexes. 

Marital  status.  Of  the  deaf  and  dumb  males  fifteen  years  of  age 
or  over  in  1910  for  whom  schedules  were  received,  less  than  one-third 
(31.8  per  cent)  were  married,  widowed,  or  divorced,  and  of  the 
females  only  a  little  more  than  two-fifths  (41.4  per  cent) .  A  compari¬ 
son  of  these  percentages  with  the  corresponding  proportions  for  the 
total  population  brings  out  clearly  the  extent  to  which  their  defect 
acts  as  a  bar  to  the  marriage  of  deaf-mutes,  the  percentage  married, 
widowed,  or  divorced  for  males  in  the  total  population  being  nearly 
twice  and  that  for  females  one  and  three-fourths  times  as  great  as 
among  the  deaf-mutes  included  in  the  tabulation.  The  differences 
between  the  two  sexes  among  the  deaf  and  dumb  in  respect  to  marital 
condition  are  of  much  the  same  character  and  due  to  much  the  same 
causes  as  those  in  the  case  of  the  general  population.  Thus  the  pro¬ 
portion  who  were  or  had  been  married  at  the  date  of  the  census  was 
somewhat  higher  for  females  than  for  males,  in  part  because  females 
as  a  rule  marry  earlier  than  males  and  in  part  because  of  the  excess 
of  males,  as  it  is  probable  that  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  deaf- 
mutes  do  not  marry  normal  persons. 

Age  when  hearing  was  lost.  Of  the  19,153  deaf-mutes  for  whom 
special  schedules  were  received,  7533,  representing  39.3  per  cent,  or 
about  two-fifths,  of  the  total,  stated  that  their  deafness  was  con¬ 
genital.  Of  those  whose  deafness  was  acquired,  by  far  the  greater 
number  (9254,  representing  84.2  per  cent,  or  somewhat  more  than 
five-sixths)  lost  their  hearing  during  the  first  five  years  of  life,  this 


454 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


class  in  fact  constituting  nearly  one-half  (48.3  per  cent)  of  all  deaf- 
mutes  for  whom  schedules  were  returned.  Only  1594  persons,  or  8.3 
per  cent  of  the  total  number  returning  schedules,  lost  their  hearing 
between  the  ages  of  five  and  nine,  and  only  140,  or  0.7  per  cent  of  the 
total,  after  reaching  the  age  of  ten.  The  total  number  who  reported 
that  they  became  deaf  after  reaching  the  age  of  eight,  by  which  time 
the  faculty  of  articulate  speech  is  usually  completely  developed,  was 
only  247.  These  were  all  persons  who,  probably  by  reason  of  their 
deafness,  had  entirely  lost  the  power  of  speech  as  an  effective  means 
of  communication,  since,  as  already  stated,  a  person  who  lost  his 
hearing  after  reaching  this  age  and  was  able  to  communicate  effec¬ 
tively  with  others  by  means  of  speech,  having  presumably  acquired 
the  faculty  of  speech  before  he  became  deaf,  was  not,  properly  speak¬ 
ing,  a  deaf-mute,  and  therefore  did  not  come  within  the  scope  of  this 
report.  As  the  parents  naturally  assume  that  a  child  is  born  in  the 
possession  of  all  its  faculties,  the  existence  of  defective  hearing  is  not 
usually  suspected  until  the  child  reaches  the  age  when  most  children 
begin  to  talk,  ordinarily  about  the  second  year  of  life,  or  perhaps  not 
even  until  it  arrives  at  school  age.  This  makes  it  possible  for  error  in 
regard  to  the  age  when  hearing  was  lost  to  arise  in  two  ways.  On  the 
one  hand,  children  who  were  actually  born  with  normal  hearing  but 
lost  it  during  infancy  are  likely  to  be  regarded  as  congenitally  deaf 
because  so  far  as  their  parents  have  been  able  to  perceive  they  have 
always  been  deaf ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  will  be  a  natural 
tendency,  if  the  child  has  ever  suffered  from  illness  or  accident,  to 
attribute  deafness  to  this  cause,  although  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was 
probably  in  many  such  instances  congenital. 

Causes }  The  total  number  of  cases  in  which  deafness  was  reported 
as  due  to  meningitis  (including  brain  fever),  scarlet  fever,  measles, 
diphtheria,  or  typhoid  fever,  the  causes  most  generally  recognized  as 
producing  deaf-mutism,  was  5819,  representing  70.2  per  cent,  or  more 
than  two-thirds,  of  the  total  number  in  which  a  classifiable  cause  was 
returned.  This  fact  brings  out  clearly  the  great  advance  which  would 
be  effected  in  the  direction  of  eliminating  deaf-mutism  by  progress  in 
the  control  of  communicable  diseases. 

!The  causes  of  deafness  as  listed  by  various  American  schools  for  deaf-mutes 
will  be  found  in  Harry  Best,  The  Deaf ,  pp.  30-40. —  Ed. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


455 


Heredity 

The  total  number  of  deaf-mutes  returning  special  schedules  who 
reported  themselves  as  having  deaf  parents,  brothers  or  sisters,  or 
children  was  4639,  representing  24.2  per  cent,  or  nearly  one-fourth, 
of  the  total.  Of  these,  420,  or  about  one-tenth,  had  deaf  parents,  the 
remainder  reporting  either  deaf  brothers  or  sisters  or  deaf  children. 
Of  those  having  deaf  parents,  270,  or  about  two-thirds,  also  had  deaf 
brothers  or  sisters,  and  28  had  deaf  children,  22  having  both.  Of  the 
4219  reporting  deaf  brothers  or  sisters  or  deaf  children  but  no  deaf 
parents,  by  far  the  greater  number  (3951)  reported  deaf  brothers  or 
sisters  only,  the  number  reporting  deaf  children  only  being  142  and 
the  number  reporting  both  deaf  brothers  or  sisters  and  deaf  children 
being  126.  The  total  number  reporting  deaf  brothers  or  sisters  was 
4347,  or  more  than  nine-tenths  of  the  total  number  reporting  deaf 
relatives,  and  the  total  number  reporting  deaf  children  was  296. 

From  the  figures  just  given  it  is  apparent  that  heredity  is  on  the 
whole  a  minor  factor  in  bringing  about  deaf-mutism,  especially  as  a 
certain  proportion  of  the  cases  where  deaf-mutes  reported  deaf  rela¬ 
tives  represent  instances  where  two  or  more  members  of  the  same 
family  lost  their  hearing  from  the  same  contagious  or  infectious  dis¬ 
ease.  This  was  indeed  to  be  expected,  in  view  of  the  extent  to  which 
deafness  results  from  causes  such  as  cerebrospinal  fever,  scarlet  fever, 
and  accident  or  other  violence,  where  the  loss  of  hearing  is  due  to 
injury  or  infection  from  without.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  although  the 
circumstance  that  deaf-mutism  is  to  a  considerable  extent  a  hereditary 
defect  is  probably  much  more  generally  recognized  than  the  circum¬ 
stance  that  blindness  may  result  from  hereditary  influences,  only  2.2 
per  cent  of  the  deaf-mutes  from  whom  the  Bureau  of  the  Census 
received  satisfactory  schedules  at  the  census  of  1910  reported  them¬ 
selves  as  having  deaf  parents,  whereas  3.7  per  cent  of  the  blind 
returning  schedules  reported  blind  parents.  This  more  general  recog¬ 
nition  of  hereditary  influence  in  the  case  of  deaf-mutism  than  in  that 
of  blindness  is  probably  due  mainly  to  the  fact  that  in  a  considerable 
proportion  of  the  cases  of  hereditary  blindness  vision  is  not  lost  until 
late  in  life,  when  the  blind  relatives  of  the  previous  generation  are 
dead,  whereas  hereditary  deaf-mutism  is  probably  in  most  instances 
congenital. 


456 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Of  the  deaf-mutes  in  the  United  States  who  returned  the  special 
schedule,  4397  reported  that  they  had  children.  The  number  of  these 
who  reported  as  to  the  hearing  of  their  children  was  4339,  of  whom 
296,  or  6.8  per  cent,  stated  that  they  had  deaf  children. 

Of  the  19,153  persons  who  returned  satisfactory  schedules,  883,  or 
4.6  per  cent,  were  the  children  of  first  cousins.  This  may  be  regarded 
as  a  relatively  high  proportion,  as  it  is  hardly  probable  that  in  every 
hundred  marriages  even  four  are  marriages  of  first  cousins.  The  per¬ 
centage  is,  moreover,  much  larger  than  the  corresponding  percentage 
for  the  blind  population  returning  special  schedules  (2.4)  ;  in  fact 
the  absolute  number  of  deaf-mutes  reporting  that  their  parents  were 
first  cousins  exceeded  the  number  of  blind  so  reporting  by  174,  al¬ 
though  the  total  number  returning  schedules  was  10,000  less.  These 
facts  indicate  that  the  subject  of  consanguineous  marriages  is  one  of 
some  importance  for  a  study  of  deaf-mutism. 

Means  of  Communication 

Of  the  individual  means  of  communication,  writing  was  the  method 
most  frequently  reported,  being  employed  by  three-fourths  (75.9  per 
cent)  of  the  total.  The  proportions  reporting  the  use  of  finger  spell¬ 
ing  and  of  the  sign  language  were,  however,  nearly  as  great  (74.8 
and  74.6  per  cent,  respectively).  The  great  progress  that  has  been 
made  in  the  teaching  of  speech  to  the  deaf  is  reflected  by  the  fact  that 
nearly  one-fourth  (23.9  per  cent)  of  the  deaf-mutes  included  in  the 
tabulation  stated  that  they  employed  speech  as  a  means  of  communi¬ 
cation.  The  actual  proportion  of  the  deaf-mute  population  who  had 
learned  to  speak  was  probably  even  higher,  since  many  deaf-mutes 
were  not  reported  as  deaf  and  dumb  by  the  population  enumerators 
for  the  reason  that  because  of  their  ability  to  speak  they  were  not 
regarded  as  coming  within  the  scope  of  the  enumeration.  Of  the 
17,000  deaf-mutes  ten  years  of  age  or  over  in  1910  for  whom  special 
schedules  were  returned,  5457,  representing  about  one-third  (32.9  per 
cent)  of  the  total  number  answering  the  inquiry  on  this  subject,  stated 
that  they  were  able  to  understand  what  people  said  by  watching  the 
motion  of  their  lips.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether  the  number  who 
habitually  received  communications  from  others  through  the  medium 
of  lip  reading  was  so  great,  as  instances  were  found  where  persons 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


457 


reported  themselves  as  able  to  read  the  lips  who  gave  no  evidence  of 
ever  having  received  any  special  instruction  in  schools  for  the  deaf  or 
elsewhere  to  assist  them  in  overcoming  the  handicap  of  their  defect. 

Occupations  oj  Deaf-M utes 

Of  the  9328  male  deaf-mutes  ten  years  of  age  or  over  in  1910  for 
whom  schedules  were  returned,  5659,  representing  60.7  per  cent,  or 
about  three-fifths,  were  reported  as  being  gainfully  employed,  as  com¬ 
pared  with  a  corresponding  percentage  of  81.3  for  the  total  male 
population  of  that  age.  Of  the  7672  female  deaf-mutes  of  the  same 
age  returning  schedules,  1213,  representing  15.8  per  cent,  or  about 
one-sixth,  were  reported  as  gainfully  employed,  the  corresponding 
percentage  for  the  general  population  being  23.4.  In  view  of  the  fact 
that  deaf-mutes  ordinarily  enter  and  leave  school  at  a  later  age  than 
hearing  persons,  and  consequently  commence  earning  their  living  later 
in  life,  it  is  possible  that  a  comparison  based  upon  the  population 
twenty  years  of  age  or  over  would  be  somewhat  more  favorable  to 
the  deaf  and  dumb.  The  figures  make  it  evident,  however,  that  deaf- 
mutism  is  the  cause  of  a  serious  economic  loss  to  the  community,  the 
loss  apparently  being  greatest  relatively  in  the  case  of  females.  This 
is  probably  to  be  explained  in  large  measure  by  the  fact  that  gainful 
employment  is  not  a  matter  of  necessity  for  women  to  the  same  extent 
that  it  is  for  men,  so  that  the  former  are  perhaps  more  likely  to  be 
deterred  from  such  employment  by  physical  defects  than  are  the  lat¬ 
ter.  Another  factor  which  may  have  some  influence  in  this  connection 
is  the  circumstance  that  the  proportion  of  persons  who  have  received 
any  education  and  thus  are  equipped  in  some  measure  for  overcoming 
the  disadvantages  attendant  upon  their  defect  is  smaller  among  female 
deaf-mutes  than  among  males.  It  must,  however,  be  remembered  that 
some  of  the  females  not  reporting  a  gainful,  employment  were  engaged 
in  household  tasks  in  the  home,  work  of  distinct  economic  value  to 
the  community. 

Deaf-Mutes  in  the  United  States :  1920 

The  Department  of  Commerce  announces  that  44,885  deaf  and 
dumb  persons,  or  deaf-mutes,  were  enumerated  in  the  census  of  1920. 
In  1  910  the  number  was  44,708.  The  Census  Bureau  included  as 


458 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


deaf-mutes  not  only  deaf  persons  literally  unable  to  speak,  but  others 
totally  deaf  from  an  early  age,  who  learned  to  speak  by  use  of  those 
special  methods  or  means  employed  for  teaching  the  deaf  who  have 
not  acquired  the  art  of  speech  in  the  ordinary  way.  Owing  to  the  in¬ 
crease  of  the  general  population  during  this  decade,  the  enumerated 
deaf-mute  population  formed  only  425  per  million  general  population 
in  1920  as  compared  to  486  per  million  in  1910.  There  was  only  one 
deaf-mute  for  every  2350  general  population  in  1920,  as  against  one 
for  every  2060  in  1910. 

In  view  of  changes  made  in  the  method  of  reporting  and  the  conse¬ 
quent  uncertainty  as  to  the  relative  completeness  of  the  1910  and 
1920  enumerations,  this  apparent  decrease  cannot  be  taken  as  meas¬ 
uring  the  actual  decrease.  It  may,  however,  be  accepted  as  indicating 
that  deaf-mutism  has  probably  become  somewhat  less  prevalent,  since 
the  statistics  of  the  more  advanced  European  countries  have  for  some 
time  showed  a  steady  decrease  in  the  ratio  of  deaf-mutes  to  popula¬ 
tion  ;  and  since  there  has  been  a  gradual  reduction  and  progressively 
more  skilled  treatment  of  certain  diseases,  especially  diseases  of  chil¬ 
dren,  which  frequently  cause  deafness. 

Schedules,  containing  such  special  facts  as  the  cause  of  deafness  and 
age  of  losing  hearing,  were  returned  and  tabulated  for  35,026  deaf- 
mutes,  or  78.0  per  cent  of  those  enumerated  in  1920.  Those  returning 
schedules  in  1910  numbered  only  19,153,  or  42.8  per  cent  of  those 
enumerated.  Analysis  of  this  group  who  returned  schedules  shows 
that  there  were  approximately  six  males  to  every  five  females.  The 
group  included  88.0  per  cent  native  whites,  7.5  per  cent  foreign  born 
whites,  and  4.2  per  cent  negroes. 

The  Causes  of  Deafness  in  the  United  States :  1920 

The  Census  Bureau  included  as  deaf-mutes  not  only  deaf  persons 
literally  unable  to  speak,  but  others  totally  deaf  from  an  early  age, 
who  learned  to  speak  by  use  of  those  special  methods  or  means  em¬ 
ployed  for  teaching  the  deaf  who  have  not  acquired  the  art  of  speech 
in  the  ordinary  way.  There  were  32,592  who  reported  the  cause  of 
deafness,  and  of  those  13,513,  or  41.5  per  cent,  reported  that  they 
were  born  deaf.  So  far  as  possible,  causes  of  deafness  were  grouped 
according  to  the  part  of  the  ear  chiefly  affected. 


Causes  of  Deafness:  1920  and  1910 


Causes 


Total  persons  returning  special 
schedules . 

Total  reporting  cause 
Causes  affecting  the  external  ear  . 
Causes  affecting  the  middle  ear  . 
Causes  producing  suppurative  con¬ 
dition  . 

Scarlet  fever . 

Measles . 

Disease  of  the  ear . 

Abscess  in  the  head  .... 

Diphtheria . 

Pneumonia . 

Influenza  (grippe ) . 

All  other . 

Causes  not  producing  suppurative 
•  condition . 

Whooping  cough . 

Catarrh . 

Colds . 

All  other . 

All  other  causes  affecting  the  middle 

ear . 

Causes  affecting  the  internal  ear  . 
Causes  affecting  the  labyrinth  . 
Malarial  fever  and  quinine  . 

Mumps  . 

All  other . 

Causes  affecting  the  auditory  nerve 

Meningitis . 

Brain  fever . 

Typhoid  fever  .  .  . 

Paralysis  and  infantile  paralysis 

Convulsions . 

All  other . 

All  other  causes  affecting  the  inter¬ 
nal  ear . 

Combination  of  different  classes  of 
causes . 

Unclassifiable  causes . 

Congenital . 

Sickness . 

Falls  and  blows . 

Accident . 

Earache . 

All  other . 

Cause  unknown  or  not  reported  .  * . 


Number 

Per  Cent  Distribution 

1920 

1910 

1920 

1910 

35,026 

19,153 

32,592 

18,161 

100.0 

100.0 

132 

64 

0-4 

0.4 

8,290 

4,507 

25-4 

24.8 

6,682 

3,708 

20.5 

20.4 

3,346 

2  ,005 

IO.3 

II.O 

1,083 

‘  525 

3-3 

2.9 

464 

237 

1.4 

i-3 

446 

349 

14 

i-9 

319 

166 

1.0 

0.9 

295 

102 

0.9 

0.6 

151 

87 

0.5 

0-5 

578 

237 

1.8 

i-3 

1,589 

789 

4-9 

4-3 

636 

301 

2.0 

i-7 

273 

186 

0.8 

1.0 

263 

156 

0.8 

0.9 

4i7 

146 

1-3 

0.8 

19 

10 

0.1 

0.1 

6,429 

3,666 

19.7 

20.2 

372 

226 

1 .1 

1.2 

162 

128 

0-5 

0.7 

159 

85 

0.5 

0.5 

5i 

13 

0.2 

0.1 

5,976 

3,399 

18.3 

18.7 

3,237 

1,812 

9-9 

10.0 

1,314 

927 

4.0 

51 

642 

384 

2.0 

2.1 

236 

35 

0-7 

0.2 

230 

174 

0-7 

1.0 

3i7 

67 

1.0 

O.4 

81 

4i 

0.2 

0.2 

268 

55 

0.8 

0-3 

17,418 

9,869 

534 

54-3 

i3,5i3 

7,533 

4i.5 

4i-5 

2,019 

1,027 

6.2 

5-7 

i,i77 

587 

3-6 

3-2 

162 

57 

0.5 

0.3 

158 

60 

0.5 

0.3 

389 

605 

1.2 

3-3 

2,489 

992 

459 


460 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Of  those  for  whom  the  cause  of  deafness  was  reported,  8290,  or 
about  one-fourth,  reported  causes  which  affect  the  middle  ear.  This 
group  included  6682,  or  20.5  per  cent,  reported  as  due  to  diseases 
which  produce  ulceration  of  the  ear,  while  1589,  or  4.9  per  cent,  were 
stated  as  due  to  diseases  which  do  not  cause  ulceration.  Nearly  one- 
fifth,  6429,  or  19.7  per  cent,  were  reported  as  deaf  from  causes  which 
affect  the  internal  ear.  These  comprised  chiefly  5976,  or  18.3  per 
cent,  who  were  stated  to  be  deaf  from  causes  which  affect  the  hearing 
nerve,  and  372,  or  1.1  per  cent,  deaf  from  diseases  which  affect  the 
labyrinth  of  the  ear.  . 

Of  the  specific  diseases  reported  as  causing  deafness,  scarlet  fever 
accounted  for  3346,  or  10.3  per  cent ;  meningitis,  together  with  "brain 
fever’7  (which  is  really  meningitis  in  most  cases)  was  reported  by 
4551  cases,  or  14.0  per  cent ;  typhoid  fever  accounted  for  the  deafness 
of  642  cases,  or  2.0  per  cent ;  measles  was  reported  by  1083,  or  3.3  per 
cent ;  and  whooping  cough  by  636,  or  2.0  per  cent,  of  those  reporting 
cause.  Infantile  paralysis,  which  was  reported  by  only  0.2  of  1  per 
cent  for  1910,  was  the  stated  cause  of  deafness  for  236,  or  0.7  per  cent, 
of  those  reporting.  This  notable  increase  was  due  to  the  severe  epi¬ 
demics  of  this  disease  which  have  occurred  in  recent  years. 

62.  Heredity  of  Deaf-Mutism1 
Deaf  OS  spring 

1.  One  or  both  partners  deaf.  Marriages  of  deaf  persons,  one  or 
both  of  the  partners  being  deaf  (taken  as  a  whole,  without  regard  to 
the  character  of  the  deafness),  are  far  more  liable  to  result  in  deaf 
offspring  than  ordinary  marriages.  The  proportion  of  marriages  of 
deaf  persons  resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is  9.7  per  cent,  and  the  propor¬ 
tion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is  8.6  per  cent.  Just  what  pro¬ 
portion  of  ordinary  marriages  result  in  deaf  offspring,  and  what 
proportion  of  deaf  children  are  born  therefrom,  we  do  not  know,  but 
they  are  probably  less  than  one-tenth  of  1  per  cent. 

~s._ 

On  the  other  hand,  marriages  of  the  deaf  are  far  more  likely  to 
result  in  hearing  offspring  than  in  deaf  offspring,  the  proportion  of 

1From  Marriages  of  the  Deaf  in  America  (pp.  125-133),  by  Edward  Allen 
Fay,  Ph.D.,  Litt.D.,  Vice  President  Emeritus  of  Gallaudet  College.  The  Volta 
Bureau,  Washington,  D.C.,  1898. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


461 


hearing  children  reported  being  75  per  cent  and  the  actual  proportion 
probably  considerably  higher,  while  that  of  deaf  children,  as  above 
stated,  is  8.6  per  cent. 

These  results  are  in  accordance,  on  the  one  hand,  with  the  law  of 
heredity  that  a  physical  anomaly  or  an  unusual  liability  to  certain 
diseases  existing  in  the  parent  tends  to  be  transmitted  to  the  offspring, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  with  the  law  of  heredity  that  the  offspring 
tend  to  revert  to  the  normal  type. 

2.  Both  partners  deaf ,  or  one  partner  hearing.  For  the  hereditary 
transmission  of  the  physical  condition  that  results  in  deafness,  it  is  not 
necessary  that  both  of  the  partners  in  marriage  should  be  deaf.  On 
the  contrary,  taking  the  deaf  as  a  whole,  without  regard  to  the  charac¬ 
ter  of  the  deafness,  marriages  in  which  both  of  the  partners  are  deaf 
are  not  more  liable  to  result  in  deaf  offspring  than  those  in  which  one 
of  the  partners  is  deaf  and  the  other  is  a  hearing  person.  Indeed,  they 
seem  to  be  less  liable  to  result  in  deaf  offspring.  The  proportion  of 
marriages  in  which  both  of  the  partners  were  deaf  that  resulted  in 
deaf  offspring  is  9.2  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born 
therefrom  is  8.4  per  cent ;  the  proportion  of  marriages  in  which  one 
of  the  partners  was  deaf  and  the  other  was  a  hearing  person,  that 
resulted  in  deaf  offspring,  is  12.5  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf 
children  born  therefrom  is  9.8.  If,  instead  of  the  number  of  mar¬ 
riages,  we  regard  the  number  of  deaf  married  persons,  the  number  of 
deaf  children  born  to  every  100  deaf  persons  married  to  deaf  partners 
is  9.4,  while  the  number  born  to  every  100  deaf  persons  married  to 
hearing  partners  is  25.8.  Even  in  marriages  where  both  of  the  part¬ 
ners  are  congenitally  deaf,  the  large  proportion  of  them  resulting  in 
deaf  offspring  (24.7  per  cent)  and  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom 
(25.9  per  cent)  can  be  explained  in  most  cases  by  the  circumstance 
that  there  were  two  persons  instead  of  one  liable  to  transmit  the 
physical  condition  that  results  in  deafness ;  for,  if  we  regard  the 
number  of  congenitally  deaf  married  persons,  we  find  that  the  num¬ 
ber  of  deaf  children  born  to  every  100  congenitally  deaf  persons 
married  to  congenitally  deaf  partners  (30.8)  is  not  greater  than 
the  number  born  to  every  100  congenitally  deaf  persons  married  to 
hearing  partners  (34.2).  In  the  majority  of  cases  no  intensification 
of  the  liability  to  deaf  offspring  seems  to  be  caused  by  the  union 
of  two  deaf  persons. 


462 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


This  conclusion  is  not,  as  it  might  appear  at  first  sight,  inconsistent 
with  the  general  law  of  heredity  that  the  liability  to  the  hereditary 
transmission  of  any  characteristic  existing  in  the  parent  is  increased 
by  the  union  of  "like  with  like” ;  for,  when  the  deafness  of  the  parent 
reappears  in  the  offspring,  the  characteristic  transmitted  is  not  deaf¬ 
ness,  as  has  been  generally  assumed  by  writers  who  have  discussed  this 
subject,  but  it  is  some  anomaly  of  the  auditory  organs  or  of  the  nerv¬ 
ous  system,  or  the  tendency  to  some  disease,  of  which  deafness  is  but 
the  result  or  the  symptom.  Inasmuch  as  these  anomalies  and  diseases 
resulting  in  deafness  are  many  and  various,  it  is  probable  that  in  most 
marriages  of  deaf  persons,  and  even  of  congenitally  deaf  persons,  the 
pathological  condition  that  results  in  deafness  is  not  the  same  in  one 
partner  that  it  is  in  the  other,  and  their  marriage  therefore  is  not, 
from  a  physiological  point  of  view,  a  union  of  "like  with  like.” 

On  the  other  hand,  where  the  pathological  condition  of  the  two 
partners  is  the  same,  as  it  probably  is  in  the  majority  of  consanguine¬ 
ous  marriages  of  deaf  persons,  there  is  doubtless  an  intensification  of 
the  liability  to  deaf  offspring ;  but  happily  such  marriages  are  com¬ 
paratively  rare.  The  number  of  them  here  reported,  probably  less 
than  the  actual  number,  is  thirty-one,  which  is  0.69  per  cent  of 
the  whole  number  of  marriages.  The  proportion  of  these  thirty-one 
marriages  that  resulted  in  deaf  offspring  is  45  per  cent,  and  the  pro¬ 
portion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is  30  per  cent.  The  curious 
circumstance  above  noted  that  the  percentages  of  marriages  resulting 
in  deaf  offspring  and  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  are  larger  where 
one  of  the  partners  was  a  hearing  person  than  where  both  of  them 
were  deaf  is  probably  chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  proportion  of 
consanguineous  marriages  reported  was  much  greater  where  one  of  the 
partners  was  a  hearing  person  (2  per  cent)  than  where  both  of  them 
were  deaf  (0.37  per  cent). 

3.  Partners  congenitally  or  adventitiously  deaj.  Congenitally  deaf 
persons,  whether  they  are  married  to  one  another,  to  adventitiously 
deaf,  or  to  hearing  partners,  are  far  more  liable  to  have  deaf  offspring 
than  are  adventitiously  deaf  persons.  The  proportion  of  marriages  of 
the  former  class,  one  or  both  of  the  partners  being  congenitally  deaf, 
resulting  in  deaf  offspring,  is  13  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf 
children  born  therefrom  is  12  per  cent ;  in  marriages  of  the  latter  class, 
one  or  both  of  the  partners  being  adventitiously  deaf,  the  proportion 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


463 

resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is  5.6  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf 
children  born  therefrom  is  4.2  per  cent.  The  liability  to  deaf  offspring 
is  greatest  when  both  of  the  partners  are  congenitally  deaf,  the  pro¬ 
portion  of  marriages  resulting  in  deaf  offspring  in  such  cases  being 
24.7  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom 
25.9  per  cent. 

Marriages  of  adventitiously  deaf  persons  are  more  liable  to  result 
in  deaf  offspring  than  ordinary  marriages,  but  when  both  of  the  part¬ 
ners  are  adventitiously  deaf  or  one  of  them  is  a  hearing  person  the 
liability  is  slight.  The  proportion  of  marriages  resulting  in  deaf  off¬ 
spring  where  both  partners  were  adventitiously  deaf  is  3.5  per  cent, 
and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is  2.3  per  cent. 
Where  adventitiously  deaf  persons  were  married  to  hearing  partners 
the  proportion  of  marriages  resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is  3.2  per  cent, 
and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is  2.2  per  cent. 
Where  they  were  married  to  congenitally  deaf  partners  the  proportion 
of  marriages  resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is  8  per  cent,  and  the  propor¬ 
tion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is  6.5  per  cent. 

The  greater  liability  to  deaf  offspring  of  marriages  of  the  con¬ 
genitally  deaf  than  of  the  adventitiously  deaf  is  in  accordance  with 
the  generally  accepted  law  of  heredity  that  congenital  or  innate  char¬ 
acteristics  are  far  more  likely  to  be  transmitted  to  the  offspring  than 
acquired  characteristics.  When  the  deafness  of  adventitiously  deaf 
parents  does  reappear  in  the  offspring,  we  may  suppose  that  the 
physical  anomaly  or  tendency  to  disease  of  which  deafness  was  the 
result  was  probably  congenital  in  the  parent  though  actual  deafness 
did  not  appear  until  some  period  later  in  life. 

4.  Partners  having  deaf  relatives.  Deaf  persons  having  deaf  rela¬ 
tives,  however  they  are  married,  and  hearing  persons  having  deaf 
relatives  and  married  to  deaf  partners,  are  very  liable  to  have  deaf 
offspring.  (Probably  hearing  persons  having  deaf  relatives  and  mar¬ 
ried  to  hearing  partners  are  subject  to  the  same  liability,  but  such 
cases  do  not  come  within  the  scope  of  the  present  inquiry.)  However 
the  marriages  of  the  deaf  are  classified  with  respect  to  the  deafness 
or  hearing  of  one  or  both  of  the  partners,  or  with  respect  to  the  con¬ 
genital  or  adventitious  character  of  the  deafness,  the  percentage  of 
marriages  resulting  in  deaf  offspring  and  the  percentage  of  deaf  chil¬ 
dren  born  therefrom  are  almost  invariably  highest  where  both  of  the 


464 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


partners  had  deaf  relatives,  next  highest  where  one  of  them  had  deaf 
relatives  and  the  other  had  not,  and  least  where  neither  had  deaf 
relatives ;  the  only  exceptions  being  in  a  few  classes  where  the  totals 
are  too  small  to  be  regarded  as  important.  Taking  all  the  marriages 
of  a  year’s  standing  or  longer  of  which  the  results  have  been  reported, 
where  both  of  the  partners  had  deaf  relatives  the  proportion  of  them 
resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is  23.5  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf 
children  born  therefrom  is  20.9  per  cent;  where  one  of  the  partners 
had  deaf  relatives  and  the  other  had  not,  the  proportion  of  marriages 
resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is  6.6  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf 
children  born  therefrom  is  6.4  per  cent;  where  neither  of  them  had 
deaf  relatives  the  proportion  of  marriages  resulting  in  deaf  offspring 
is  only  2.3  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  there¬ 
from  1.2  per  cent.  Probably  the  actual  percentages  of  marriages 
resulting  in  deaf  offspring  and  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom,  where 
neither  of  the  partners  had  deaf  relatives,  are  even  less  than  these, 
for  in  some  cases  the  statements  of  the  marriage  records  that  neither 
of  the  partners  had  deaf  relatives  are  not  well  authenticated,  and  in 
all  of  them  there  is  the  possibility  that  there  were  deaf  relatives 
unknown  to  the  persons  who  filled  out  the  record  blanks.  Where 
neither  of  the  partners  has  deaf  relatives  the  liability  to  deaf  offspring 
is  very  slight,  perhaps  not  greater  than  in  ordinary  marriages. 

In  marriages  where  both  of  the  partners  are  congenitally  deaf  and 
both  have  deaf  relatives  the  proportion  of  them  having  deaf  offspring 
and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  are  very  high 
(28.4  and  30.3  per  cent)  ;  but  where  neither  of  the  partners  has  deaf 
relatives,  even  though  both  of  them  are  congenitally  deaf,  the  liability 
seems  to  be  slight,  perhaps  not  greater  than  in  ordinary  marriages. 
Fourteen  marriages  of  this  class  are  reported,  resulting  in  twenty-four 
children.  Of  these  children  one  was  deaf,  but  in  this  case  the  state¬ 
ment  of  the  marriage  record  that  neither  of  the  partners  had  deaf 
relatives  is  not  well  authenticated.  If  we  accept  the  statement,  the 
proportion  of  marriages  of  this  class  resulting  in  deaf  offspring  is 

7.1  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is 

4.1  per  cent;  but  if  we  reject  it,  there  remains  not  a  single  instance 
of  marriages  in  which  both  of  the  partners  were  congenitally  deaf, 
and  neither  had  deaf  relatives,  that  resulted  in  deaf  offspring.  Though 
the  total  number  of  marriages  of  this  class  is  not  large  enough  to 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


46s 


render  the  result  conclusive,  yet,  taking  them  in  connection  with  the 
hi  other  marriages  of  congenitally  deaf  persons  in  which  neither  of 
the  partners  had  deaf  relatives,1  we  are  justified  in  concluding  that, 
while  congenital  deafness  may  be  a  prima  facie  indication  of  a 
liability  to  deaf  offspring,  it  is  not  to  be  accepted  as  a  conclusive 
evidence  of  such  liability. 

The  possession  of  deaf  relatives,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  be 
a  trustworthy  indication  of  a  liability  to  deaf  offspring.  If  a  deaf 
person,  whether  congenitally  or  adventitiously  deaf,  has  deaf  rela¬ 
tives,  that  person,  however  married,  is  liable  to  have  deaf  offspring, 
the  liability  being  much  greater,  however,  in  the  case  of  the  con¬ 
genitally  deaf  than  in  that  of  the  adventitiously  deaf ;  and  if  a  deaf 
person,  either  with  or  without  deaf  relatives,  marries  a  person,  whether 
deaf  or  hearing,  who  has  deaf  relatives,  the  marriage  is  liable  to  result 
in  deaf  offspring.  If  both  partners  have  deaf  relatives,  the  physical 
conditions  tending  to  produce  deafness,  whatever  they  may  be,  are 
liable  to  be  transmitted  from  both  parents,  and  the  probability  of  deaf 
offspring  is  therefore  largely  increased;  but  even  when  only  one  of 
the  partners  has  deaf  relatives,  the  liability  to  deaf  offspring  is  still 
considerable. 

5.  Partners  consanguineous.  The  marriages  of  the  deaf  most  liable 
to  result  in  deaf  offspring  are  those  in  which  the  partners  are  related 
by  consanguinity.  Thirty-one  such  marriages  are  reported  in  the 
marriage  records,  and  of  these  fourteen,  or  45.1  per  cent,  resulted  in 
deaf  offspring.  One  hundred  children  were  born  from  these  thirty- 
one  marriages,  and  of  these  thirty,  or  30  per  cent,  were  deaf. 

The  totals  of  the  several  classes  of  relationship,  as  first  cousins, 
second  cousins,  etc.,  and  the  totals  of  the  several  classes  of  marriage, 
as  of  both  of  the  partners  deaf,  one  of  the  partners  deaf  and  the  other 
hearing,  one  or  both  of  the  partners  congenitally  or  adventitiously 
deaf,  one  or  both  of  the  partners  having  other  deaf  relatives  or  not, 
are  too  small  to  enable  us  to  form  conclusions  as  to  their  comparative 
results;  but  the  large  percentage  of  marriages  resulting  in  deaf  off- 

^^The  proportion  of  these  in  marriages  that  resulted  in  deaf  offspring  is  4.5 
per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom  is  24  per  cent;  or, 
if  we  eliminate  one  marriage  record,  the  statement  of  which  that  neither  partner 
had  deaf  relatives  is  not  well  authenticated,  the  proportion  of  marriages  resulting 
in  deaf  offspring  is  3.6  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  deaf  children  born  there¬ 
from  is  2  per  cent. 


466 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


spring,  and  of  deaf  children  born  therefrom,  in  every  one  of  these 
classes,  indicates  that  it  is  exceedingly  dangerous  for  a  deaf  person  to 
marry  a  blood  relative,  no  matter  what  the  character  or  degree  of 
the  relationship  may  be,  and  no  matter  whether  the  relative  is  deaf 
or  hearing,  nor  whether  the  deafness  of  either  or  both  or  neither  of 
the  partners  is  congenital,  nor  whether  either  or  both  or  neither  of 
them  have  other  deaf  relatives. 

The  reason  why  consanguineous  marriages  are  so  much  more  liable 
to  result  in  deaf  offspring  than  ordinary  marriages  of  the  deaf  is, 
probably,  that  in  such  marriages  the  same  condition  tending  to  pro¬ 
duce  deafness  is  likely  to  exist  in  both  of  the  partners,  and,  from  the 
union  of  "like  with  like,”  to  be  transmitted  to  their  offspring  with 
increased  intensity.1 

iWhen  Dr.  Fay’s  book  appeared,  Dr.  Alexander  Graham  Bell  felt  that  the  re¬ 
sults  tabulated  on  page  134  confirmed  the  opinion  he  had  expressed  in  his  memoir 
concerning  the  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  deaf  to  reproduce  deaf  offspring,  and 
thus  he  was  led  to  make  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  4471  marriages  of  persons 
deaf  from  childhood  that  are  presented  in  detail  in  Dr.  Fay’s  book. 

Dr.  Bell  found  that  in  974  of  the  marriages  no  information  was  obtained  con¬ 
cerning  offspring,  while  in  419  cases  the  marriage  took  place  within  a  year  of  the 
date  of  report  to  Dr.  Fay,  so  that  no  offspring  had  then  appeared,  and  that  434 
of  the  marriages  were  childless  when  reported  to  Dr.  Fay.  Eliminating  these  1827 
marriages  from  the  4471  recorded  in  Dr.  Fay’s  book,  left  2644  marriages  of  a 
year’s  standing  or  longer  to  be  analyzed ;  for  the  children  recorded  were  the  off¬ 
spring  of  only  these  2644  marriages. 

The  total  number  of  children  recorded  was  6782 ;  of  these  588,  or  8.66  per  cent, 
were  deaf.  These  588  deaf  children  were  the  offspring  of  only  302  of  the  mar¬ 
riages.  Now,  the  summary  table  shown  on  page  134  of  Dr.  Fay’s  book  does  not 
give  the  total  number  of  children  born  of  these  marriages,  but  Dr.  Bell  found 
these  details  available  in  Dr.  Fay’s  book.  After  discarding  two  of  the  marriages 
(which  resulted  in  three  deaf  children  and  "several”  hearing  children),  because 
the  total  number  of  children  born  was  not  stated,  he  found  the  following  totals: 

Marriages  resulting  in  deaf  offspring . 300 

Total  number  of  children  born . 1044 

Number  of  deaf  children  . . 585 

Proportion  deaf .  56% 

In  other  words,  from  these  300  marriages  that  resulted  in  deaf  offspring  more 
than  half  of  the  children  were  born  deaf. 

Another  development  worthy  of  note  is  that  of  these  2642  marriages  analyzed 
the  average  number  of  children  per  marriage  in  the  300  marriages  that  resulted  in 
deaf  offspring  was  3.48,  while  an  average  of  only  2.44  per  marriage  was  re¬ 
ported  in  the  2342  marriages  resulting  in  no  reported  deaf  offspring. —  From  Fred 
DeLand’s  Introduction  to  Graphical  Studies  of  Marriages  of  the  Deaf  (p.  6),  by 
Alexander  Graham  Bell.  The  Volta  Bureau,  Washington,  D.C.,  1917. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


467 


63.  Education  of  the  Deaf  and  the  Blind1 

Systematic  care  of  the  defective  classes  began  in  America  in  1815, 
when  a  young  theological  student,  Thomas  Hopkins  Gallaudet,  started 
for  Europe  to  study  methods  of  teaching  the  deaf  and  dumb.  A 
school  for  this  class  was  opened  in  1817,  one  for  the  blind  in  1831, 
and  one  for  the  feeble-minded  in  1845 — practically  fifteen  years  apart.  . 
In  each  case  the  first  schools  were  in  New  England,  the  second  in 
New  York,  the  third  in  Pennsylvania ;  and  these  schools  followed 
one  another  quickly.  All  started  in  the  face  of  more  or  less  dis¬ 
trust  as  to  their  feasibility.  At  first  all  were  experimental,  being 
started  through  private  initiative.  A  few  pupils  were  taught  and  ex¬ 
hibited  before  the  amazed  public,  when  in  the  case  of  the  deaf  and 
the  blind  private  funds  in  abundance  were  contributed  and  the  schools 
quickly  established  as  private  corporations.  In  the  case  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded  the  first  school  to  be  incorporated  was  a  public  organization 
— that  is,  it  was  supported  by  the  state.  Before  1822  the  state  had 
not  been  educated  to  the  point  of  supporting  schools  for  the  special 
classes,  but  by  1848  it  was  ready  to  see  its  duty  towards  even  the 
idiotic,  though  wealthy  people  were  by  no  means  prepared  to  con¬ 
tribute  directly  to  schools  for  them. 

The  three  states  named  having  led  the  way,  the  movement  spread 
quickly  into  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Virginia,  and  Illinois — in  almost  identi¬ 
cal  order  for  each  special  class.  Here,  however,  the  schools  for  the 
three  classes  arose  as  state  institutions.  It  had  become  an  accepted 
part  of  public  policy  for  the  state  to  provide  a  means  of  education 
for  all  her  children.  The  superintendents  of  the  early  schools  for  the 
deaf  and  dumb  were  generally  clergymen ;  those  of  the  blind  and  the 
idiotic,  generally  physicians.  The  institutions  were  necessarily  board¬ 
ing  schools ;  and  the  early  ones  were  established  as  a  rule  in  or  near 
the  state  capitals,  chiefly  that  their  achievements  might  be  kept  before 
.the  members  of  the  legislatures,  on  whose  practical  sympathy  the 
continuance  of  the  schools  usually  depended. 

The  large  private  or  semi-public  institutions  are  confined  to  the 
eastern  states,  where  the  movement  began.  Their  support  comes 

1From  Education  of  Defectives  (pp.  3-29),  by  Edward  E.  Allen,  Director  of 
the  Perkins  Institution  and  Massachusetts  School  for  the  Blind.  Copyright,  1899, 
1904,  by  L.  B.  Lyon  Company. 


468 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


chiefly  from  private  bequests  and  the  interest  on  invested  endowment 
funds.  All,  however,  receive  what  is  termed  state  aid,  and  all  make 
annual  report  to  the  state  legislatures,  to  the  commissioners  of  public 
charities  or  of  public  education,  as  the  case  may  be.  All  these  institu¬ 
tions  are  governed  by  honorary  boards  of  trustees  or  managers,  who 
appoint  the  superintendent  or  principal.  In  the  semi-public  organi¬ 
zation  the  managers  form  a  self-appointing,  close  corporation ;  in  the 
public,  they  are  appointed  usually  by  the  state  governor,  by  whom 
they  may  also  be  removed. 

The  semi-public  institutions  are  usually  well  endowed.  Their  ex¬ 
penditures  are,  therefore,  not  limited  by  legislative  grant ;  and, 
moreover,  these  institutions  are  free  from  political  interference,  an 
interference  which,  in  the  case  of  several  of  the  state  organizations, 
has  seriously  affected  from  time  to  time  the  efficiency  of  the  institu¬ 
tions  themselves.  As  a  rule,  the  institution  plants  are  large  and 
well  equipped.  Even  when  within  the  built-up  cities  the  buildings  are 
surrounded  with  ample  lawns  and  playgrounds.  The  appropriations 
of  money  are  generous,  whether  the  schools  are  public  or  semi-public. 
The  earlier  institutions  were  built  on  the  congregate  plan ;  the  later 
and  those  that  have  been  rebuilt  have  generally  adopted  the  segregate 
or  cottage  plan. 

The  pupils  are  not  committed  to  these  institutions,  but  are  ad¬ 
mitted  or  rejected  by  the  boards  of  trustees  on  the  recommendation 
of  the  superintendents. 

The  early  institutions  for  all  three  classes  of  defectives  began  purely 
as  schools.  And  all  those  existing  to-day,  except  those  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded,  discharge  or  graduate  all  pupils  after  these  have  completed 
the  course  of  instruction.  With  the  feeble-minded  this  plan  was  found 
to  be  inexpedient,  for  reasons  which  will  be  stated  later. 

A  very  recent  movement,  started  by  the  instructors  of  the  deaf,  is 
the  affiliation  of  the  educators  of  the  defective  classes  with  those  of 
the  National  Educational  Association.  It  is  being  more  and  more* 
recognized  that  the  line  between  a  defective  and  a  normal  child  cannot 
be  drawn  hard  and  fast,  and  that  many  a  child  who  appears  dull  and 
stupid  in  school  is  in  some  measure  defective.  Hence,  these  special 
schools  afford  fields  of  most  helpful  suggestion  to  teachers  of  ordinary 
children.  All  persons  intending  to  make  teaching  a  vocation  should 
become  acquainted  with  these  schools  and  their  methods. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


469 


It  is  interesting  to  note  that  systematic  work  for  the  deaf  and 
dumb,  the  blind,  and  the  feeble-minded  began  in  France,  and  that  to 
France  America  sent  its  early  teachers  to  study  methods  and  ascer¬ 
tain  results. 

Schools  for  the  Deaf 

About  the  middle  of  the  last  century  three  schools  for  the  deaf  and 
dumb  were  opened  in  Europe,  one  in  France,  one  in  Germany,  and  one 
in  Scotland.  Though  they  sprang  up  at  about  the  same  time  they 
were  yet  wholly  independent  in  origin.  In  Paris  the  Abbe  de  l’Epee 
having  observed  two  deaf-mute  sisters  conversing  by  means  of  gestures, 
seized  upon  the  idea  that  in  gesture  language  lay  the  secret  of  instruct¬ 
ing  the  deaf  and  dumb.  He  therefore  elaborated  a  system  of  gesture 
signs  and  made  it  the  medium  of  instruction  in  the  school  which  he 
started.  Heinicke  in  Dresden  and  Braidwood  in  Edinburgh  simply 
adopted  articulate  speech  as  the  language  of  man  and  taught  their 
pupils  through  it,  requiring  them  to  speak  and  read  the  lips  of  others. 
Thus  arose  the  two  important  methods  of  deaf-mute  instruction. 

Reports  of  the  successes,  chiefly  in  the  British  school,  having 
reached  America,  several  parents  of  deaf-mutes  sent  their  children  to 
Scotland  to  be  educated.  These  deaf  children  returned  no  longer  as 
mutes ;  they  were  able  to  converse  readily  by  speaking  and  lip  read¬ 
ing.  One  of  these  parents  was  so  delighted  with  his  boy’s  schooling 
that  he  published  a  book  in  London  and  wrote  articles  for  the  New 
England  periodicals,  with  the  intention  of  arousing  interest  in  the 
new  work.  This  man  also  took  steps  to  ascertain  the  number  of 
deaf-mutes  in  Massachusetts.  Another  man  in  Virginia,  some  of 
whose  relatives  had  attended  Braidwood’s  school,  even  opened  a  little 
school  for  deaf  and  dumb  pupils  in  his  state,  employing  as  its  teacher 
one  of  the  Braidwood  family,  who  had  come  to  America  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  continuing  in  the  profession  of  his  family  here.  This  was  in 
1812.  The  school  was  the  first  of  its  kind  started  in  America.  How¬ 
ever,  it  was  soon  given  up,  as  was  a  similar  effort  in  New  York,  where 
a  clergyman  undertook  to  instruct  several  deaf  children  whom  he 
found  in  an  almshouse. 

Though  the  events  above  touched  upon  seemed  to  result  in  little, 
they  yet  had  great  effect  in  directing  intelligent  attention  to  this  field 
of  work.  They  constitute  its  preliminary  stages. 


470 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


It  happened  in  Hartford,  Conn.,  that  there  was  a  physician,  one  of 
whose  little  daughters  had  become  deaf.  Why  could  not  this  child 
be  educated  as  well  as  her  hearing  sisters  ?  With  this  thought  he  spent 
some  eight  years  in  agitating  the  question  of  starting  a  school  for  deaf 
children.  In  1815  money  enough  was  raised  in  a  single  day  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  sending  a  teacher  abroad  to  study  methods.  A  young 
graduate  of  Yale  College  and  of  a  theological  seminary  was  chosen  as 
the  teacher  to  go.  This  was  Thomas  Hopkins  Gallaudet,  who  was 
destined  to  become  the  founder  of  deaf-mute  instruction  in  America. 

Of  course  he  went  to  Great  Britain.  But  the  doors  of  the  British 
schools  were  closed  to  him.  He  found  the  science  and  art  of  teaching 
the  deaf  regarded  as  a  business  monopoly,  whereas  he  had  expected 
to  find  it  conducted  from  his  own  motive  of  philanthropy.  After 
wandering  about  there  for  nine  months  he  gave  up  hope  of  acquiring 
the  Braidwood  method  and  accepted  an  invitation  to  study  methods 
at  the  Paris  school.  At  this  school  he  spent  the  three  remaining 
months  of  the  year,  a  time  far  too  short  in  which  to  acquire  the  special 
language  of  gesture  signs.  Hence,  he  induced  a  deaf-mute,  who  was 
teaching  in  the  school,  to  accompany  him  to  America.  This  man  was 
the  brilliant  and  accomplished  Laurent  Clerk,  who  became  an  engine 
of  power  for  establishing  schools  for  deaf-mutes  in  our  country.  Thus 
was  the  French  method  or  the  sign-language  method  brought  to 
America.  It  was  improved  and  further  systematized  by  our  early 
teachers  and  in  this  form  was  the  basis  of  instruction  in  all  our  schools 
for  half  a  century. 

During  the  absence  of  Dr.  Gallaudet,  influential  men  of  Hartford 
had  secured  from  the  state  legislature  the  incorporation  of  the  Con¬ 
necticut  asylum  for  the  education  and  instruction  of  deaf  and  dumb 
persons.  Upon  his  return  he  and  Mr.  Clerk  traveled  for  eight  months 
among  prominent  cities  in  behalf  of  the  cause  of  the  deaf.  The  ex¬ 
hibition  of  Laurent  Clerk  alone  helped  the  cause  as  nothing  else  could 
have  done.  On  April  15,  1817,  school  work  began  at  Hartford  with 
seven  pupils.  During  the  year  thirty-three  pupils  came.  This  was 
the  first  permanent  school  in  the  country.  While  in  other  countries 
similar  schools  had  no  reliable  basis  of  support,  the  founders  of  our 
schools  immediately  established  theirs  on  a  permanent  basis.  Private  * 
aid  was  necessary  at  first,  but  no  sooner  had  the  feasibility  of  the  work 
been  shown  than  public  moneys  were  granted. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


47i 


In  this  year  the  Connecticut  asylum  changed  its  name  to  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Asylum  at  Hartford  for  the  education  and  instruction  of  the  deaf 
and  dumb ;  for  it  was  then  supposed  that  one  school  could  accommo¬ 
date  for  many  years  all  the  pupils  of  the  country  who  would  attend 
school.  But  interest  in  the  schooling  of  deaf-mutes  had  been  aroused 
in  other  places.  In  1818  a  school  was  opened  in  New  York  under  a 
teacher  from  Hartford ;  and  in  Philadelphia,  where  Dr.  Gallaudet  and 
Mr.  Clerk  had  gone  to  obtain  aid  for  the  Hartford  school,  an  humble 
storekeeper  by  the  name  of  Seixas  began  to  teach,  in  1819,  a  little 
class  of  deaf  pupils,  and  he  was  so  successful  that  an  institution  was 
organized  in  1820  with  Seixas  as  first  teacher  and  principal.  In  a  very 
few  months  he  was  succeeded  by  a  permanent  principal  from  Hart¬ 
ford.  Back  in  1819  Massachusetts  had  provided  an  appropriation 
for  the  education  of  twenty  indigent  pupils  at  Hartford,  and  in  1825 
New  Hampshire  and  Vermont  adopted  the  same  policy. 

Other  states  soon  followed  this  good  example.  Thus,  through  the  efforts 
of  the  founders  of  this  [the  Hartford]  school,  the  humane,  just,  and  wise 
policy  of  educating  deaf-mutes  at  the  public  expense  was  firmly  established 
in  this  country,  and  has  been  adopted  by  almost  every  state  in  the  union. 
Bi  some  of  the  western  states  means  for  the  education  of  deaf-mutes  are 
secured  by  constitutional  provision.  This  has  put  the  schools  for  deaf- 
mutes  in  the  United  States  on  a  better  basis,  financially,  than  those  in  any 
other  part  of  the  world.1 

Only  two  years  after  the  founding  of  the  Pennsylvania  school, 
Kentucky  followed  with  its  institution,  being  the  first  to  be  supported 
by  a  state.  The  act  establishing  it  limited  the  pupils  at  any  one  time 
to  25,  and  their  term  of  instruction  to  three  years.  In  fact  limits  of 
this  kind  are  usually  prescribed  in  all  the  early  institutions.  (The 
Illinois  school  now  has  612  pupils,  and  the  New  York  schools  allow 
a  term  of  seventeen  years.)  The  first  principal  of  the  Kentucky 
school  went  to  Hartford  for  a  year  to  study  methods.  Ohio  and  Vir¬ 
ginia  soon  followed  in  the  good  work.  Both  received  their  first  super¬ 
intendents  from  Hartford.  Thereafter  institutions  sprang  up  rapidly 
in  the  south  and  west,  taking  their  early  superintendents  or  teachers 
either  from  the  parent  school  at  Hartford  or  from  one  or  another  of 
the  older  schools. 

American  Asylum,”  chap,  i,  p.  13,  in  Histories  of  American  Schools  for 
the  Deaf. 


472 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


In  1857  there  was  incorporated  by  the  national  congress  the  Colum¬ 
bia  institution  at  Washington,  D.  C.,  which  requires  special  mention. 
Though  originally  intended  as  a  school  where  the  deaf  children  of 
government  beneficiaries  could  be  educated,  circumstances  of  which 
not  the  least  influential  was  the  energy  of  its  principal,  Dr.  Edward  M. 
Gallaudet,  son  of  the  pioneer,  soon  brought  about  a  change  enabling 
the  institution  to  confer  collegiate  degrees.  The  institution  was  then 
divided  into  two  departments,  the  advanced  department  taking  the 
name  of  the  National  deaf-mute  college.  Thus,  in  1864,  America  had 
taken  a  step  "  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  deaf-mute  instruction.” 

Most  of  the  deaf  and  dumb  are  either  born  deaf  or  become  so  before 
acquiring  language.  They  are  dumb  because  they  are  deaf,  and  with¬ 
out  special  instruction  can  never  know  any  but  a  gestural  language. 
The  pioneer  educators  of  the  deaf  in  this  country  were  all  "broad¬ 
minded  men  of  liberal  education,”  and  they  set  a  high  standard  at 
the  outset  for  the  work.  A  language  of  signs  they  saw  was  the  key 
to  the  instruction  of  their  pupils,  who,  indeed,  were  allowed  so  few 
years  of  schooling,  that  no  time  was  to  be  lost  in  laboring  over  the 
extraordinary  difficulties  of  teaching  them  speech.  Moreover,  these 
teachers  saw  with  great  satisfaction  the  development  of  their  pupite 
through  the  language  of  signs. 

This  language  is  ideographic — "being  readily  expressive  of  ideas  and 
emotions,”  rather  than  of  phraseology.  Put  into  words  their  order  is 
entirely  different  from  the  natural  order,  thus,  "Let  it  be  supposed  that 
a  girl  has  been  seen  by  a  deaf-mute  child  to  drop  a  cup  of  milk  which 
she  was  carrying  home.  He  would  relate  the  incident  in  the  following 
order  of  sign  words:  Saw-I-girl-walk-cup-milk-carry-home-drop.”1 
The  late  superintendent  of  the  Illinois  institution,  Dr.  Gillett,  writes : 

When  reduced  to  a  system  they  [signs]  form  a  convenient  means  of 
conveying  to  one  mind  the  ideas  conceived  by  another,  though  not  clothed 
in  the  language  in  which  a  cultured  mind  expresses  them.  One  addressed  in 
the  sign  language  receives  the  idea  and  translates  it  into  English  without 
any  intimation  of  the  phraseology  in  the  mind  of  the  speaker,  so  that  a 
dozen  persons  familiar  with  the  sign  language,  observing  the  gesticulations 
of  a  speaker,  would  each  translate  correctly  the  thoughts  given  forth,  but 
no  two  of  them  would  be  in  exactly  the  same  phraseology.  It  is  a  concrete 
language,  in  which  the  expression  of  abstract  ideas  is  exceedingly  difficult.2 

1  Article  "  Deaf  and  Dumb”  in  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  (9th  ed.).  American 
reprint.  2 Gillett,  Some  Notable  Benefactors  of  the  Deaf,  pp.  14-15. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


473 


As  the  ideas  are  given  out  chiefly  by  means  of  hand  gestures,  schools 
using  the  sign  language  as  a  means  of  instruction  are  said  to  follow 
or  use  the  manual  method.1 

Among  the  manually-taught  deaf  this  language  early  becomes  the 
vernacular.  As  it  is  a  language  of  living  pictures,  such  deaf  people 
think  in  pictures  and  dream  in  them.  The  sign  language  is  said  to  be 
to  the  deaf  what  spoken  language  is  to  the  hearing ;  and  yet  its  use  in 
the  school  room  is  deemed  by  many  teachers  extremely  detrimental 
to  the  acquisition  of  the  English  language,  and,  therefore,  unwise. 

All  our  educators  of  the  deaf  agree  that  giving  to  their  pupils  the 
ability  to  use  the  English  language  is  their  chief  end  and  aim.  They 
differ  widely,  however,  over  the  use  of  signs.  The  greater  number 
believe  a  moderate  use  of  them  to  be  economical  of  time  and  extremely 
useful  to  the  deaf  in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge.  There  is  a  small 
but  growing  number  who  dispense  with  signs  in  toto  just  as  soon  as 
possible.  These  latter  teach  by  the  intuitive,  direct,  or  u  English  lan¬ 
guage  method.”  They  teach  English  by  and  through  English,  spoken, 
read,  and  written. 

It  is  extraordinarily  difficult  to  get  started  by  the  oral  or  English 
language  method.  But  teachers  of  this  method  claim  that  once  well 
started  their  pupils  advance  more  logically,  more  surely,  more  pre¬ 
cisely,  and  finally  more  swiftly  than  the  pupils  of  those  permitting 
the  intervention  of  signs.  Advocates  of  using  the  signs  together  with 
other  means  claim  that  the  minds  of  most  of  their  new  pupils  are 
sluggish  from  want  of  language  to  think  in,  and  that  they  need  to  be 
aroused  by  the  quickest  method ;  that  their  pupils  have  already  lost 
too  many  years  of  youth,  and  that  to  cause  them  to  lose  more  because 
of  a  theory  is  wrong  and  wicked.  This  school  asserts  that  "A  large 
percentage  of  the  deaf  under  proper  methods  can  obtain  a  very  useful 
amount  of  speech  and  lip-reading,  but  [that]  there  is  also  a  large 

1  The  simple  sign  for  cat  well  illustrates  the  graphic  nature  of  the  language. 
In  order  to  teach  this  sign,  a  sign  teacher  "would  show  the  child  a  cat,  if  possible, 
or  a  picture  of  a  cat,  which  would  be  recognized  by  the  child.  The  next  step 
would  be  to  direct  attention  to  the  cat’s  whiskers,  drawing  the  thumb  and  finger 
of  each  hand  lightly  over  them.  A  similar  motion  with  the  thumb  and  finger  of 
each  hand  above  the  teacher’s  upper  lip  at  once  becomes  the  sign  for  cat.  The 
instructed  deaf  child  will  be  expected  to  recall  the  object,  cat,  on  seeing  this  con¬ 
ventional  sign.” — Gordon,  The  Difference  between  the  Two  Systems  of  Teach¬ 
ing  Deaf-Mute  Children  the  English  Language ,  pp.  1-2. 


474 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


percentage  of  them  that  would  be  greatly  restricted  in  their  mental 
development,  if  allowed  no  other  means  of  instruction,”  and  continues : 

"We  are  striving  to  take  the  golden  mean,  placing  first  in  impor¬ 
tance  mental  development  and  a  knowledge  of  written  language,  and 
adding  thereto  in  the  case  of  every  child  speech  and  lip-reading  to  the 
degree  that  his  capacity  and  adaptability  allow  him  to  acquire  them.”1 

And  again,  "For  rapid  and  clear  explanation,  for  testing  the  com¬ 
prehension  of  the  pupil,  for  lectures  and  religious  instruction  before 
large  numbers  of  pupils,  there-is  no  other  means  equal  in  efficiency  to 
the  sign  language.  Its  proper  and  conservative  use  always  tends  to 
mental  development,  saves  time,  and  is  the  most  efficient  aid  known 
in  the  acquisition  of  written  and  spoken  language.”2 

The  other  school  affirms  that  the  two  methods  or  systems  are 
mutually  exclusive,  saying: 

Of  course  no  pupil  can  be  taught  under  the  intuitive  and  sign  method  at 
the  same  time,  and  it  is  impossible  to  combine  into  one  system  a  method 
which  is  dependent  upon  the  "sign”  language  at  every  stage  of  instruction 
with  a  method  which  dispenses  absolutely  with  the  "sign”  language  at  every 
stage  in  teaching  the  English  language.  In  the  "sign-language”  method  in¬ 
structors  aim  to  teach  the  vernacular  language  through  the  intervention  of 
signs,  but  their  deaf-mute  pupils  acquire  a  mixture  of  natural  signs,  panto¬ 
mime,  conventional  signs,  and  finger  spelling  which  becomes  the  habitual 
vehicle  of  thought  and  expression,  wherever  it  is  possible  to  use  a  gestural 
language,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  English  language.  The  intuitive  method 
dispenses  entirely  with  the  crutch  of  the  "sign-language”  in  the  mastery 
of  English.3 

A  form  of  the  English  language  method,  taught  at  the  Rochester 
(N.Y.)  institution,  substitutes  finger  spelling  for  signs  as  these  are 
used  in  manual  schools,  and  is  called  the  "manual  alphabet  method.” 
Superintendent  Westervelt  says  of  it,  "It  is  the  principle  of  our 
method  of  instruction  that  the  child  has  a  right  to  receive  instruction 
through  that  form  of  our  language  which  he  can  understand  most 
readily,  with  the  least  strain  of  attention,  and  the  least  diversion  from 
the  thought  to  the  organ  of  its  expression.”4 

1Third  Biennial  Report  of  the  American  School ,  p.  12. 

2 First  Biennial  Report  of  the  American  Asylum,  p.  17. 

3 Gordon,  The  Difference  between  the  Tivo  Systems  of  Teaching  etc.,  p.  3. 

4Western  New  York  Institution,  Histories  of  American  Schools  for  the  Deaf, 
chap,  ii,  p.  11. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


-475 


So  much  for  the  rival  methods,  which,  however,  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  understand  if  we  would  comprehend  the  history  of  deaf- 
mute  education  in  America. 

The  history  of  the  rise  of  the  oral  method  is  interesting.  As  has 
been  said,  the  manual  method  reigned  supreme  for  the  first  fifty  years 
of  the  work.  In  1843,  Horace  Mann,  secretary  of  the  Massachusetts 
state  board  of  education,  and  Dr.  Howe,  d-irector  of  the  Perkins  in¬ 
stitution  for  the  blind  in  Boston,  made  a  tour  of  Europe.  In  his  next 
annual  report  Horace  Mann  praised  the  oral  method  as  taught  in 
Germany,  stating  that  it  was  superior  to  the  method  employed  in 
America.  The  report  was  widely  read,  and  caused  no  little  commotion 
among  our  teachers  of  the  deaf,  several  of  whom  went  abroad  to  see 
for  themselves.  These  gentlemen  did  not  agree  with  Horace  Mann, 
and  little  change  was  then  made  in  American  methods.  Still  as  a 
result  of  their  recommendations,  classes  in  articulation  were  intro¬ 
duced  into  several  schools.  Later,  in  1864,  the  father  of  a  little  deaf 
girl  in  Massachusetts  began  to  agitate  for  the  incorporation  of  an 
oral  school  in  that  state.  A  small  private  school  of  the  kind  was  soon 
opened  near  Boston.  In  the  nick  of  time — for  the  opponents  of 
opening  an  oral  school  were  active — a  Mr.  Clarke  of  Northampton 
offered  to  endow  a  school  for  the  deaf  in  Massachusetts.  The  project 
being  favored  by  the  governor  of  the  commonwealth,  and  by  Dr.  Howe, 
who  was  then  secretary  of  the  state  board  of  charities,  the  legislature 
incorporated  in  1867  the  Clarke  institution  at  Northampton,  which 
was  opened  as  an  oral  school.  In  the  same  year  a  former  teacher  of 
an  Austrian  school  opened  in  New  York  what  soon  became  the  New 
York  institution  for  the  improved  instruction  of  deaf-mutes. 

This  invasion  of  the  field  so  long  occupied  by  the  silent  method  of 
signs  occasioned  much  controversy.  Dr.  Edward  M.  Gallaudet,  presi¬ 
dent  of  the  Columbia  institution,  at  once  went  abroad  to  examine  schools 
and  their  methods.  Upon  his  return  he  reported  that  if  the  whole  body 
of  the  deaf  were  to  be  restricted  to  one  kind  of  instruction,  he  favored 
results  to  be  obtained  by  the  manual  methods  of  America ;  but  he  main¬ 
tained  "the  practicability  of  teaching  a  large  proportion  of  the  deaf 
to  speak  and  to  read  from  the  lips,”1  and  advocated  the  introduction  of 
articulation  into  all  the  schools  of  the  country.  As  a  result  a  confer- 

1  Quoted  in  Gordon’s  Notes  and  Observations  upon  the  Education  of  the  Deaf , 
p.  xxix. 


476 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


ence  of  principals  of  American  institutions  met  at  Washington,  which 
adopted  resolutions  in  the  line  of  President  Gallaudet’s  recommenda¬ 
tions.  Classes  in  articulation  were  then  very  generally  introduced. 

During  the  next  few  years  a  gradual  movement  abroad  towards 
the  abolition  of  signs  was  evident.  Dr.  Alexander  Graham  Bell  had 
introduced  to  teachers  his  father’s  system  of  visible  speech,  a  system 
of  written  characters  devised  to  show  the  position  taken  and  the  move¬ 
ment  made  by  the  tongue,  teeth,  lips,  glottis,  and  other  vocal  organs 
in  articulation.  In  1890  the  American  association  to  promote  the 
teaching  of  speech  to  the  deaf  was  incorporated,  with  Dr.  Alexander 
Graham  Bell  as  president. 

The  early  principals  saw  the  need  of  exchanging  ideas,  and  soon 
after  the  beginning  of  the  work  started  an  organ  of  communication. 
This  organ,  The  Annals  of  the  Deaf,  is  now  in  its  forty-fourth 
volume.  It  is  a  quarterly  magazine,1  conducted  under  the  direction  of 
a  committee  of  the  conference  of  superintendents  and  principals  of 
American  schools  for  the  deaf.  It  is  a  high-class,  much-prized  periodi¬ 
cal,  and  is  said  to  be  the  leading  publication  of  its  kind  in  the  world. 
In  the  pages  of  the  Annals  have  been  published  articles  on  all  manner 
of  questions  relating  to  the  deaf. 

The  Volta  bureau  is  a  unique  institution.^  The  Volta  prize  of  twenty- 
five  thousand  francs  awarded  by  the  French  government  to  Dr.  Bell 
for  his  invention  of  the  telephone,  he  applied  to  the  founding  of  a 
bureau  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  and  diffusing  knowledge  concern¬ 
ing  the  deaf.  This  is  the  Volta  bureau  of  Washington,  D.  C.  It  has 
already  published  a  large  number  of  papers,  studies,  and  books. 

The  influence  of  Dr.  Bell  upon  the  work  for  the  deaf  has  been  deep 
and  lasting.  The  invention  of  the  telephone  itself  resulted  from  his 
experiments  upon  a  device  which  he  hoped  would  enable  the  deaf  to 
read  the  vibrations  of  the  human  voice.  He  has  devoted  his  best  en¬ 
ergies  and  his  means,  to  furthering  the  work  which  he  has  made  his 
profession.  His  great  efforts  have  been  towards  the  promotion  of 
speech-teaching  to  the  deaf. 

Public  day  schools  for  the  deaf  have  sprung  up  in  various  places. 
The  Horace  Mann  school  of  Boston  is  a  notable  example.  They  fill 
an  unquestioned  need,  as  many  parents  refuse  to  send  their  deaf  chil¬ 
dren  off  to  an  institution.  A  still  further  movement  towards  decen- 

xIt  now  appears  six  times  a  year. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


477 


tralization  has  come  to  pass  in  Wisconsin.  Wherever  in  this  state  a 
few  deaf  children  can  be  gathered  near  their  homes,  state  aid  will  be 
given  to  pay  teachers  sent  there  to  teach  them.  And  this  movement 
is  tending  to  become  more  and  more  general.  All  these  day  schools 
spread  the  oral  method.  An  important  effect  of  the  rise  of  this  method 
has  been  the  lowering  of  the  age  when  deaf  children  are  received,  and 
of  lengthening  their  term  of  instruction ;  also  of  largely  increasing  the 
number  of  women  teachers  employed. 

With  the  lowering  of  the  age  of  pupils,  kindergarten  methods  have 
been  made  use  of  more  and  more;  though  no  true  kindergarten  can 
be  conducted  in  schools  where  language  comes  so  hard  and  so  late, 
where  even  natural  signs  are  arbitrarily  interdicted,  and  where  there 
can  be  no  music.  But  the  occupations  and  the  games  are  widely 
applicable  and  are  now  universally  used. 

From  the  above  discussion  it  is  seen  that  the  deaf  child  comes  to 
school  with  almost  no  language  to  think  in,  his  only  means  of  express¬ 
ing  his  wants  being  crude  natural  signs.  Such  being  the  case,  the  first 
duty  of  the  teacher  is  to  establish  communication  with  him  and  there¬ 
after,  during  his  whole  course  at  school,  more  than  in  any  other  kind 
of  educational  work,  to  make  language  the  end  of  training  and  other 
subjects  the  means  of  varying  language  teaching.  This  statement  is 
strictly  true  only  of  elementary  education,  but  then  the  majority  of 
deaf  pupils  do  not  advance  far  beyond  the  elementary  stage;  not 
because  they  cannot,  for  they  can,  but  because  so  very  much  time  is 
absorbed  in  language  work  that  their  progress  in  other  things  is  slow ; 
then,  too,  parents  are  prone  to  call  their  boys  away  from  school  as 
soon  as  they  believe  these  can  help  sustain  the  family.  A  few  of  the 
brighter  and  more  ambitious  pupils  from  the  schools  take  the  course 
at  the  National  deaf-mute  college,  now  called  Gallaudet  college,  where 
they  have  "an  opportunity  to  secure  the  advantages  of  a  rigid  and 
thorough  course  of  intellectual  training  in  the  higher  walks  of  litera¬ 
ture  and  the  liberal  arts.”  Occasionally  we  hear  of  deaf  pupils  taking 
high  school  work  in  schools  with  hearing  pupils,  and  even  of  being 
graduated  from  colleges  of  the  hearing. 

The  course  of  training  at  American  schools  for  the  deaf  has  always 
been  practical.  Indeed,  industrial  training  is  almost  essential  for 
those  young  people  who  would  form  industrious  habits  and  facility  in 
the  use  of  tools  that  will  put  them  on  their  feet  when  they  enter  the 


478 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


world  of  labor ;  for  most  deaf  pupils  will  have  to  work  for  their  living. 
Their  educators  have  a  magnificent  incentive  in  the  knowledge  that 
the  trained  deaf  are  not  at  all  disqualified  from  earping  a  living  by 
simple  inability  to  hear.  In  their  schools  general  manual  training  is 
followed  with  a  pupil  until,  for  one  reason  or  another,  he  chooses  his 
trade  or  it  is  chosen  for  him.  The  general  equipment  for  trade  teach¬ 
ing  is  excellent.  Printing  is  an  extremely  useful  occupation  for  the 
deaf,  especially  in  the  acquisition  of  idiomatic  language ;  and  nearly 
every  institution  for  their  instruction  publishes  one  or  more  papers. 

Schools  for  the  Blind 

When  it  is  stated  that  prior  to  1830  the  blind  of  America  were  to 
be  found  "moping  in  hidden  corners  or  degraded  by  the  wayside,  or 
vegetating  in  almshouses,”  it  is  the  adult  blind  that  is  meant.  Still 
blind  children  were  occasionally  found  in  these  places,  though  it  could 
scarcely  be  said  that  they  were  vegetating,  as  could  be  said  of  the 
untrained  deaf  children.  Their  ability  to  hear  and  speak  does  not  cut 
off  the  blind  from  the  education  of  communion  with  friends  and  asso¬ 
ciates.  The  needs  of  the  blind,  then,  were  not  so  evident  or  so  early 
forced  upon  people’s  attention  as  were  those  of  the  deaf  and  dumb 
children.  Blind  children  were  less  often  seen  than  deaf  children,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  there  were  and  always  are  fewer  of  them.  This 
fact  was  not  then  realized.  The  British  census  of  1851  first  showed 
the  world  that  over  80  per  cent  of  the  blind  are  adults.  Our  schools 
for  the  blind  were  started,  first,  because  of  the  widespread  interest  in 
the  results  of  educating  the  young  deaf  and  dumb,  which  furnished 
inspiration  for  new  fields  of  educational  endeavor ;  secondly,  because 
the  country  was  coming  to  the  conviction  that  all  the  children  of  the 
state  should  receive  education  both  as  a  matter  of  public  policy  and 
as  a  private  right;  and  thirdly,  because  reports  of  what  had  been 
accomplished  abroad  in  schools  for  the  blind  were  being  promulgated 
in  our  land. 

By  1830  the  more  progressive  states  of  the  east  were  ready  to  give 
their  blind  children  school  training.  In  that  year  the  government  first 
included  in  the  national  census  the  deaf  and  dumb  and  the  blind.  The 
work  of  the  blind  was  to  begin  with  scientific  foreknowledge  as  to 
their  number. 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


479 


Private  ardor  to  begin  the  work  had  been  smouldering  for  several 
years,  when  in  1829  certain  gentlemen  in  Boston  obtained  the  in¬ 
corporation  of  the  "New  England  asylum  for  the  blind/’  This  was 
before  they  had  selected  either  the  pupils  or  a  teacher  for  them.  By 
a  most  fortunate  circumstance,  the  interest  and  services  were  obtained 
of  a  graduate  of  Brown  university,  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe,  who  after 
finishing  his  medical  studies  had  chivalrously  gone  to  the  aid  of  the 
Greeks.  This  gentleman  became  the  American  father  and  Cadmus 
of  the  blind.  He  went  at  once  to  Europe  to  study  methods  of  in¬ 
struction.  Upon  his  return,  in  1832,  the  school  was  opened  with  six 
pupils.  In  New  York  the  act  of  incorporation  of  the  New  York  in¬ 
stitution  for  the  blind  was  passed  in  1831;  but  funds  were  needed 
and  no  one  went  abroad  to  study  methods.  This  school  opened  in 
March,  1832,  antedating  by  a  few  months  the  school  at  Boston.  In 
the  very  same  year  a  German  teacher  of  the  blind,  a  Mr.  Friedlander, 
most  opportunely  came  to  Philadelphia,  in  the  hope  of  starting  a 
school  for  the  blind  there.  The  way  the  enterprise  was  put  through  is 
typical  of  many  other  beginnings  of  special  schools  in  America.  Hav¬ 
ing  trained  certain  blind  children  he  exhibited  their  accomplishments, 
first,  to  a  few  influential  people,  secondly,  before  a  large  audience 
among  whom  he  distributed  a  leaflet,  "Observations  on  the  instruction 
of  blind  persons.”  A  meeting  of  public-spirited  citizens  followed, 
funds  were  liberally  contributed,  fairs  held,  and  the  success  of  the 
cause  was  assured.  The  Pennsylvania  institution  for  the  instruction 
of  the  blind  was  opened  in  1833,  fully  ten  months  before  an  act  of 
incorporation  was  obtained. 

The  three  schools  at  Boston,  New  York,  and  Philadelphia  are  called 
the  pioneer  schools.  All  sprang  from  private  effort  and  private  funds. 
All  were  incorporated  as  private  institutions,  and  remain  so  to  this 
day.  Two  similar  institutions  for  the  blind  have  arisen  in  this  coun¬ 
try,  that  at  Baltimore  and  that  at  Pittsburg. 

The  origin  of  the  state  schools  differs  from  that  of  the  type  above 
given  only  in  that  classes  of  trained  pupils  from  the  earlier  schools 
were  exhibited  before  the  state  legislatures,  as  well  as  before  the 
people.  State  appropriations  followed  and  the  institutions  were  in¬ 
augurated  as  state  institutions.  The  new  schools  sprang  into  being 
with  astonishing  rapidity.  There  are  now  in  1899  forty  schools  for 
the  blind  in  the  United  States,  and  every  state  in  the  union  makes 


480 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


provision  for  its  blind  of  school  age  either  in  its  own  school  or  in  that 
of  a  neighboring  state. 

In  our  sparsely-settled  country,  especially  west  of  the  Alleghenies 
and  south  of  Maryland,  great  efforts  had  to  be  made  to  find  the 
children  and  still  greater  efforts  to  persuade  the  parents  to  send  them 
to  school ;  and  in  many  regions  similar  conditions  of  parental  igno¬ 
rance  exist  to-day.  In  certain  states  where  the  amount  of  the  public 
fund  seemed  to  preclude  a  special  grant  for  the  blind,  pupils  of  this 
class  were  brought  together  in  connection  with  a  school  for  the  deaf 
and  dumb,  forming  "dual  schools,”  as  they  are  called.  These  institu¬ 
tions  could  not  help  being  unfair  to  their  blind  contingent;  for  in 

nearly  every  such  case  the  blind  came  to  a  school  already  established 

\ 

as  a  school  for  the  deaf,  and  under  the  superintendence  of  a  man 
especially  interested  in  the  education  of  the  deaf ;  moreover,  the  num¬ 
ber  of  the  deaf  pupils  usually  far  exceeded  that  of  the  blind.  There 
are  still  a  few  of  these  dual  schools,  but  wherever  possible  they  have 
been  divided  into  two  distinct  institutions. 

In  northern  schools  the  colored  blind  are  educated  with  the  white ; 
in  southern  schools  it  is  best  for  the  colored  to  have  schools  of  their 
own.  Both  the  whites  and  they  prefer  this  arrangement.  The  first 
school  for  the  colored  blind  was  opened  in  North  Carolina  in  1869. 

All  the  institutions  for  the  blind  were  in  their  very  inception  schools. 
The  pioneer  schools  imported  literary  teachers  from  Paris  and  handi¬ 
craft  teachers  from  Edinburg.  At  first  only  the  brighter  class  of 
pupils  came  under  instruction.  Teaching  them  was  easy.  They  pro¬ 
gressed  with  amazing  strides ;  all  was  enthusiasm ;  exhibitions  were 
called  for  and  widely  given  (Dr.  Howe’s  pupils  gave  exhibitions  in 
seventeen  states)  ;  large  editions  of  the  various  annual  reports  were 
exhausted.  Soon,  however,  less  bright  pupils  came  to  be  admitted ; 
then  the  curriculum  of  studies  began  to  sober  down  to  the  practical 
and  comprehensive  one  prevailing  to-day.  Whatever  occupation  the 
boy  or  girl  expects  to  follow  after  leaving  school,  it  is  assumed  he 
will  follow  it  better  and  thus  live  more  happily  and  worthily  if  he  has 
a  general  education.  When,  as  was  formerly  the  case,  the  period  or 
term  of  schooling- allowed  pupils  was  shorter  than  it  is  now,  they  were 
not  admitted  before  the  age  of  eight  or  nine.  Now  that  kindergarten 
departments  have  been  universally  added  to  the  schools,  the  pupils 
are  urged  to  enter  at  an  early  age ;  because  experience  has  shown  that 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


481 


at  home  these  little  blind  folks  are  coddled  rather  than  trained,  so 
much  so  in  fact  that  by  the  time  many  of  them  come  to  school  their 
natural  growth  of  body  and  mind  has  been  so  interfered  with  by 
inaction,  that  all  the  efforts  of  the  schools  cannot  make  up  for  lost 
time  and  opportunity.  The  principle  of  periodicity  of  growth  has 
now  come  to  be  understood  and  the  importance  of  applying  the  proper 
stimulus  at  the  period  most  sensitive  to  it,  comprehended.  Children 
with  good  sight  and  hearing  have  got  along  without  kindergarten 
training,  and  so  have  blind  children,  but  of  all  the  useful  means  of 
reaching  and  developing  the  average  blind  child  none  is  so  effective 
as  the  properly-conducted  kindergarten.  It  is  not  easy  to  overesti¬ 
mate  the  importance  of  hearing  as  giving  the  child  language  and  all 
that  this  means,  song  and  the  joy  it  brings  and  the  deep  feeling  it 
inspires.  The  practical  knowledge  of  things  comes  to  the  blind 
through  the  hand,  their  fingers  being  veritable  projections  of  their 
brains.  Thus  must  their  hands  not  only  be  trained  to  sensitiveness  of 
touch  but  to  be  strong  and  supple,  so  that  they  may,  indeed,  be  dex¬ 
terous  ;  for  as  their  hands  are  so  are  their  brains.  The  kindergarten 
cultivates  ear  and  heart  and  hand  and  brain  as  nothing  else  does. 
Even  color  is  not  wholly  omitted  in  kindergartens  for  the  blind.  Many 
see  colors,  and  those  who  do  not  love  to  talk  about  them  and  cer¬ 
tainly  derive  some  indirect  value  from  considering  them.  Kinder¬ 
gartens  for  the  blind  may  be  true  kindergartens  in  every  sense  of  the 
word.  A  kindergartner  of  fully-sensed  children  would  miss  here  only 
the  brightness  coming  from  the  untrammeled  ability  to  run  and  play 
and  observe  all  that  sight  brings  into  view,  the  quick  response  of  "I 
know,”  "I  have  seen  this,”  and  "I  have  been  there.”  But,  then,  kin¬ 
dergartens  for  the  blind  have  as  their  end  and  aim  this  very  arous¬ 
ing  of  the  children  and  the  putting  of  them  in  touch  with  their 
surroundings. 

Blind  children  with  kindergarten  training  are  more  susceptible  to 
instruction  than  those  without  it.  Above  this  department  the  course 
of  studies  in  American  schools  requires  from  seven  to  eight  years, 
which  means  a  primary,  a  grammar,  and  a  high  school  education,  or 
instruction  in  object  lessons,  reading,  writing,  spelling,  grammar,  com¬ 
position,  arithmetic,  history,  physiology,  botany,  zoology,  geology, 
physics,  algebra,  geometry,  civics,  English  literature,  typewriting,  and 
sometimes  Latin  and  modern  languages.  Not  a  few  pupils  have  fitted 


482 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


for  college  where  they  took  the  regular  course  with  the  seeing  students, 
and  from  which  they  were  graduated  usually  with  distinction.  For¬ 
merly  much  of  the  teaching  was  oral,  which,  in  many  cases,  was  apt 
to  be  more  pleasant  than  profitable  to  the  pupil.  Since  the  general 
introduction  of  the  embossed  text  book  and  tangible  writing,  the  pupil 
has  been  forced  to  depend  more  and  more  upon  himself,  obviously 
with  better  results.  In  fact,  the  work  has  been  growing  more  and 
more  practical.  The  methods  of  teaching  the  blind  correspond  in 
general  to  those  of  teaching  other  hearing  children.  The  common 
appliances  have  but  to  be  raised  and  enlarged  as  in  maps  and  dia¬ 
grams,  or  simply  made  tangible,  which  may  be  done,  for  example,  by 
notching  an  ordinary  ruler  so  that  the  graduations  can  be  felt.  A  suc¬ 
cessful  teacher  of  the  seeing  readily  adapts  herself  to  the  instruction 
of  the  blind.  She  learns  to  write  their  punctographic  systems  and  to 
read  them  with  the  eye. 

Industrial  training  has  been  an  integral  part  of  the  school  course 
from  the  beginning.  Recently  educational  manual  training  has  been 
generally  introduced  as  preliminary  to  the  trades.  Sloyd  has  been 
found  especially  adapted  to  the  blind.  The  handicrafts — chair- 
caning,  hammock-making,  broom-making,  carpet-weaving,  and  a  few 
others,  alone  remain  of  all  the  many  trades  taught  at  one  time  or 
another  in  our  schools.  Manual  occupations  of  some  kind  will  always 
be  taught,  even  were  it  evident  that  none  of  them  would  be  followed 
by  the  blind  as  trades ;  for  it  is  by  doing  and  making  that  the  blind 
especially  learn  best.  Then,  it  is  essential  that  they  be  kept  occupied. 
They  are  happier  so  and  far  better  off.  In  the  past,  before  the  intro¬ 
duction  of  such  varieties  of  labor-saving  machinery  as  the  last  half 
century  has  seen,  many  of  the  discharged  pupils  followed  some  man¬ 
ual  trade  and  succeeded  in  subsisting  by  it.  To-day  this  is  less  and 
less  possible.  The  mind  itself  of  the  blind  is  least  trammeled  by  the 
lack  of  sight ;  hence  some  pursuit  where  intelligence  is  the  chief  factor 
would  seem  to  be  best  adapted  to  his  condition. 

Music,  of  course,  opens  up  his  most  delightful  field.  It  is  said  that 
all  the  force  of  the  superintendents  of  the  early  schools  was  required 
to  prevent  the  institutions  from  becoming  mere  conservatories  of 
music.  To-day  only  those  pupils  pursue  music  in  regular  course  who 
have  talent  for  it;  but  even  those  are  not  allowed  to  neglect  other 
studies  for  it.  It  is  the  experience  of  the  American  schools  as  of  the 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUTISM 


483 


European,  that  the  profession  of  music  offers  to  the  educated  and 
trained  musician  who  is  blind,  a  field  in  which  he  can  work  his  way 
with  least  hindrance  from  his  lack  of  sight,  and  many  are  they  who 
have  found  in  it  a  means  of  livelihood  for  themselves  and  their 
families.  A  few  in  nearly  every  school  fit  themselves  to  be  tuners 
of  pianos. 

The  importance  of  physical  training  was  early  recognized ;  for  the 
blind  have  less  vitality  and  more  feeble  constitutions  than  the  seeing ; 
besides,  those  of  our  pupils  who  most  need  exercise,  are  least  apt  to 
seek  it  of  their  own  accord.  At  first  the  schools  had  no  gymnasiums ; 
of  late  years  such  have  been  pretty  generally  added,  and  systematic 
physical  exercise  is  carried  out. 

The  American  schools  for  the  blind  were  founded  upon  embossed 
books.  Dr.  Howe  states  somewhere  that  the  simple  reading  from 
embossed  print  did  more  to  establish  the  schools  in  the  country  than 
any  other  one  thing.  Extraordinary  pains  were  taken  by  Dr.  Howe 
and  his  assistants  to  perfect  a  system  which  should  be  at  once  readily 
tangible  to  the  fingers  of  the  blind  and  legible  to  the  eyes  of  their 
friends.  The  result  was  the  small  lower  case  letter  of  Dr.  Howe,  the 
Boston  line  print,  as  it  is  often  called.  To  this  the  jury  gave  prefer¬ 
ence  before  all  other  embossed  systems  exhibited  at  the  great  exhibi¬ 
tion  of  the  industry  of  all  nations,  in  London,  in  1852.  Backed  by 
such  indorsement  and  all  the  authority  of  Dr.  Howe  the  system  was 
rapidly  adopted  into  the  American  schools.  It  was  then  the  theory 
that  the  blind  would  be  further  isolated  from  their  friends  if  their 
alphabets  were  dissimilar.  The  blind  of  themselves  had  devised  a 
writable  system — arbitrary  and  composed  of  dots  or  points — one 
which  they  could  both  read  and  write.  But  the  early  superintendents 
would  not  countenance  it.  However,  many  of  the  blind  failed  to  read 
the  line  letter  system ;  because  to  read  it  requires  extreme  nicety  of 
touch,  which  all  the  blind  by  no  means  have.  Characters  composed 
of  points  not  of  lines  are  scientifically  adapted  to  touch  reading.  In 
the  33rd  report  of  the  New  York  institution,  Supt.  Wm.  B.  Wait  wrote : 

Now,  which  is  the  more  important,  that  all  the  young  blind  should  be  able 
to  read,  thus  being  made,  in  fact,  like  the  seeing,  or  that  they  should  be 
taught  an  alphabet  which  in  some  sort  resembles  that  used  by  the  seeing, 
but  by  doing  which  only  34  per  cent  of  them  will  ever  be  able  to  read  with 
any  pleasure  or  profit  ? 


484 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


This  attitude  of  the  New  York  school  was  the  outcome  of  statistics 
gathered  from  seven  institutions,  in  which  664  pupils  were  involved, 
and  of  experiments  made  by  Mr.  Wait  with  his  own  pupils,  using  a 
system  scientifically  devised  by  him,  composed  of  points  in  arbitrary 
combination.  This  was  in  1868.  At  the  next  convention  of  the  Amer¬ 
ican  instructors  of  the  blind,  it  was  resolved  "That  the  New  York 
horizontal  point  alphabet  as  arranged  by  Mr.  Wait,  should  be  taught 
in  all  institutions  for  the  education  of  the  blind.”  Not  long  after¬ 
wards  a  national  printing  house  was  subsidized,  from  which  the  schools 
obtained  free  books,  both  in  the  point  and  in  the  line  systems.  In  a 
very  few  years  the  point  books  were  in  increasing  demand,  and  to-day 
most  of  the  schools  prefer  them  to  those  in  the  line  print. 

The  acceptance  of  the  point  was  due  to  several  things, —  first  of 
all,  to  its  writability  and  superior  tangibility,  and  secondly,  to  the 
extraordinary  energy  of  a  few  of  its  advocates.  The  old  world  was  a 
long  time  accepting  a  writable  point  system.  That  of  Louis  Braille, 
devised  in  1829,  though  much  used  by  individuals,  was  not  officially 
adopted  into  the  Paris  school  where  it  originated  until  1854.  In  con¬ 
trast,  America  devised,  printed,  spread,  and  resolved  to  accept  its 
writable  system  in  less  than  one-half  the  time.  The  benefits  of  a 
tangible  writable  system  are  vast.  It  puts  the  blind  more  nearly  on  a 
par  with  the  seeing,  particularly  as  pupils  in  school.  Its  adoption 
here,  next  to  that  of  tangible  printing,  makes  obtainable  the  ideal  of 
American  schools  for  the  blind. 

Every  tangible  system  has  its  defects.  French  "braille”  as  adopted 
into  England  has  antiquated  abbreviations  and  contractions  for  the 
use  of  adults ;  and  is  involved  with  rules  allowing  much  bad  use,  like 
the  omission  of  all  capitals.  The  New  York  point  as  printed  also  laid 
itself  open  to  much  criticism  as  to  "good  use.”  The  American  braille, 
the  latest  system,  combining  the  best  features  of  French  braille  and 
of  New  York  point,  was  devised  by  a  blind  teacher  of  the  Perkins 
institution.  It  takes  full  account  of  "good  use,”  and  those  who  use 
the  system  deem  it  very  satisfactory.  In  1892,  when  the  American 
braille  system  was  adopted  into  several  schools,  a  typewriter  for 
writing  braille  was  invented,  and  this  was  followed  by  the  invention 
of  another  machine  for  embossing  braille  directly  on  plates  of  thin 
brass  from  which  any  number  of  duplicates  could  be  struck  off  on 


BLINDNESS  AND  DEAF-MUT1SM 


485 


paper.1  Here  was  a  means  of  creating  a  new  library  at  once.  But 
the  chief  value  of  the  invention  lay  in  the  fact  that  as  the  machine 
was  simple  and  inexpensive  and  could  be  operated  if  necessary  by  a 
blind  man,  any  institution  could  have  a  printing  office  of  its  own. 
And  several  schools  immediately  established  such  offices  from  which 
they  issued  at  once  whatever  their  school  classes  demanded.  By  co¬ 
operating  in  the  selection  of  the  books  to  be  embossed  these  schools 
have  created  in  the  space  of  seven  years  a  library  of  books  in  Ameri¬ 
can  braille  than  which  there  is  no  superior  in  any  system  in  any 
country,  and  they  have  added  an  immense  amount  of  music  in  the 
braille  music  notation,  which  is  the  same  all  over  the  world.  A  type¬ 
writer,  and  a  machine  for  embossing  brass  plates  in  the  New  York 
point  system,  have  also  appeared. 

Excellent  embossed  libraries  exist  in  all  three  of  the  systems.  Books 
in  all  three  may  be  obtained  from  the  National  printing  house  for  the 
blind  at  Louisville,  Ky.,  where  many  of  the  plates  have  been  made 
and  where  most  of  them  are  kept.  This  printing  house  was  subsidized 
by  congress  in  1873,  and  since  that  time  has  spent  $10,000  annually 
in  the  production  of  books  in  the  various  systems,  music  scores  in  the 
New  York  point  notation,  and  tangible  apparatus,  each  school  order¬ 
ing  from  the  published  list,  books,  etc.,  to  the  value  of  its  quota  or 
part  proportional  to  the  number  of  its  pupils.  The  printing  office  of 
the  Perkins  institution  at  Boston  is  the  largest  private  enterprise  of 
its  kind  in  the  world.  It  has  been  running  almost  continuously  since 
1834,  and  has  put  forth  a  splendid  list  of  books  in  the  Boston  line  print. 

The  school  instruction  of  the  blind  is  comparatively  an  easy  matter. 
The  work  is  less  of  a  science  than  the  more  difficult  task  of  instructing 
the  deaf  and  dumb.  But  if  we  consider  the  results,  it  must  be  ad¬ 
mitted  that  it  is  far  easier  to  fit  the  intelligent  deaf  to  be  self- 
supporting  than  it  is  to  fit  the  blind  to  be  so.  The  world  of  practical 
affairs  is  the  world  of  light ;  and  if  the  blind  succeed  in  that  world  it 
is  certainly  to  their  credit.  And  yet  we  expect  them  to  succeed  in  it ; 
and  having  given  them  the  best  preparation  we  can  devise,  we  find 
that  many  do  succeed,  some  brilliantly. 

1For  these  inventions,  which  have  been  of  the  greatest  recent  service  to  the 
education  of  the  blind,  the  work  is  indebted  to  Mr.  Frank  H.  Hall,  superintendent 
of  the  Illinois  school. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


DEFORMITY:  CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 

64.  Extent,  Causes,  and  Conditions  of  Deformity1 

The  most  practicable  definition  which  we  have  discovered  is  that 
employed  by  the  education  committee  of  Birmingham,  England,  whose 
special  sub-committee  of  inquiry  concerning  physically  defective  adults 
and  children  took  a  complete  census  of  the  cripples  in  Birmingham  in 
1 91 1.  For  the  purpose  of  this  census  a  cripple  was  defined  as:  "A 
person  whose  (muscular)  movements  are  so  far  restricted  by  accident 
or  disease  as  to  affect  his  capacity  for  self-support.” 


Causes  of  Physical  Disability  of  721  Crippled  Children. 
Birmingham,  England,  1911 


Cripples 

Number 

Per  Cent 

Tubercular  disease . 

285 

39-5 

Infantile  paralysis . 

175 

24-3 

Rickets . 

73 

10. 1 

Congenital  deformity . 

71 

9.8 

Apoplexy . 

33 

4.6 

Birth  palsy . 

25 

3.5 

Accident . 

25 

3-5 

Scoliosis . 

13 

1.8 

Scattering . 

21 

2.9 

Total . 

721 

100.0 

'  Census  of  cripples  in  Birmingham,  England.  No  comprehensive 
census  of  crippled  children  has  been  taken  in  any  state  or  community 
in  the  United  States.  The  one  attempt  to  secure  a  complete  and 

aBy  Edith  Reeves.  Adapted  from  Care  and  Education  of  Crippled  Children 
in  the  United  States,  pp.  iq,  21,  67-69,  88-90.  Copyright,  1914,  by  the  Russell 
Sage  Foundation,  New  York. 


486 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


487 


scientifically  analyzed  census  of  the  cripples  of  a  community,  not  only 
from  hospital  records  but  from  many  other  sources,  including  school 
records  and  those  of  many  charitable  organizations,  is  the  census  of 
cripples  in  Birmingham,  England,1  already  mentioned.2  ...  In  this 
city  of  500,000  people  were  found  1001  cripples  over  sixteen  years  of 
age  and  1006  under  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  report  of  this  census 
printed  in  October,  1911,  is  worthy  of  study  by  any  city  in  America 
where  even  a  rough  estimate  of  the  number  of  cripples  is  to  be  made. 
The  cripples  over  sixteen  and  under  sixteen,  respectively,  were  divided 
by  the  special  committee  of  inquiry,  which  included  a  number  of  sur¬ 
geons  :  first,  according  to  the  medical  or  other  causes  of  their  physical 
difficulties,  then  according  to  their  ability  to  work.  As  already  stated, 
.  .  .  a  cripple  was  defined  as:  "A  person  whose  (muscular)  move¬ 
ments  are  so  far  restricted  by  accident  or  disease  as  to  affect  his  capac¬ 
ity  for  self-support.”  The  working  ability  of  the  1001  cripples  sixteen 
years  of  age  or  more  is  shown  by  the  following  table : 


Working  Ability  of  iooi  Cripples  16  Years  of  Age  or  More. 

Birmingham,  England,  1911 


Status 

Cripples 

Number 

Per  Cent 

Able  to  go  to  work  under  ordinary  conditions . 

Able  to  attend  a  central  workshop . 

Able  to  do  remunerative  work  at  home . 

Unable  to  do  any  remunerative  work . 

214 

145 

III 

531 

21.4 

14-5 

1 1. 1 

53-o 

Total . 

1,001 

100.0 

The  following  table  shows  the  measure  of  self-support  attained  by 
cripples  sixteen  years  of  age  or  more : 

1  Report  of  a  Special  Sub-committee  of  Inquiry  Concerning  Physically  Defec¬ 
tive  Adults  and  Children  to  the  City  of  Birmingham  Education  Committee, 
1911. 

2 For  later  censuses  see  infra ,  Titles  66  and  67.  See  also  the  files  of  the  American 
Journal  of  Care  for  Cripples ,  the  Reports  and  Bulletins  of  the  Federal  Board  of 
Vocational  Education  and  the  Publications  of  the  Red  Cross  Institute  for  Crip¬ 
pled  and  Disabled  Men.  Several  valuable  bibliographies  have  been  compiled  by 
Douglas  C.  McMurtrie. —  Ed. 


488 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Self-Support  among  iooi  Cripples  16  Years  of  Age  or  More. 

Birmingham,  England,  1911 


Status 

Cripples 

Number 

Per  Cent 

Self-supporting . 

176 

17.6 

Not  self-supporting  but  did  not  require  help . 

Not  self-supporting  and  did  not  require  help  at  time  of  census, 

156 

15.6 

but  might  be  expected  to  need  it  later . 

144 

14.4 

Not  self-supporting  and  required  help . 

191 

I9-I 

Being  maintained  in  charitable  institutions . 

334 

33-3 

Total . 

1,001 

100.0 

The  following  table  indicates  the  working  capacity  of  697  cripples 
under  sixteen  years  of  age  who  were  not  at  work : 


Working  Ability  of  697  Cripples  under  16  Years  of  Age  who 


WERE  NOT  AT  WORK.  BIRMINGHAM,  ENGLAND,  I9II 

Status 

Cripples 

Number 

Per  Cent 

Likely  to  be  able  to  go  to  work  under  ordinary  conditions  . 

Likely  to  be  able  to  attend  a  central  workshop . 

Likely  to  be  able  to  do  remunerative  work  at  home  .... 
Likely  to  be  unable  to  do  any  remunerative  work  .... 
Future  capacity  could  not  be  estimated . 

230 

IQI 

42 

57 

177 

33 .0 
27.4 

6.0 

8.2 

25-4 

Total . 

697 

100.0 

The  printed  report  of  this  census  does  not  take  up  in  detail  degrees 
of  handicap  suffered  by  the  different  individuals,  how  many  are  unable 
to  stand,  unable  to  walk,  and  so  forth,  but  it  is  probable  that  the 
original  records  would  give  much  information  of  this  kind.  The  com¬ 
mittee  stated  as  its  conclusion  that  "all  the  cripples  in  the  city”  (at 
that  time)  "not  including  the  334  cases  in  the  workhouses  and  in¬ 
firmaries,  would  be  properly  provided  for”  (though  with  a  very  low 
estimate  of  the  amount  necessary  for  subsistence)  "if 
"(1)  A  Central  Workshop  were  provided  for  145; 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS  489 

"(2)  Work  were  provided  at  home  for  hi  (reasonable  remunera¬ 
tion  being  given  in  both  cases  for  work  done)  ; 

"  (3)  Financial  assistance  were  given  to  191  (the  amount  required 
varying  from  about  2  shillings  to  5  or  6  shillings  per  week).” 

A  second  report  of  this  committee,  dated  March  29,  1912,  recom¬ 
mends  that  the  first  need  be  met  by  the  establishment  of  a  workshop 
for  crippled  girls  where  they  may  learn  general  needlework,  em¬ 
broidery,  millinery,  and  tailoring,  and  receive  wages  for  their  work; 
also  a  central  workshop  for  cripples  of  both  sexes  doing  printing  and 
bookbinding. 

Conclusions.  This  study  reveals  the  wide  variety  of  pursuits  by 
which  many  of  the  institutions  are  preparing  cripples  to  earn  a  part 
or  all  of  their  own  support.  The  opinion  is  practically  unanimous  that 
needle  trades,  including  plain  sewing,  embroidery,  and  possibly  mil¬ 
linery,  solve  the  problem  of  wage-earning  for  large  numbers  of  crippled 
girls.  There  is  also  general  agreement  that  manual  training,  in  addi¬ 
tion  to  its  other  advantages,  helps  to  fit  crippled  boys,  as  well  as  other 
boys,  for  later  work  which  has  direct  vocational  bearing.  But  no  one 
occupation  or  group  of  occupations  is  regarded  as  so  universally  prac¬ 
ticable  for  crippled  boys  as  the  needle  trades  for  crippled  girls.  Only 
a  few  institutions  have  tried  any  one  of  the  other  occupations,  and 
there  is  much  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  respective  merits  of  the 
various  occupations  mentioned  in  this  chapter. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  to  advocate  here  the  general  acceptance  of 
any  one  of  the  occupations  under  discussion,  because,  first,  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  employment  in  given  occupations  as  to  health  conditions  of 
the  places  of  work,  hours,  wages,  and  prospects  of  advance  have  not 
been  studied  in  sufficient  detail,  even  for  industries  as  a  whole,  still 
less  for  a  specific  locality ;  second,  the  ability  of  different  types  of 
cripples  to  perform  the  various  kinds  of  tasks  imposed  by  the  given 
occupations  has  not  been  determined. 

It  is  obvious  that  studies  for  the  purpose  of  securing  information 
about  employment  conditions  are  needed  for  the  guidance  of  young 
people,  whether  they  are  crippled  or  not.  Such  studies  must  usually 
be  within  a  limited  range  of  territory,  sometimes  one  state,  often  onfy 
a  single  city,  in  order  to  have  the  fullest  value.  People  who  are  in¬ 
terested  in  the  vocational  training  and  guidance  of  crippled  children 
should  keep  closely  in  touch  with  every  movement  whose  aim  it  is  to 


490 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


secure  information  which  furnishes  a  basis  for  a  program  of  vocational 
training.  The  pamphlets  on  particular  kinds  of  employment  issued 
by  the  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  of  Boston  are 
excellent  examples  of  such  local  studies.  All  general  information  on 
the  subject  helps  to  simplify  the  choice  of  occupations  to  be  taught 
in  institutions  for  cripples  by  showing  the  relative  advantages  of  the 
different  occupations  for  any  young  person. 

For  cripples  who  remain  in  any  degree  handicapped,  we  need,  in 
addition,  knowledge  of  the  particular  kinds  of  work  for  which  each 
type  of  cripple  is  not  incapacitated  by  his  physical  defect.  Studies 
of  this  sort  made  in  different  localities  would  furnish  a  basis  of  gen¬ 
eralization  as  to  how  far  specific  handicaps  prove  a  hindrance  or  make 
work  possible  in  a  given  occupation.  Machine  work  in  a  factory 
should  be  undertaken  by  a  cripple  only  after  he  is  sure  that  neither 
the  ordinary  movements  he  must  perform,  nor  those  necessary  in 
case  of  accident,  require  physical  effort  of  which  he  is  not  capable. 
The  experience  of  cripples  graduated  from  special  schools,  and  the 
success  or  failure  of  individual  cripples  who  have  entered  different 
occupations  on  their  own  initiative  without  coming  from  an  institu¬ 
tion,  would,  if  gathered  together,  furnish  practical  information  as  to 
the  degree  to  which  certain  physical  defects  hinder  or  prevent  success 
in  different  kinds  of  work.1 

So  long  as  the  two  kinds  of  information  mentioned  are  not  available 
we  do  not  feel  prepared  to  recommend  specific  trades  as  better  than 
others  for  introduction  into  schools  for  cripples.  If  a  crippled  child 
has  sufficient  ability  and  if  necessary  funds  can  be  secured  for  his 
education  in  one  of  the  professions  where  the  work  is  chiefly  mental, 
his  problem  becomes  an  easy  one;  but  these  cases  are  rare.  For 
those  who  lack  special  mental  ability,  or  for  whom  it  is  not  possible 
to  secure  the  money  necessary  for  the  undertaking  of  long  years  of 
training,  the  best  opportunities  seem  to  be  in  the  direction  of  skilled 
handicrafts,  including  needle  trades  of  all  kinds,  commercial  engrav¬ 
ing,  mechanical  drawing,  the  making  of  articles  from  wood,  reed,  or 
metal,  printing,  cobbling,  manicuring,  and  photography. 

JA  list  of  graduates  from  the  Industrial  School  for  Crippled  and  Deformed 
Children  in  Boston,  with  the  wages  they  are  earning  and  the  cause  of  crippling 
in  each  case,  is  given  in  the  Appendix,  p.  235,  of  Reeves’s  Care  and  Education  of 
Crippled  Children  in  the  United  States. 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


491 


65.  Treatment  and  After-Care  for  Crippled  Children1 

The  term  "cripple”  includes  cases  with  such  widely  varying  needs 
that  the  institutions  for  cripples  are  of  several  different  types.  It  may 
be  said  in  general  that  the  crippled  children  who  are  maimed  or  de¬ 
formed  but  have  no  active  disease  need,  first,  operative  measures 
which  will  give  them  the  greatest  use  of  their  muscles  or  make  the 
deformed  limbs  as  nearly  straight  as  possible.  After  recovery  from 
operations  they  can  in  many  cases  return  to  their  homes,  if  they  go 
frequently  to  dispensaries  for  the  adjustment  of  braces  and  appliances. 
These  are  the  children  whom  it  often  seems  best  to  educate  through 
day  schools  for  cripples.  But  children  who  have  had  rickets  and  all 
those  with  bone  tuberculosis  need  to  live  for  a  considerable  time  where 
the  general  living  conditions  as  to  food,  air,  and  sun  are  the  best. 
These  children  form  the  largest  proportion  of  the  number  cared  for 
in  convalescent  hospitals,  usually  located  in  the  country. 

There  are  a  limited  number  of  incurable  cases  cared  for  perma¬ 
nently  in  asylum  homes.  Very  few  of  these  cases  were  hopelessly  de¬ 
formed  at  birth  or  otherwise  really  incurable;  most  of  the  so-called 
"incurables,”  except  a  small  proportion  of  badly  paralyzed  cases,  are 
children  who  were  not  treated  in  time  but  who,  if  they  had  been 
brought  to  a  surgeon’s  attention  when  their  difficulty  was  first  dis¬ 
covered,  could  have  been  greatly  benefited  and  ultimately  enabled  to 
care  for  themselves  to  such  an  extent  that  residence  in  an  institution 
would  not  have  been  necessary. 

That  the  family  home  is  the  best  place  for  well  children  is  now 
generally  recognized.  But  crippled  children  are  conceded  to  be  a 
special  class,  requiring  in  many  cases  surgical  operations  and  in  most 
cases  very  close  physical  supervision  for  months,  often  years.  It  is 
admitted  to  be  inevitable  that  operative  cases  must  go  to  the  hospital, 
but  there  is  not  general  agreement  as  to  what  should  be  done  with 
children  well  enough  to  leave  the  hospital  who  still  need  careful  atten¬ 
tion  for  a  long  period.  Some  surgeons  insist  that  parents  can  not  be 
trusted  to  adjust  a  child’s  brace  or  even  to  bring  him  to  the  dispensary 
at  the  time  ordered  by  the  doctor.  Some  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the 
treatment  of  joint  tuberculosis  through  a  dispensary  benefits  the 

1  By  Edith  Reeves.  From  Care  and  Education  of  Crippled  Children  in  the  United 
States,  pp.  21-25.  Copyright,  1914,  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  New  York. 


492 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


patient  very  little,  and  that  such  cases  must  always  be  looked  after  in 
convalescent  hospitals  with  the  constant  oversight  of  nurses  and  physi¬ 
cians.  Some  of  the  asylum  homes  covered  by  this  study  provide  a 
degree  of  medical  care  which  is  believed  to  be  greater  than  the  chil¬ 
dren  would  receive  if  they  were  in  family  homes.  Children  may  be 
placed  in  such  homes  from  the  same  motives  which  cause  others  to 
be  sent  to  convalescent  hospitals. 

Children  who  do  not  require  special  medical  attention  are  often 
placed  in  the  asylum  homes  chiefly  because  the  persons  interested  do 
not  know  what  else  to  do  with  them.  They  believe  that  places  can 
not  be  found  for  crippled  children  in  family  homes  because  they  are 
less  attractive  to  look  upon  than  other  children.  While  not  denying 
the  probable  truth  of  this  contention  in  some  cases,  we  must  state  our 
belief  that  a  considerable  number  of  the  children  not  requiring  medical 
care  who  are  now  in  asylum  homes  for  cripples  might  be  placed  with 
families.  The  New  York  Home  for  Destitute  Crippled  Children  was 
closed  as  an  asylum  home  for  crippled  children  in  the  spring  of  1913. 
The  building  is  now  used  by  the  Children’s  Aid  Society  of  New  York 
as  a  temporary  receiving  home  for  children  who  come  into  its  care. 
Of  the  20  crippled  children  in  the  home  at  the  time  of  the  change  in 
its  work  19,  or  all  but  one,  were  placed  by  agents  of  the  Children’s  Aid 
Society  within  one  month  in  homes  of  relatives.  Most  of  the  children 
will  probably  live  in  surroundings  much  less  attractive  than  those  fur¬ 
nished  by  the  home,  but  the  change  seems  a  commendable  one.  It 
would  be  well  if  other  asylum  homes  would  consider  carefully  the 
character  of  the  cases  they  admit  and  refuse  those  not  genuinely  in 
need  of  institutional  care.  This  would  leave  more  openings  for  chil¬ 
dren  who  need  such  care. 

Many  people  interested  in  work  for  crippled  children,  whose  view¬ 
point  is  not  strictly  technical,  object  to  sending  children  to  any  insti¬ 
tution  for  a  period  which  may  extend  to  five  or  six  years,  because 
children  who  live  so  long  in  an  institution  atmosphere  will  become 
"institutionalized.”  This  objection  is  somewhat  met  by  the  rejoinder 
that  crippled  children  in  family  homes  are  not  usually  treated  as  other 
members  of  the  family  are;  that  they  are  petted,  or  in  some  cases 
neglected  or  despised,  if  they  live  at  home.  When  this  is  true,  the 
child  has  certainly  never  known  the  normal  family  atmosphere ;  and 
it  is  possible  that  his  relation  to  other  people  would  be  more  natural 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


493 


in  an  institution  where  the  other  children  are  also  crippled  and  no 
one  receives  either  disproportionate  kindness  or  unkindness.  The 
psychological  question  as  to  whether  cripples  would  better  associate 
chiefly  with  other  cripples  or  in  part  with  normal  children  is  argued 
strongly  on  both  sides.  Some  would  keep  crippled  children  segregated 
so  that  they  may  not  be  too  sensitive  in  regard  to  their  disabilities  or 
hurt  by  seeing  sound  children  do  things  they  can  not  do.  Other  people 
believe  that  segregated  cripples  always  become  abnormal  in  their 
point  of  view ;  that  they  need  contact  with  others  who  associate  more 
actively  in  the  life  of  the  world. 

It  is  not  intended  to  give  in  this  handbook  final  answer  to  these 
difficult  questions.  It  is  our  conclusion  that  both  systems  of  organi¬ 
zation  in  the  care  of  convalescent  crippled  children  are  needed,  espe¬ 
cially  in  very  large  centers  of  population.  Some  children  should  be 
kept  in  convalescent  hospitals  or  homes,  preferably  in  the  country, 
throughout  their  period  of  convalescence.  Others  may  quite  safely 
live  at  home,  being  cared  for  physically  through  a  dispensary,  and 
may  attend  day  school  classes,  either  public  or  private.  Each  of  the 
larger  cities  in  America  should  have  day  school  classes  for  crippled 
children  who  are  disabled  but  not  diseased,  and  also  for  some  of  those 
who  are  still  diseased,  as  with  bone  tuberculosis,  but  who  have  fairly 
good  homes  and  parents  with  enough  intelligence  to  follow  the  in¬ 
structions  of  a  visiting  nurse. 

Four  sets  of  facts  must  be  clearly  comprehended  in  choosing  be¬ 
tween  these  alternatives  for. each  individual  child: 

First,  What  is  the  physical  condition  of  the  child  who  is  being 
considered?  The  nature  of  his  physical  difficulty  and  the  degree  to 
which  he  needs  supervision  by  surgeons  and  nurses  are  the  most  vital 
points.  On  this  question  the  surgeon’s  decision  must  be  taken  as 
final  and  it  seems  undeniable  that  a  great  number  of  children  with 
bone  tuberculosis  can  be  cured  as  rapidly  as  possible  only  with 
continuous  supervision  in  a  convalescent  hospital. 

Second,  What  kind  of  a  home  has  the  child,  and  what  kind  of  care 
will  he  receive  if  he  does  not  go  to  an  institution  ?  This  depends  upon 
housing  conditions,  the  sort  of  food  the  child  will  get  at  home,  and  the 
probable  intelligence  of  his  parents  in  carrying  out  the  doctor’s  orders 
about  fresh  air  and  other  conditions  necessary  for  the  child’s  health, 
as  well  as  upon  faithful  visits  to  the  dispensary. 


494 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


Third,  What  degree  of  physical  supervision  will  the  child  have  if 
he  remains  at  home  instead  of  going  to  an  institution  ?  The  existence 
of  an  efficient  system  of  visiting  nursing  in  connection  with  the  hos¬ 
pital  to  which  the  child  is  taken  is  the  necessary  prerequisite  for 
successful  dispensary  work.  When  there  are  visiting  nurses  many 
children  may  stay  at  home  who  would  otherwise  need  to  go  to  a 
convalescent  hospital. 

Fourth,  What  are  the  standards  of  the  institution  to  which  the 
child  may  be  sent?  Those  who  fear  that  residence  in  an  institution 
for  cripples  would  unfit  the  child  to  make  his  way  in  the  world  as  well 
as  if  he  stayed  in  a  family  home,  ought  to  consider  with  care  certain 
definite  points.  The  number  of  children  in  the  entire  institution  should 
be  learned;  if  there  is  a  cottage  system,  the  number  of  children  in 
each  cottage,  the  number  of  beds  in  each,  and  the  amount  of  space 
between  them ;  how  many  sit  at  each  table  in  the  dining  room  and 
whether  the  chairs,  dishes,  and  utensils  create  a  homelike  atmosphere ; 
whether  or  not  there  is  uniform  dress.  These  details  are  not  given  as 
absolute  criteria  as  to  the  quality  of  the  institution,  but  are  suggestive 
pointers.  The  vital  element  is  not  dependent  alone  or  chiefly  upon 
these  material  details,  for  it  is  the  personality  of  the  employes  which 
after  all  determines  the  elusive  thing  called  "atmosphere.”  Some  of 
the  hospitals  gave  the  visitor  an  impression  of  greater  homelikeness 
than  did  some  of  the  places  called  "homes.” 


66.  Survey  of  the  Cripples  of  Cleveland1 
Number  and  Ratio  of  Crippled  Persons 

The  number  of  cripples  of  all  ages  found  in  Cleveland,  in  an  enu¬ 
meration  by  a  house-to-house  canvass  extending  over  a  period  of  one 
year  from  October,  1915,  to  October,  1916,  was  4186.  As  the  esti¬ 
mated  population  of  Cleveland  for  1916  was  674,073,  this  gives  a 
ratio  of  about  six  cripples  to  each  1000  inhabitants. 

iFrom  The  Education  and  Occupations  of  Cripples,  Juvenile  and  Adult:  A 
Survey  of  All  the  Cripples  of  Cleveland ,  Ohio ,  in  1916 ,  under  the  Auspices  of  the 
Welfare  Federation  of  Cleveland ,  by  Lucy  Wright  and  Amy  M.  Hamburger. 
Publications  of  the  Red  Cross  Institute  for  Crippled  and  Disabled  Men,  Series  2, 
No.  3,  pp.  18-21. 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


495 


In  the  Massachusetts  state  census  of  1905  a  total  of  17,134  persons 
were  enumerated  as  lame,  maimed,  and  deformed.  This  gives  a  ratio 
for  the  three  groups  of  5.7  to  each  1000  of  the  population.  The  group 
maimed  was,  to  be  sure,  made  to  include  loss  of  one  eye  and  a  few 
other  defects  not  included  under  the  Cleveland  definition,  but  even  so, 
the  correspondence  of  the  two  ratios  is  interesting. 

In  matters  of  education  and  employment  the  essential  problems  of 
crippled  condition  and  of  the  individual  must  be  worked  out  on  the 
basis  of  what  the  cripple  has  to  offer  the  community  rather  than  on 
the  basis  of  economic  need  or  lack,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of 
equalizing  his  chances  for  taking  an  active  part  in  life.  These  prob¬ 
lems  can  best  be  reckoned  with  as  an  integral  part  of  our  general 
educational  and  industrial  life,  but  require  a  technical  knowledge  and 
experience  on  the  part  of  those  who  administer  the  work  if  the  chances 
of  individuals  are  to  be  effectively  safeguarded.  In  this  sense  educa¬ 
tional  and  industrial  needs  are  the  essential  points  of  interest  in  our 
study,  and  from  such  a  point  of  view  the  eight  principal  conclusions 
to  be  drawn  from  it  may  be  briefly  summarized  as  follows : 

1.  The  problem  of  the  crippled  population  is  first  of  all  a  problem  of 
child  welfare.  Although  adults  were  more  numerous  than  the  children 
— more  than  three  times  as  many — a  fourth  of  the  crippled  popula¬ 
tion  were  not  only  under  the  age  of  fifteen  at  the  time  of  survey,  but 
a  third  of  the  adult  cripples  became  disabled  while  under  the  age  of 
fifteen.  Thus  a  total  of  forty-nine  per  cent  of  the  whole  group  were 
disabled  in  childhood. 

2.  As  a  children’s  problem  it  is  essentially  a  medical-educational 
one.  The  nature  of  the  causes  and  the  form  of  the  crippled  condition, 
the  consequent  length  of  time  and  well-known  conditions  of  life  and 
treatment  needed  to  minimize  the  handicap  require  that  provision  for 
medical  and  educational  care  be  planned  in  close  relation  to  each  other. 

3.  The  varieties  of  muscular  and  skeletal  defects  are  so  many,  and 
crippled  persons,  like  normal  ones,  have  so  great  a  variety  of  aptitudes, 
that  no  single  or  simple  means  will  satisfactorily  provide  for  their 
vocational  preparation.  Their  needs  must,  therefore,  be  met  as  a  part 
of  a  general,  liberal  program  for  prevocational  education. 

4.  With  lively  appreciation  of  the  good  work  of  existing  agencies, 
it  must  still  be  said  that  special  provisions  for  the  care  of  crippled 
children  in  Cleveland  are  inadequate,  especially  in  their  equipment 


496 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


for  correlating  medical  and  educational  care  and  for  fitting  crippled 
children  for  working  life.  Therefore,  new  or  enlarged  means  of  meet¬ 
ing  this  need  should  be  provided. 

5.  The  problem  of  the  crippled  population  is  a  problem  of  adults 
in  working  life.  The  number  who  are  over  sixty  years  of  age  is  small, 
the  number  of  those  who  became  crippled  after  sixty  is  still  smaller. 
But  the  number  becoming  crippled  during  working  life  by  accident, 
especially  of  men,  is  large,  and  the  number  crippled  from  all  causes 
very  large. 

6.  Cripples  in  Cleveland,  under  heavy  physical  handicap,  in  direct 
competition  with  others,  and  without  special  favor  of  the  community, 
have  reached  and  held  remarkable  positions  of  economic  independence. 
Their  capacity,  occupations,  and  earnings  point  on  the  whole  to  varied 
and  normal  tendencies  of  life. 

7.  The  great  variety  of  forms  of  handicap  and  notable  difference 
in  aptitudes  and  experience  prior  to  becoming  crippled  point  to  the 
need  of  a  most  flexible  system  of  service  to  those  among  cripples  who 
cannot  make  their  way  unaided,  but  who  may  be  benefited  by  special 
plans  for  their  rehabilitation  and  re-education.  This  plan  may  well 
be  a  part  of  an  adequate  system  for  vocational  training  for  all  citizens. 

8.  The  increased  care  with  which,  under  existing  laws,  employers 
tend  to  avoid  the  added  risks  of  liability  in  employing  physically 
handicapped  labor,  place  the  handicapped,  however  competent  they 
may  be,  at  an  increasing  disadvantage  except  at  times  and  in  places 
where  other  labor  is  difficult  or  impossible  to  secure. 

These  general  conclusions  and  the  facts  in  detail  upon  which  they 
are  based  disclose  particularly  two  definite  directions  in  which  com¬ 
munity  effort  is  needed  in  order  to  equalize  chances  for  cripples : 

First,  adequate  provision  should  be  made  for  the  medical- 
educational  care  of  crippled  children. 

Second,  measures  should  be  planned  for  safeguarding  the  interests 
of  crippled  adults. 

To  carry  out  the  work  of  a  program  of  this  kind  a  central  bureau 
or  federation  is  recommended  that  represents  not  only  existing  agen¬ 
cies  especially  instituted  for  cripples  but  all  the  forces  touching  their 
lives  most  closely — medical,  educational,  industrial. 

One  important  question  underlying  any  conclusions  and  any  plans 
that  may  be  made  as  a  result  of  the  Survey  is  whether  there  are 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


497 

workers  suitably  equipped  for  the  lay  part  of  the  program,  especially 
for  work  with  adults. 

To  be  of  immediate  service  we  need  at  this  time  most  of  all  workers 
of  genuine  skill  in  securing  medical,  social,  and  industrial  estimates  of 
handicapped  individuals  in  season  to  be  of  service  to  them  and  to  the 
community.  We  need  workers  who  have  acquired  wisdom  enough  to 
lead  in  an  educational  campaign  that  will  benefit  all  cripples  alike 
in  times  of  peace  or  war  by  teaching  us  when  to  remember  and  when 
to  forget  that  a  man  has  a  physical  handicap.  To  classify  our  fellow- 
men  by  a  single  aspect  of  physical  disability  is  superficial  and  futile. 
If  the  Survey  drives  this  point  home  it  will  do  a  much-needed  service. 

67.  Economic  Consequences  of  Physical  Disability1 
A  Case  Study  of  Civilian  Cripples  in  New  York  City 

One  of  the  aims  of  the  investigation  was  to  find  what  light  the  story 
of  a  cripple  would  throw  upon  the  problem  of  industrial  readjustment. 
Had  he  been  re-employed  in  his  former  occupation,  or  had  he  found  a 
new  one  ?  If  still  out  of  work,  what  were  the  obstacles  to  his  employ¬ 
ment?  It  was  quite  cleai;  at  the  outset  that  the  infinite  variety  of 
experiences  encountered  would  make  it  impossible  to  classify,  tabu¬ 
late,  and  array  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  arrive  at  formulae  for  dealing 
with  cripples  in  which  the  only  variant  would  be  the  nature  of  the 
handicap.  The  stories  of  men  who  have  succeeded  in  spite  of  handi¬ 
caps,  and  of  those  who  have  not,  are  merely  suggestive  of  what  may 
be  attempted  for  others.  •  Each  case  for  readjustment  will  be  a  prob¬ 
lem  in  itself  in  which  a  man’s  education,  his  previous  industrial  ex¬ 
perience,  his  tastes  and  aptitudes,  the  nature  of  his  injury  and  other 
handicaps,  the  conditions  in  industry  in  general,  or  in  a  particular 
trade,  and  a  multitude  of  other  factors  will  affect  the  solution. 

There  are  evidences  that  there  is  a  feeling  of  obligation  on  the  part 
of  many  employers  to  take  back  upon  the  pay-roll  men  who  have  been 
injured  in  their  employ.  This  is  the  avowed  policy  of  several  firms, 
particularly  when  they  feel  that  the  men  have  been  fair  in  the  settle¬ 
ment  of  their  compensation.  How  far  the  return  of  an  injured  man 

1From  The  Economic  Consequences  of  Physical  Disability;  A  Case  Study  of 
Civilian  Cripples  in  New  York  City,  by  John  C.  Faries,  Ph.D.  Publications  of 
the  Red  Cross  Institute  for  Crippled  and  Disabled  Men,  Series  i,  No.  2. 


498 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


to  his  former  occupation  and  wage  is  due  to  consideration  on  the  part 
of  the  employer,  and  how  far  to  unimpaired  efficiency,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  say.  In  an  investigation  made  in  Cincinnati  the  claim  was 
made  by  employers  that  when  they  re-employed  their  injured  men  the 
"man  ceased  to  be  a  valuable  employee  after  he  became  aware  of  their 
moral  obligation  toward  him.  When  the  debt  was  reversed  and  em¬ 
ployment  was  given  to  a  man  for  whose  handicap  they  were  not 
responsible,  gratitude  and  the  dreaded  difficulty  of  obtaining  another 
position  often  made  such  employees  more  faithful.” 

Some  men  who  had  been  taken  back  by  their  former  employers 
expressed  some  fear  as  to  the  security  of  their  positions  and  thought 
they  would  be  discriminated  against.  It  would  seem  that  such  an 
uncertainty  ought  to  spur  a  man  to  demonstrate  his  ability  to  make 
good  in  spite  of  his  handicap.  Such  a  spur  might  easily  prove  to  be 
the  salvation  of  a  crippled  man. 

The  ninety-two  leg  cases  involved  the  largest  proportion  of  ampu¬ 
tations  and  the  largest  proportion  of  unemployment.  Fifty-seven 
were  idle  and  sixty-five  had  suffered  amputations.  Of  those  losing  a 
leg,  only  three  had  returned  to  work  for  their  former  employers,  as 
follows :  One  was  a  bill-poster  and  now  folds  paper  at  a  lower  wage ; 
one  was  an  upholsterer  and  with  the  aid  of  an  artificial  leg  is  back  at 
the  same  work  at  the  same  wages;  the  third,  who  lost  his  leg  while 
operating  a  wire-pulling  machine,  expected  to  be  re-employed  at  a 
different  operation,  but  probably  at  the  same  wages.  Nineteen  more 
of  those  losing  a  leg  had  found  employment  of  one  kind  or  another. 

Amputations  are  great  economic  levelers.  As  will  be  seen  by  the 
following  list  of  employments  before  and  after  amputations,  the 
skilled  electrician,  the  engineer,  the  baker,  are  all  reduced  to  the  level 
of  unskilled  labor : 


Hands 


Feet 


Before  After 

switchman  machinist’s  helper 

baker  peddling  pretzels 

machine  hand  studying 
baker  stableman 


Before  After 

garment  worker  unknown 

checker  timekeeper 

deck  hand  assistant  cook 

longshoreman  elevator  operator 

unknown 1  salesman 


1  Case  of  long  standing. 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


*499 


Arms  Legs  (Continued) 


Before 

After 

Before 

After 

engineer 

helper  in  storeroom 

teamster 

janitor  work 

machine  hand 

same 

butcher 

same 

machine  hand 

messenger  boy 

painter 

employing  painter 

driver 

watchman 

dental  mechanic 

same 

electrician 

watchman 

helper  on  wagon1 

peddles  gum 

machine  hand 

delivery  boy 

haberdasher 

jitney  ’bus 

ferry  hand1 

clerk 

machine  hand 

by  same  employer 

unknown1 

watchman 

auto  mechanic1 

repair  shop 

Legs 

brakeman 

storekeeper 

upholsterer 

same 

peddler 

same 

student 

clerk 

laborer 

same 

track  inspector1 

peddler 

bill-poster 

folder  of  paper 

coal  heaver1 

peddles  pencils 

baker 

tends  shop 

too  young1 

wireless  operator 

machinist 

candy  store 

too  young1 

newsboy 

student1 

cashier 

too  young1 

office  boy 

An  accident  may  destroy  at  one  blow  the  chance  to  exercise  that 
skill  which  is  slowly  acquired  and  which  serves  to  raise  a  man  above 
the  level  of  his  plodding  fellows.  A  mental  training  which  needs  the 
cunning  of  a  hand  for  its  expression  is  no  longer  an  economic  asset 
when  the  hand  is  gone,  unless  the  same  training  can  find  expression 
in  some  other  way.  This  means  that  if  the  man  is  to  continue  to  have 
the  benefit  of  his  old  knowledge  and  skill  either  something  capable  of 
giving  expression  to  his  skill  must  take  the  place  of  his  hand,  or  his 
knowledge  must  be  turned  to  account  in  some  other  way  than  by  the 
use  of  his  hand.  Mechanical  devices  to  take  the  place  of  a  hand  cannot 
be  more  than  clumsy  instruments  to  do  the  bidding  of  a  trained  mind.  In 
cases  where  the  hand  plays  a  lesser  part  in  translating  the  knowledge  of 
the  mind  into  action  some  prosthetic  device  may  be  a  useful  substitute. 

The  opinion  among  employers  who  were  interviewed  was  that  there 
were  many  occupations  that  might  be  filled  by  leg  cripples  who  had 
the  use  of  their  hands.  But  it  is  quite  essential  that  they  get  about 
with  some  facility.  Many  employers  refuse  to  hire  men  who  use 
crutches  but  do  not  object  to  men  with  artificial  limbs.  The  possession 
of  an  artificial  limb,  therefore,  seems  to  be  quite  essential  to  the 


1Case  of  long  standing. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


500 

employment  of  a  leg  cripple.  And  the  success  of  such  an  appliance 
depends  upon  a  healthy  stump,  which  in  turn  depends  upon  skilful 
surgery  and  general  physical  health. 

Apparent  Needs  of  Cases  Studied 

An  effort  was  made  in  each  case  to  appraise  the  man’s  needs.  Each 
investigator  was  asked  to  indicate  upon  a  card  which  was  filed  with 
the  case  story  what  he  thought  the  man  needed.  In  200  cases  no  need 
was  indicated,  inasmuch  as  the  man  seemed  to  have  made  the  readjust¬ 
ment  himself  or  needed  no  outside  assistance  in  making  it,  while  161 
were  thought  to  need  some  care. 


• 

0 

Z  e. 

S  W 

W 

w  3-» 

b 

Needing 

Training 

Hopeful  for 
Training 

1 

Needing 
Financial  Aid 

Needing 

Artificial  Limb 

Needing 

Employment 

Needing  Medi¬ 

cal  Treatment 

Upper  limb  injuries 

Fingers . 

41 

34 

18 

I 

19 

3 

Hands . 

22 

20 

II 

6 

13 

1 

Arms . 

20 

18 

10 

11 

10 

2 

Totals . 

83 

72 

I 

17 

42 

6 

Lower  limb  injuries 

Toes . 

3 

3 

1 

I 

Feet . 

13 

11 

4 

2 

3 

8 

Legs . 

59 

42 

16 

4 

21 

40 

3 

Totals . 

75 

56 

21 

6 

24 

49 

3 

Miscellaneous . 

3 

1 

1 

1 

• 

3 

Grand  T otals . 

161 

t 

129 

61 

8 

4i 

9i 

12 

The  number  of  men  who  were  thought  by  the  investigators  to  need 
either  re-education  for  their  old  trade,  or  training  for  a  new  occupa¬ 
tion,  was  129.  When  each  case  was  carefully  considered  in  the  light 
of  the  man’s  age,  his  education,  the  kind  of  work  he  had  done,  his 
attitude  towards  training,  his  knowledge  of  English,  etc.,  the  number 
was  narrowed  down  to  61  who  seemed  to  be  hopeful  candidates 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


50i 


for  such  training  as  the  Institute  might  be  equipped  to  do.  Probably 
not  all  of  these  could  or  would  enter  trade  classes,  but  from  this  num¬ 
ber  there  could  probably  be  selected  a  number  of  candidates  who 
would  afford  good  material  for  the  educational  experiment  proposed. 

Only  8  were  reported  as  needing  financial  relief  other  than  assist¬ 
ance  in  procuring  artificial  limbs.  There  were  41  who  seemed  to  need 
help  of  that  kind. 

Some  12  cases  seemed  to  require  medical  treatment  before  they 
would  be  fit  for  employment.  These  1 2  are  apart  from  a  considerable 
number  who  are  actually  under  treatment  at  the  present  time. 

The  number  needing  employment  was  91.  The  discrepancy  be¬ 
tween  this  number  and  the  number  reported  as  unemployed  (132) 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  some  3 1  were  undergoing  treatment  or  were,  at 
the  time,  physically  incapacitated  for  work.  Several  others  had  work 
in  view  or  would  undoubtedly  find  employment  themselves  and  a  few 
were  being  cared  for  in  one  way  or  another. 

These  91  men  present  an  immediate  problem  of  employment.  Many 
of  them  are  in  dire  need  of  the  returns  of  labor  and  many  of  them  are 
drifting  into  the  shoals  of  chronic  idleness  and  dependency.  Society 
must  either  provide  some  adequate  help  to  enable  them  to  become  self- 
supporting  or  ultimately  assume  the  burden  of  their  non-productive 
lives.  Some  of  them  can  be  directed  by  wise  advice  into  some  line  of 
activity  in  which  they  can  be  self-supporting ;  some  can  be  placed  in 
industry  without  special  training ;  help  in  securing  proper  artificial 
limbs  will  enable  some  to  obtain  work ;  some  can  be  trained  by  a  short 
vocational  course  to  become  wage-earners  again ;  some  should  be  ad¬ 
vised  to  seek  a  thorough  trade  training  in  some  approved  school.  The 
question  is  largely  one  of  a  study  of  the  individual  case  and  the  choice 
of  proper  means  for  his  industrial  rehabilitation. 

68.  Policy  in  Dealing  with  Disabled  Civilians1 

The  rehabilitation  for  self-support  of  disabled  soldiers  and  sailors 
has  attracted  wide  public  interest.  As  we  now  enter  upon  the  recon¬ 
struction  period  there  arises  the  question  as  to  how  far  the  policies 

1  By  Douglas  C.  McMurtrie,  Director  of  the  Red  Cross  Institute  for  Crippled 
and  Disabled  Men.  From  "Future  Policy  in  Dealing  with  Disabled  Civilians: 
Some  Conclusions  from  Experience,”  Medical  Record,  January  25,  1919.  Copy¬ 
right,  William  Wood  &  Company. 


502 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


developed  in  dealing  with  military  cripples  can  be  carried  over  for  the 
benefit  of  disabled  civilians.  Some  results  have  already  been  accom¬ 
plished  in  the  reeducation  of  industrial  cripples.  What  conclusions 
helpful  to  the  formation  of  future  state  or  national  policy  have 
been  drawn  ? 

The  first  conclusion  from  experience  is  that  rehabilitation  of  the 
disabled  does  not  consist  solely  in  vocational  education.  It  is  as 
largely  a  piece  of  social  work  as  it  is  educational.  The  chief  problem 
of  any  individual  disabled  man  is  a  character  problem.  The  chief 
necessity  is  to  inspire  his  ambition,  to  overcome  the  tendency  to 
inertia,  combat  the  psychological  conditions  which  inevitably  develop 
with  a  permanent  injury,  and  to  inspire  perseverance  to  continue  the 
effort  at  rehabilitation  when  once  begun. 

Successfully  to  deal  with  the  disabled  men  requires  a  special  under¬ 
standing  of  their  difficulties  and  extraordinary  patience  on  the  part  of 
directors,  advisers,  teachers,  or  social  workers.  The  average  disabled 
man,  and  particularly  the  civilian  cripple,  who  enters  on  a  course  of 
training,  is  likely  to  abandon  it  in  discouragement  at  the  end  of  the 
first  week.  The  average  teacher  who  deals  with  him  is  likely  to  be¬ 
come  disgusted  before  that  time  and  be  perfectly  willing  to  let  him 
abandon  the  course  in  the  sure  belief  that  the  man  is  not  worth 
bothering  about.  Yet  those  who  have  dealt  with  cripples  understand 
that  this  is  not  the  case,  and  that  with  the  rule  of  "try,  try  again” 
success  can  be  attained  in  the  great  majority  of  instances. 

Although  I  heartily  believe  in  the  restoration  of  a  disabled  man  to 
a  place  in  the  community  as  a  normal  being,  rather  than  committing 
him  to  a  special  colony  for  cripples,  I  am  convinced  that  the  most 
effective  agency  of  rehabilitation  is  a  special  school  for  the  physically 
handicapped.  In  such  a  school  every  facility  is  designed  for  disabled 
pupils  and  all  members  of  the  staff  are  originally  picked  for  aptitude 
in  dealing  with  cripples,  and  their  cumulative  experience  makes  them 
more  skilled  in  doing  so.  All  the  members  of  the  staff  of  the  Red 
Cross  Institute  testify  that  difficulties  they  considered  insuperable 
in  the  first  twenty  men  dealt  with  are  now  minimized  by  experience. 

A  special  school  for  the  disabled  can  have  its  own  social  service 
staff,  an  attending  physician  to  keep  watch  on  the  condition  of  the 
men  from  the  medical  or  surgical  viewpoint,  and  a  staff  of  teachers 
fully  familiar  with  the  special  requirements  of  the  work. 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


503 


Foreign  experience  in  rehabilitation  seems  to  point  most  clearly  to 
the  need  of  special  schools.  Practically  all  the  schools  of  reeducation 
in  France  have  been  organized  for  war  cripples.  In  Great  Britain, 
where  the  existing  facilities  of  technical  institutes  have  been  largely 
availed  of,  it  has  been  found  in  experience  necessary  to  start  special 
classes  or  sections  for  the  disabled,  as  the  men  did  not  mix  successfully 
with  the  regular  pupils.  Even  in  Canada,  with  the  exception  of  the 
interesting  placement  in  apprenticeship  which  has  been  done,  the  most 
successful  reeducation  has  been  in  schools  given  over  to  become  special 
institutions  for  disabled  soldiers. 

These  considerations  lead  me  to  believe  that  miscellaneous  intro¬ 
duction  of  disabled  persons  into  a  general  system  of  vocational  educa¬ 
tion  would  be  unwise,  but  that  the  establishment  of  special  institutions 
for  the  disabled  would  be  most  highly  desirable. 

The  mere  offer  of  vocational  rehabilitation  advantages  does  not  by 
any  means  solve  the  problem  of  the  idle  disabled  men,  and  it  cannot 
safely  be  assumed  that  any  considerable  number  of  injured  men  in  the 
United  States  will  take  advantage  of  rehabilitation  opportunity,  un¬ 
less  there  is  very  radical  readjustment  of  present  state  legislative 
provisions.  * 

Our  experience  at  the  Red  Cross  Institute  for  Crippled  and  Dis¬ 
abled  Men  in  New  York  very  clearly  illustrates  this  point.  For  over 
a  year  this  school  of  reeducation  has  been  in  operation.  It  offers  a 
reasonable  variety  of  subjects  of  instruction,  six  in  all :  mechanical 
drafting,  moving-picture  operating,  oxyacetylene  welding,  printing, 
the  making  of  artificial  limbs,  and  jewelry  work.  All  its  advantages 
are  free,  yet  it  has  at  the  present  time  less  than  forty  pupils. 

There  are  in  New  York  City,  however,  according  to  statistics,  thou¬ 
sands  upon  thousands  of  cripples  who  would  profit  by  reeducation. 
What  is  the  reason  they  do  not  take  advantage  of  the  opportunity  ? 

The  answer  is  found  in  the  other  influences  upon  the  disabled  man. 
The  most  potent  of  these  is  the  theory  and  practice  of  workmen’s 
compensation.  Practically  every  compensation  case  that  has  ever 
come  to  the  Red  Cross  Institute  has  come  upon  the  day  compensation 
expired.  For  one  year,  for  two  years,  or  for  four  years,  the  man  had 
existed  in  idleness,  drawing  compensation,  and  when  this  support  was 
cut  off  he  cast  about  and  became  interested  in  rehabilitation.  When 
we  come  to  examine  the  compensation  provisions  of  the  various  States 


504 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


we  find  that  they  encourage  idleness,  in  that  the  compensation  pay¬ 
ments  are  adversely  affected  by  any  improvement  in  earning  capacity. 

At  a  recent  conference  there  was  discussion  of  who  should  meet  the 
cost  of  rehabilitating  the  disabled  men.  As  far  as  the  industrial  crip¬ 
ple  is  concerned,  so  soon  as  the  movement  and  its  philosophy  shall 
have  gained  some  headway  there  should  be  no  cost  whatever.  Merely 
by  a  reapportionment  of  funds  already  provided,  effected  through  an 
understanding  of  the  possibilities  of  rehabilitation,  there  will  be  a  net 
cash  saving  rather  than  increase  in  expenditure.  I  can  more  clearly 
illustrate  the  possibility  of  this  by  statement  of  a  typical  case  than 
by  much  theoretical  elaboration.  A  worker  in  Massachusetts  was 
injured  by  a  fall  while  working  inside  a  submarine,  and  his  hand  be¬ 
came  permanently  crippled.  In  due  course  his  compensation  rate  was 
determined,  and  he  was  referred  to  the  insurance  carrier  to  be  paid 
ten  dollars  a  week  for  a  long  period,  with  a  maximum  total  payment 
of  four  thousand  dollars.  Since  the  disability  was  manifestly  per¬ 
manent  the  insurance  company  wrote  the  case  off  their  books  as  a 
four  thousand  dollar  loss  and  transferred  that  amount  to  reserve  to 
cover  the  weekly  payments.  After  the  compensation  had  been  paid 
for  nearly  a  year  a  new  official  of  the  insurance  company  began  look¬ 
ing  over  the  list  of  men  to  whom  the  company  was  paying  compen¬ 
sation.  His  attention  was  directed  to  the  man  in  question,  and  the 
latter  was  requested  to  call  at  the  office  of  the  company.  The  case  was, 
like  many  thousands  of  others,  susceptible  of  rehabilitation  for  self- 
support,  so  the  insurance  company  official  put  a  proposition  to  the 
man  in  very  frank  terms.  "I  believe  that  you  can  be  trained  to  earn 
a  good  living.  I  want  you  to  understand  very  clearly,  however,  that 
this  proposal  is  to  the  financial  advantage  of  the  company,  but  I  also 
believe  it  is  to  your  advantage  as  well.  A  total  income  of  ten  dollars 
a  week  is  not  very  attractive  to  you,  and  you  would  probably  rather 
return  to  work  at  a  good  wage  than  remain  idle.  If  you  will  consent, 
the  company  will  send  you  to  a  school  of  reeducation  and  see  if  we 
cannot  get  you  back  on  your  feet  in  good  shape.” 

The  injured  man  consented  to  the  proposal,  and  the  company  sent 
him  to  the  Red  Cross  Institute  in  New  York.  They  began  to  pay  him 
not  ten  dollars  a  week  as  required  by  law,  but  forty  dollars  a  week, 
twenty  to  him  in  New  York  and  twenty  to  his  wife  at  home.  The 
company  also  paid  liberally  his  traveling  expenses  in  both  directions. 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


505 

In  the  period  of  eight  weeks  he  was  reeducated  in  oxyacetylene  cutting 
and  welding  and  returned  home.  He  is  now  making  not  only  a 
satisfactory  wage,  but  twice  as  much  as  he  had  ever  earned  before  the 
accident  took  place. 

In  the  whole  transaction  every  party  at  interest  was  benefited.  The 
man  was  advantaged  in  that  his  general  living  standard  was  distinctly 
raised,  and  the  necessity  of  working  for  his  living  could  not  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  a  hardship.  The  company  paid  less  than  five  hundred  dol¬ 
lars  for  his  rehabilitation,  and  this  expense,  in  conjunction  with  the 
five  hundred  dollars  already  paid  in  weekly  compensation  during  the 
first  year  of  idleness,  made  a  total  for  the  case  of  one  thousand  dollars. 
They  were  thus  enabled  to  charge  three  thousand  dollars  of  profit  to 
the  account  of  profit  and  loss.  Had  the  course  of  training  been  earlier 
begun,  there  would  have  been  saved  five  hundred  dollars  more.  The 
community  was  infinitely  the  gainer  in  that  the  man,  formerly  an  un¬ 
productive  consumer,  became  a  useful  producer  instead.  The  com¬ 
munity  further  gained  in  the  elimination  of  the  disabled  man  from 
the  category  of  a  prospective  dependent,  because  while  compensation 
might  have  taken  care  of  him  in  a  very  insufficient  way  during  the 
period  the  payments  ran,  there  would  have  come  a  time  when  com¬ 
pensation  ceased,  and  then  he  would  have  been  in  a  desperate  eco¬ 
nomic  status  indeed — confirmed  in  habits  of  idleness,  untrained  for 
skilled  work,  and  without  any  source  of  support. 

It  is  perfectly  clear  that  if  State  compensation  authorities  will  alter 
their  practice  so  as  to  encourage  rehabilitation  rather  than  discourage 
it,  if  casualty  insurance  companies  will  see  the  path  of  true  economy 
(and  they  are  coming  to  this  at  the  present  time),  there  will  be  no 
cost  in  the  rehabilitation  of  the  industrial  cripple  but  rather  a  great 
economic  and  social  saving.  The  case  just  cited  throws  interesting 
light  on  the  question  raised  as  to  whether  future  legislation  should 
embrace  in  its  scope  accident  cripples  not  under  protection  of  work¬ 
men’s  compensation  laws,  congenital  cases,  and  disease  cripples.  If 
any  legislation  is  to  be  passed  these  classes  should  most  emphatically 
be  included  because  they  constitute  the  cripples  who  are  most  in  need 
of  assistance.  As  has  been  shown,  with  developments  which  can  con¬ 
fidently  be  expected  within  the  next  couple  of  years,  the  industrial 
cripple  will  not  be  in  much  need  of  financial  assistance.  It  is  the  other 
cripples  who  contribute  most  largely  to  dependency  and  who  involve 


506 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


the  greatest  community  expense.  Their  restoration  is  desirable  in  the 
extreme,  because  the  elimination  of  dependency  due  to  physical  handi¬ 
cap  will  lift  a  colossal  burden  from  the  agencies  of  philanthropic  relief. 

It  has  been  already  stated  that  rehabilitation  is  intimately  related 
to  workmen’s  compensation.  So  far  as  the  industrial  cripple  is  con¬ 
cerned  the  administration  of  rehabilitation  should  be  coincident  with 
that  of  compensation.  It  has  not  as  yet  been  possible  conservatively 
to  draw  definite  conclusions  regarding  the  exact  provisions  of  com¬ 
pensation  laws  which  should  be  altered.  It  seems  clear,  however,  that 
one  suggestion  can  come  from  the  experience  of  all  the  belligerent 
nations  in  providing  for  the  pensions  of  disabled  soldiers.  It  has  been 
evident  from  the  first  efforts  at  reeducation  that  pensions  .must  be 
paid  for  physical  injury  only  and  not  be  prejudiced  by  increase  of 
earning  capacity  and  subsequent  restoration  to  self-support.  Unless 
this  provision  is  made  it  is  almost  impossible  to  persuade  men  to 
undertake  reeducation.  A  man  does  not  like  to  lose  one  definite 
advantage,  even  though  there  is  a  greater  advantage  in  store.  All  the 
military  pensions,  therefore,  are  fixed,  and  a  man  may  earn  twice  as 
much  after  his  injury  as  before,  and  yet  his  pension  will  be  paid  to 
him,  just  the  same.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  learned  that  the  scale 
of  pensions  is  of  comparatively  little  importance  if  adequate  rehabili¬ 
tation  advantages  are  offered.  In  fact,  a  fairly  low  pension  scale  may 
be  a  means  of  character  building  and  encouragement,  whereas  an  ex¬ 
tremely  high  pension  scale  may  tend  to  demoralization  and  prove  an 
encouragement  to  idleness. 

It  is  possible  that  in  the  field  of  workmen’s  compensation  there  may 
be  a  small  statutory  award  for  specific  injury,  and  there  may  then 
be  extended  in  addition  opportunity  of  reeducation  at  the  expense  of 
the  State  fund  or  insurance  carrier.  If  an  earnest  attempt  at  rehabili¬ 
tation  is  made  by  the  man,  and  for  one  reason  or  another  he  fails, 
there  might  then  be  a  further  discretionary  award  by  the  State  com¬ 
pensation  authority  making  the  total  payment  as  great  or  preferably 
greater  than  called  for  by  the  present  scale.  At  any  rate,  the  rehabili¬ 
tation  and  compensation  of  industrial  cripples  are  so  intimately  related 
as  to  be  almost  impossible  of  administrative  division. 

In  rehabilitation  of  civilian  cripples  what  are  the  financial  cir¬ 
cumstances  involved  ?  It  is  my  belief  that  the  cost  of  rehabilitation 
will  average  between  two  hundred  and  three  hundred  dollars  per  case, 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


507 


but  this  is,  of  course,  highly  economical,  because  when  a  man  is 
rehabilitated  his  economic  problem  is  solved  for  good  and  he  is  no 
longer  a  charge  in  any  sense  of  the  word. 

The  expense  of  rehabilitation  will  be  apportioned  about  as  follows : 


Per  Cent 

Salaries  of  administrative  and  teaching  staff . 20 

Maintenance  of  pupils  during  training  $o 

Rent,  or  depreciation  and  interest  on  capital  investment  in 

building . 10 

Depreciation  and  interest  on  equipment . 10 

Supplies  and  material . 10 


You  will  note  that  maintenance  is  the  large  item.  If  you  take  the 
average  cripple  met  on  the  streets  and  offer  him  the  finest  course  of 
reeducation  in  the  world,  it  is  unlikely  he  will  be  able  to  take  advan¬ 
tage  of  the  opportunity.  Though  he  is  earning  seven  dollars  a  week, 
and  there  is  prospect  of  increasing  his  income  to  thirty  dollars  weekly, 
it  will  be  impossible  for  him  to  take  the  course  offered,  because  he  will 
starve  meanwhile.  This  was  one  of  the  first  lessons  learned  in  starting 
out  to  rehabilitate  disabled  civilians.  There  is  necessary  for  the  aver¬ 
age  case  some  form  of  living  allowance,  and  if  the  same  governmental 
principle  is  to  be  applied  to  the  crippled  civilian  as  is  now  applied  to 
the  disabled  soldier,  this  is  properly  a  charge  upon  the  rehabilitation 
organization.  For  the  industrial  cripple,  of  course,  this  maintenance 
may  come  out  of  compensation  reserves  if  intelligent  adjustment  of 
practice  and  legislation  is  made,  but  for  the  general  accident,  disease, 
or  congenital  cripple,  no  such  source  of  support  is  available.  Any 
provision  of  rehabilitation  would  be,  in  the  mind  of  the  public,  a 
failure  unless  maintenance  were  provided  for. 

In  the  table  just  presented  there  has  not  been  taken  into  account 
the  medical,  social  service,  and  follow-up  attention  which  should  like¬ 
wise  be  encouraged. 

Statistics  show  the  number  of  disabled  persons  to  be  very  great. 
Of  course,  a  very  large  proportion  of  these  men,  particularly  those 
with  any  character  or  initiative,  readjust  themselves  industrially  and 
get  back  in  the  work  of  the  world  in  such  a  way  that  their  employers 
hardly  think  of  them  as  cripples.  A  large  number  can  satisfactorily 
be  put  back  into  employment  through  provision  of  special  and 
expert  placement  facilities.  An  essential  link  in  the  rehabilitation 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


5°8 

program  is  the  provision  of  special  placement  bureaus  for  the  disabled. 
The  Red  Cross  Institute  in  New  York  has  operated  for  the  past  year 
such  a  bureau,  and  has  found  that  many  men  need  only  vocational 
guidance  and  intelligent  search  for  a  suitable  job  in  order  to  have 
their  problem  solved.  There  has  been  already  delegated  to  the  United 
States  Employment  Service  of  the  Department  of  Labor  a  vast  place¬ 
ment  enterprise.  This  service  should  be  encouraged  to  develop  in 
every  large  center  of  population  a  special  bureau  for  the  physically 
handicapped.  Such  placement  work  cannot  satisfactorily  be  done 
through  the  ordinary  public  employment  office,  but  when  done  care¬ 
fully  and  thoroughly  is  certainly  a  public  economy. 

69.  Rehabilitation  of  the  Injured  Worker1 

In  the  opinion  of  those  familiar  with  the  problems  involved  there 
are  five  stages  in  the  treatment  and  rehabilitation  of  persons  seriously 
injured  by  industrial  accident,  if  they  are  to  be  restored  to  industry 
as  self-supporting  and  self-directing  workers*  and  citizens.  No  sharp 
line  of  demarcation  can  be  drawn  between  these  successive  periods ; 
as,  for  example,  the  periods  of  surgical  treatment  and  convalescence 
and  mental  adjustment.  Yet  they  represent  well-recognized  stages 
in  care  and  treatment. 

I.  A  Period  of  Surgical  Treatment. 

II.  A  Period  of  Convalescence  and  Mental  Adjustment. 

III.  A  Period  of  Training. 

IV.  A  Period  of  Placement. 

V.  A  Period  of  Physical  Adjustment  to  Demands  of  Position. 

A  Period  of  Surgical  Treatment 

It  is  not  the  province  of  this  report  to  discuss  ways  and  means  of 
surgical  treatment,  but  rather  to  suggest  that  tremendous  strides  have 
been  made  in  recent  years  in  orthopedic  surgery  and  the  fitting  of 
artificial  limbs.  These  results  are  of  sufficient  importance  to  justify 
the  conclusion  that,  given  correct  surgical  attention  and  after- 
treatment,  only  a  small  portion  of  injured  workmen  cannot  be 
restored  to  industry. 

1From  "Special  Report  of  the  Board  of  Education  relative  to  Training  for  In¬ 
jured  Persons”  (pp.  20-24),  Frederick  P.  Fish,  Chairman.  Commonwealth  of 
Massachusetts,  House  of  Representatives,  Publication  No.  1733.  Boston,  1917. 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS 


509 


A  Period  of  Convalescence  and  Mental  Adjustment 

One  of  the  greatest  needs  at  this  stage  of  recovery  is  some  organized 
method,  both  as  to  material  and  as  to  persons  whose  task  it  shall  be, 
to  bring  the  information  already  available  regarding  possibilities  of 
training  and  future  work  to  the  convalescent  in  a  way  which  he  can 
understand. 


A  Period  of  Training  and  of  Placement 

The  maimed  man  frequently  has  difficulty  in  getting  employment 
because  of  the  unwillingness  of  employers  to  trouble  with  the  awk¬ 
wardness  and  lack  of  skill  exhibited  by  such  an  employee.  Given  a 
job,  he  frequently  has  difficulty  in  holding  it  because  of  the  lack  of 
patience  on  the  part  of  the  foreman  and  his  own  discouragement. 
Frequently  it  is  a  case  of  successively  getting  and  losing  several  jobs, 
all  of  which  tends  to  add  to  his  discouragement.  A  number  of  volun¬ 
teer  agencies  have  worked  on  the  problem  of  placement  and  have 
found  that  there  are  two  parts  in  their  work : 

1.  An  education  of  the  injured  workman,  to  give  him  courage  and  be¬ 
lief  that  he  can  perform  a  useful  wage-earning  service. 

2.  An  education  of  the  employer,  which  will  tend  to  make  him  willing  to 
put  up  with  the  necessarily  awkward  and  unskilled  performance  of  new  types 
of  work  until  the  injured  worker  has  become  adjusted  to  his  new  conditions. 

Establishing  a  sympathetic  and  helpful  contact  point  is  one  of  the 
most  important  parts  of  their  work.  It  is  also  necessary  to  follow  up 
the  injured  worker  for  the  purpose  of  tiding  him  over  periods  of 
discouragement  and  helping  him  to  keep  a  strong  faith  in  his  ability. 

Aside  from  the  surgical  treatment  and  compensation,  assistance  to 
the  injured  worker  outlined  above  is  now  rendered  only  by  volunteer 
agencies,  and  in  no  way  meets  State-wide  conditions.1 

1  There  are  a  variety  of  industries  in  which  there  are  operations  which  can  be 
profitably  performed  by  the  handicapped.  The  following  list  was  compiled  by 
Miss  Grace  S.  Harper  of  Boston  for  the  Canadian  Commission  on  Military  Hos¬ 
pitals  and  Convalescent  Homes:  Boot  and  shoe  industry;  stitching,  vamping,  but¬ 
tonhole  operating,  eyeletting,  tip  repairing,  etc.  These  processes  required  the  use 
of  one  limb  and  full  use  of  both  hands.  Watchmaking;  most  of  the  processes  in 
watchmaking  are  sedentary.  Telephone  operating.  Commercial  telegraphy.  Jew¬ 
elry  manufacture.  Machine  stitching  in  all  trades.  Printing  industry.  Monotyp¬ 
ing.  Linotyping.  Knitting  industry.  Leather  goods  manufacture.  Tailoring. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  DEFECTIVENESS 


5io 

A  Period  of  Physical  Adjustment  to  Demands  of  Position 

This  period  presents  the  problem  concerning  which  there  is  little 
helpful  experience  to  guide  in  formulating  plans  for  extensive  future 
development.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  many  employers  have  in 
the  past  undertaken  to  find  employment  for  people  injured  in  their 
employ.  In  most  instances  concerning  which  we  can  learn  the  subse¬ 
quent  employment  has  frequently  been  of  a  lower  grade  and  at  a 
lower  wage.  The  proposal  for  training  them  implies  the  possibility  of 
restoring  a  considerable  number  of  people  to  industry  at  a  wage  as 
nearly  as  possible  equal  to  that  earned  prior  to  injury.  It  is  under¬ 
stood  by  all  familiar  with  the  problem  that  it  may  be  necessary  for 
such  a  workman  to  be  provided  with  special  tools,  adaptations  of  tools, 
or  other  changes  in  physical  surroundings,  such  as  adjustable  stools, 
benches,  or  special  equipment  provided  for  his  work  or  which  he  may 
provide  for  himself.  It  is  probable  that  in  the  initial  stages  at  least 
his  output  would  be  considerably  below  that  of  the  person  not  suffer¬ 
ing  handicaps.  In  view  of  these  conditions  it  is  clear  that  attention 
must  be  given,  through  an  agency  provided  for  this  particular  purpose, 
to  securing  the  co-operation  of  a  large  number  of  employers  in  provid¬ 
ing  work  for  the  specially  trained,  handicapped  workmen,  whether 
or  not  they  may  have  been  injured  in  such  employment. 

Given  the  willing  employer,  there  is  a  further  need  of  willing  fore¬ 
men  and  a  co-operative  effort  in  the  workroom  itself.  We  may  an¬ 
ticipate  considerable  discouragement  on  the  part  of  the  worker  in 
readapting  himself  to  industrial  demands,  and  no  small  exercise  of 
will-power  to  overcome  discouragement  and  a  chronic  self-pity.  For 
these  reasons  the  services  of  specially  qualified  social  workers  are 
probably  necessary. 

The  Federal  Board  of  Vocational  Education1 

Cooperation  between  the  Federal  Government  and  the  States.  The 
Smith-Hughes  Act  provides  a  scheme  of  cooperation  between  the  Federal 
Government  and  the  States  for  the  promotion  of  vocational  education  in 
the  fields  of  agriculture,  trade,  home  economics,  and  industry. 

Under  this  act  the  Federal  Government  does  not  propose  to  undertake 
the  organization  and  immediate  direction  of  vocational  training  in  the 

1From  "A  Statement  of  Policies,”  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education, 
Bulletin  No.  1,  pp.  7,  9.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1917. 


I 


CRIPPLED  CHILDREN  AND  ADULTS  51 1 

States,  but  does  agree  to  make  from  year  to  year  substantial  financial  con¬ 
tribution  to  its  support.  It  undertakes  to  pay  over  to  the  States  annually 
certain  sums  of  money  and  to  cooperate  in  fostering  and  promoting  voca¬ 
tional  training  and  the  training  of  vocational  teachers.  The  grants  of 
Federal  money  are  conditional,  and  the  acceptance  of  these  grants  imposes 
upon  the  States  specific  obligations  to  expend  the  money  paid  over  to  them 
in  accordance  with  the  provisions  of  the  act. 

This  cooperation  of  the  States  with  the  Federal  Government  js  based 
upon  four  fundamental  ideas:  First,  that  vocational  education  being  es¬ 
sential  to  the  national  welfare,  it  is  a  function  of  the  National  Government 
to  stimulate  the  States  to  undertake  this  new  and  needed  form  of  service; 
second,  that  Federal  funds  are  necessary  in  order  to  equalize  the  burden 
of  carrying  on  the  work  among  the  States;  third,  that  since  the  Federal 
Government  is  vitally  interested  in  the  success  of  vocational  education,  it 
should,  so  to  speak,  purchase  a  degree  of  participation  in  this  work;  and, 
fourth,  that  only  by  creating  such  a  relationship  between  the  central  and  the 
local  Governments  can  proper  standards  of  educational  efficiency  be  set  up. 

The  guiding  principle  of  the  vocational  education  act — and  it  can  not 
be  too  strongly  emphasized  that  this  principle  applies  to  every  phase  of 
activity  under  that  act — is  that  the  education  to  be  furnished  must  be  under 
public  supervision  and  control,  and  designed  to  train  persons  for  useful 
employment,  whether  in  agriculture,  trade  and  industry,  or  home  economics. 

To  the  extent  that  it  is  subsidized  by  the  Federal  Government  under  the 
Smith-Hughes  Act,  vocational  training  must  be  vocational  training  for  the 
common,  wage-earning  employments.  It  may  be  given  to  boys  and  girls 
who,  having  selected  a  vocation,  desire  preparation  for  entering  it  as  trained 
wage  earners;  to  boys  and  girls  who,  having  already  taken  up  a  wage¬ 
earning  employment,  seek  greater  efficiency  in  that  employment;  or  to 
wage  earners  established  in  their  trade  or  occupation,  who  wish  through 
increase  in  their  efficiency  and  wage-earning  capacity  to  advance  to  positions 
of  responsibility.  No  academic  studies  can  be  supported  out  of  Smith- 
Hughes  money. 


PART  IV.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


CHAPTER  XIX 

% 

SURVEYS  OF  THE  CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF 

POVERTY 

70.  Poverty  in  East  London1 

The  area  dealt  with  is  composed  of  the  following  unions  of  parishes 
or  registration  districts,  containing  in  all  about  900,000  inhabitants : 


East  London  — 

Shoreditch . 124,000 

Bethnal  Green . 130,000 

Whitechapel . 76,000 

St.George’s-in-the  East . 49,000 

Stepney . 63,000 

Mile  End  Old  Town . 112,000 

Poplar . 169,000 

Hackney . 186,000 

Total . 909,000 


The  eight  classes  into  which  I  have  divided  these  people  are: 

A.  The  lowest  class  of  occasional  labourers,  loafers,  and 

B.  Casual  earnings — "very  poor.”  [semi-criminals. 

C.  Intermittent  earnings 

D.  Small  regular  earnings 

E.  Regular  standard  earnings — above  the  line  of  poverty. 

F.  Higher  class  labour. 

G.  Lower  middle  class. 

H.  Upper  middle  class. 

The  divisions  indicated  here  by  "poor”  and  "very  poor”  are  neces¬ 
sarily  arbitrary.  By  the  word  "poor”  I  mean  to  describe  those  who 
have  a  sufficiently  regular  though  bare  income,  such  as  185  to  21  s 
per  week  for  a  moderate  family,  and  by  "very  poor”  those  who  from 

1From  Life  and  Labour  of  the  People  in  London ,  by  Charles  Booth.  First 
Series:  Poverty,  Vol.  I,  East,  Central  and  South  London,  pp.  28-72.  Macmillan 
&  Co.,  Ltd.,  London,  1902. 


|  together  the  "poor.” 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


513 


any  cause  fall  much  below  this  standard.  The  "poor”  are  those  whose 
means  may  be  sufficient,  but  are  barely  sufficient,  for  decent  inde¬ 
pendent  life;  the  "very  poor”  those  whose  means  are  insufficient  for 
this  according  to  the  usual  standard  of  life  in  this  country.  My 
"poor”  may  be  described  as  living  under  a  struggle  to  obtain  the 
necessaries  of  life  and  make  both  ends  meet;  while  the  "very  poor” 
live  in  a  state  of  chronic  want.  It  may  be  their  own  fault  that  this 
is  so ;  that  is  another  question ;  my  first  business  is  simply  with  the 
numbers  who,  from  whatever  cause,  do  live  under  conditions  of  pov¬ 
erty  or  destitution. 

Before  proceeding  further  with  comparisons  of  one  district  with 
another,  I  will  describe  the  classes  and  their  manner  of  living  so  far 
as  it  is  known  to  me.  And  here  I  may  say  that  in  addition  to  the 
information  obtained  from  the  School  Board  visitors,  for  the  division 
of  the  population  into  the  eight  classes,  I  have  been  glad,  in  describing 
the  lives  of  these  people,  to  use  any  available  information,  and  have 
received  much  valuable  assistance  from  relieving  officers,  rent  col¬ 
lectors,  officers  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society,  and  others. 

Class  A.  The  lowest  class,  which  consists  of  some  occasional 
labourers,  street-sellers,  loafers,  criminals,  and  semi-criminals,  I  put 
at  11,000,  or  i|  per  cent  of  the  population,  but  this  is  no  more  than 
a  rough  estimate,  as  these  people  are  beyond  enumeration,  and  only 
a  small  proportion  of  them  are  on  the  School  Board  visitors’  books. 
The  numbers  given  in  my  tables  are  obtained  by  adding  in  an  esti¬ 
mated  number  from  the  inmates  of  common  lodging  houses,  and  from 
the  lowest  class  of  streets.  With  these  ought  to  be  counted  the  home¬ 
less  outcasts  who  on  any  given  night  take  shelter  where  they  can, 
and  so  may  be  supposed  to  be  in  part  outside  of  any  census.  Those 
I  have  attempted  to  count  consist  mostly  of  casual  labourers  of  low 
character,  and  their  families,  together  with  those  in  a  similar  way  of 
life  who  pick  up  a  living  without  labour  of  any  kind.  Their  life  is 
the  life  of  savages,  with  vicissitudes  of  extreme  hardship  and  occa¬ 
sional  excess.  Their  food  is  of  the  coarsest  description,  and  their 
only  luxury  is  drink.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  how  they  live ;  the  living 
is  picked  up,  and  what  is  got  is  frequently  shared ;  when  they  cannot 
find  3d  for  their  night’s  lodging,  unless  favourably  known  to  the 
deputy,  they  are  turned  out  at  night  into  the  street,  to  return  to  the 
common  kitchen  in  the  morning.  From  these  come  the  battered  fig- 


5i4 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


ures  who  slouch  through  the  streets,  and  play  the  beggar  or  the  bully, 
or  help  to  foul  the  record  of  the  unemployed ;  these  are  the  worst 
class  of  corner  men  who  hang  round  the  doors  of  public-houses,  the 
young  men  who  spring  forward  on  any  chance  to  earn  a  copper,  the 
ready  materials  for  disorder  when  occasion  serves.  They  render  no 
useful  service,  they  create  no  wealth :  more  often  they  destroy  it. 
They  degrade  whatever  they  touch,  and  as  individuals  are  perhaps 
incapable  of  improvement ;  they  may  be  to  some  extent  a  necessary 
evil  in  every  large  city,  but  their  numbers  will  be  affected  by  the 
economical  condition  of  the  classes  above  them,  and  the  discretion  of 
"the  charitable  world”;  their  way  of  life  by  the  pressure  of  police 
supervision. 

It  is  much  to  be  desired  and  to  be  hoped  that  this  class  may  become 
less  hereditary  in  its  character.  There  appears  to  be  no  doubt  that 
it  is  now  hereditary  to  a  very  considerable  extent.  The  children  are 
the  street  arabs,  and  are  to  be  found  separated  from  their  parents  in 
pauper  or  industrial  schools,  and  in  such  homes  as  Dr.  Barnardo’s. 
Some  are  in  the  Board  schools,  and  more  in  ragged  schools,  and  the 
remainder,  who  cannot  be  counted,  and  may  still  be  numerous,  are 
every  year  confined  within  narrowing  bounds  by  the  persistent  pres¬ 
sure  of  the  School  Board  and  other  agencies. 

While  the  number  of  children  left  in  charge  of  this  class  is  propor¬ 
tionately  small,  the  number  of  young  persons  belonging  to  it  is  not 
so — young  men  who  take  naturally  to  loafing ;  ‘girls  who  take  almost 
as  naturally  to  the  streets ;  some  drift  back  from  the  pauper  and  in¬ 
dustrial  schools,  and  others  drift  down  from  the  classes  of  casual  and 
irregular  labour.  I  have  attempted  to  describe  the  prevailing  type 
amongst  these  people,  but  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  are  not 
individuals  of  every  sort  to  be  found  in  the  mass.  Those  who  are 
able  to  wash  the  mud  may  find  some  gems  in  it.  There  are,  at  any 
rate,  many  very  piteous  cases.  Whatever  doubt  there  may  be  as  to 
the  exact  numbers  of  this  class,  it  is  certain  that  they  bear  a  very  small 
proportion  to  the  rest  of  the  population,  or  even  to  Class  B  with  which 
they  are  mixed  up,  and  from  which  it  is  at  times  difficult  to  separate 
them.  The  hordes  of  barbarians  of  whom  we  have  heard,  who,  issu¬ 
ing  from  their  slums,  will  one  day  overwhelm  modern  civilization,  do 
not  exist.  There  are  barbarians,  but  they  are  a  handful,  a.  small  and 
decreasing  percentage :  a  disgrace  but  not  a  danger. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


515 


This  class  is  recruited  with  adult  men  from  all  the  others.  All  such 
recruits  have  been  in  some  way  unfortunate,  and  most,  if  not  all,  have 
lost  their  characters.  Women,  too,  drop  down,  sometimes  with  the 
men,  more  often  from  the  streets.  A  considerable  number  of  dis¬ 
charged  soldiers  are  to  be  found  in  Classes  A  and  B. 

Class  B — Casual  earnings — very  poor — add  up  almost  exactly  to 
100,000,  or  1 1^  per  cent  of  the  whole  population.  Widows  or  deserted 
women  and  their  families  bring  a  large  contingent  to  this  class,  but 
its  men  are  mostly  to  be  found  in  Section  2  of  " Labour.”  I  have 
divided  "Labour”  into  six  sections,  corresponding  in  effect  to  the  first 
six  classes — (1)  occasional,  (2)  casual,  (3)  intermittent,  (4)  regular 
low  pay,  (5)  regular  standard  pay,  (6)  highly  paid.  This  classifica¬ 
tion  cannot  be  made  exact.  These  sections  not  only  melt  into  each 
other  by  insensible  degrees,  but  the  only  divisions  which  can  be  made 
are  rather  divisions  of  sentiment  than  of  positive  fact:  the  line  be¬ 
tween  Nos.  1  and  2  (loafers  and  casual  labourers)  is  of  this  character, 
difficult  to  test,  and  not  otherwise  to  be  established ;  and  the  bound¬ 
aries  of  No.  2  are  constantly  fluctuating;  for  the  casual  labourer, 
besides  being  pressed  on  from  below,  when  times  are  hard  is  also 
flooded  from  above ;  every  class,  even  artisans  and  clerks,  furnishing 
those  who,  failing  to  find  a  living  in  their  own  trade,  compete  at  the 
dock  gates  for  work.  And  on  the  other  hand  those  of  this  class  who 
have  a  preference,  and  come  first  in  turn  for  the  work  of  the  casual 
sort  that  is  to  be  had  at  the  docks  or  elsewhere,  practically  step  up 
into  Section  4,  or  may  do  so  if  they  choose,  as  obtaining  regular  work 
at  low  pay.  Similarly,  it  is  most  difficult  to  divide  correctly  No.  3 
from  No.  5  (irregular  from  regular),  or  No.  5  from  No.  4  (ordinary 
from  low  wages)  ;  in  times  of  bad  trade  many  who  would  otherwise  be 
counted  as  regularly  employed  sink  for  a  time  into  No.  3,  and  it  is  in 
some  cases  difficult  to  learn  the  actual  wages,  as  well  as  to  decide 
where  to  draw  the  line,  between  No.  5  and  No.  4.  Between  No.  5 
and  No.  6  there  is  the  same  difficulty,  especially  where  a  higher  rate 
of  wages  happens  to  be  set  off  by  greater  irregularity  of  employment. 

Section  No.  2,  coinciding,  so  far  as  it  goes,  with  Class  B,  is  intended 
to  include  none  but  true  casual  labourers,  excluding  the  men  already 
described  under  No.  1,  who  are  not  properly  labourers  at  all ;  leaving 
for  No.  3  those  irregularly  employed,  who  may  be  out  of  work  or  in 
work,  but  whose  employment,  though  mostly  paid  by  the  hour,  has 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


5l6 

its  tenure  rather  by  the  week,  or  the  month,  or  the  season ;  and  for 
No.  4,  those  whose  pay,  however  low,  comes  in  with  reasonable  cer¬ 
tainty  and  regularity  from  year’s  end  to  year’s  end.  In  East  London 
the  largest  field  for  casual  labour  is  at  the  Docks. 

The  labourers  of  Class  B  do  not,  on  the  average,  get  as  much  as 
three  days’  work  a  week,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  many  of  them  could  or 
would  work  full  time  for  long  together  if  they  had  the  opportunity. 
From  whatever  section  Class  B  is  drawn,  except  the  sections  of  poor 
women,  there  will  be  found  many  of  them  who  from  shiftlessness, 
helplessness,  idleness,  or  drink,  are  inevitably  poor.  The  ideal  of  such 
persons  is  to  work  when  they  like  and  play  when  they  like ;  these  it  is 
who  are  rightly  called  the  "leisure  class”  amongst  the  poor — leisure 
bounded  very  closely  by  the  pressure  of  want,  but  habitual  to  the 
extent  of  second  nature.  They  cannot  stand  the  regularity  and  dul- 
ness  of  civilized  existence,  and  find  the  excitement  they  need  in  the 
life  of  the  streets,  or  at  home  as  spectators  of  or  participators  in  some 
highly  coloured  domestic  scene.  There  is  drunkenness  amongst  them, 
especially  amongst  the  women ;  but  drink  is  not  their  special  luxury, 
as  with  the  lowest  class,  nor  is  it  their  passion,  as  with  a  portion  of 
those  with  higher  wages  and  irregular  but  severe  work.  The  earnings 
of  the  men  vary  with  the  state  of  trade,  and  drop  to  a  few  shillings  a 
week  or  nothing  at  all  in  bad  times ;  they  are  never  high,  nor  does 
this  class  make  the  hauls  which  come  at  times  in  the  more  hazardous 
lives  of  the  class  below  them ;  when,  for  instance,  a  sensational  news¬ 
paper  sells  by  thousands  in  the  streets  for  2d  to  6d  a  copy.  The  wives 
in  this  class  mostly  do  some  work,  and  those  who  are  sober,  perhaps, 
work  more  steadily  than  the  men ;  but  their  work  is  mostly  of  a  rough 
kind,  or  is  done  for  others  almost  as  poor  as  themselves.  It  is  in  all 
cases  wretchedly  paid,  so  that  if  they  earn  the  rent  they  do  very  well. 

Both  boys  and  girls  get  employment  without  much  difficulty — the 
girls  earn  enough  to  pay  their  mothers  45  or  55  a  week  if  they  stay  at 
home ;  and  if  the  boys  do  not  bring  in  enough,  they  are  likely  to  be 
turned  adrift,  being  in  that  case  apt  to  sink  into  Class  A;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  more  industrious  or  capable  boys  no  doubt  rise  into 
Classes  C,  D,  or  E. 

Class  B,  and  especially  the  "labour”  part  of  it,  is  not  one  in  which 
men  are  born  and  live  and  die,  so  much  as  a  deposit  of  those  who  from 
mental,  moral,  and  physical  reasons  are  incapable  of  better  work. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


517 


Class  C — Intermittent  earnings — numbering  nearly  75,000,  or  about 
8  per  cent  of  the  population,  are  more  than  any  others  the  victims  of 
competition,  and  on  them  falls  with  particular  severity  the  weight  of 
recurrent  depressions  of  trade.  In  this  class  are  counted  most  of  the 
labourers  in  Section  3,  together  with  a  large  contingent  from  the  poorer 
artisans,  street  sellers,  and  the  smaller  shops.  Here  may  perhaps  be 
found  the  most  proper  field  for  systematic  charitable  assistance ;  pro¬ 
vided  always  some  evidence  of  thrift  is  made  the  pre-condition  or 
consequence  of  assistance. 

Section  3  of  Labour,  which  contributes  so  largely  to  Class  C,  con¬ 
sists  of  men  who  usually  work  by  the  job,  or  who  are  in  or  out  of 
work  according  to  the  season  or  the  nature  of  their  employment.  This 
irregularity  of  employment  may  show  itself  in  the  week  or  in  the  year : 
stevedores  and  waterside  porters  may  secure  only  one  or  two  days’ 
work  in  a  week,  whereas  labourers  in  the  building  trades  may  get  only 
eight  or  nine  months  in  the  year.  They  are,  all  round,  men  who,  if  in 
regular  work,  would  be  counted  in  Section  5,  and  it  is  therefore  satis¬ 
factory  to  note  that  the  proportion  in  irregular  work  is  small.  The 
great  body  of  the  labouring  class  (as  distinguished  from  the  skilled 
workmen)  have  a  regular  steady  income,  such  as  it  is. 

Some  of  the  irregularly  employed  men  earn  very  high  wages,  fully 
as  high  as  those  of  the  artisan  class.  These  are  men  of  great  physical 
strength,  working  on  coal  or  grain,  or  combining  aptitude  and  practice 
with  strength  as  in  handling  timber.  It  is  amongst  such  men,  espe¬ 
cially  those  carrying  grain  and  coal,  that  the  passion  for  drink  is  most 
developed.  A  man  will  very  quickly  earn  15s  or  20s,  but  at  the  cost 
of  great  exhaustion,  and  many  of  them  eat  largely  and  drink  freely  till 
the  money  is  gone,  taking  very  little  of  it  home.  Others  of  this  class 
earn  wages  approaching  to  artisan  rates  when,  as  in  the  case  of  steve¬ 
dores,  their  work  requires  special  skill,  and  is  protected  by  trade  organ¬ 
ization.  If  these  men  are  to  be  counted  in  Section  No.  3,  as  unfortu¬ 
nately  many  of  them  must  be  at  present,  it  is  because  their  numbers 
are  too  great.  While  trade  is  dull  the  absorption  of  surplus  labour 
by  other  employment  is  extremely  slow.  There  are  also  in  this  section 
a  large  number  of  wharf  and  warehouse  hands,  who  depend  on  the 
handling  of  certain  crops  for  the  London  market.  They  have  full  work 
and  good  work  when  the  wool  or  tea  sales  are  on,  and  at  other  times 
may  be  very  slack. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


5i8 

They  take  things  as  they  come ;  work  when  they  can  get  work  in 
their  own  line,  and  otherwise  go  without,  or,  if  actually  hard  up,  try, 
almost  hopelessly,  for  casual  work.  The  more  enterprising  ones  who 
fill  up  their  time  in  some  way  which  ekes  out  their  bare  earnings  are 
the  exceptions,  and  such  men  would  probably  pass  into  Section  5  as 
having  regular  standard  earnings.  On  the  other  hand,  many  fall  out 
of  Section  5  into  Section  3  through  illness,  and  it  is  largely  in  such 
cases  that  extreme  poverty  is  felt.  The  pressure  is  also  very  severe 
where  there  are  many  young  children ;  a  man  and  his  wife  by  them¬ 
selves  can  get  along,  improvident  or  not,  doing  on  very  little  when 
work  fails;  the  children  who  have  left  school,  if  they  live  at  home, 
readily  keep  themselves,  and  sometimes  do  even  more.  It  is  in  the 
years  when  the  elder  children  have  not  yet  left  school,  while  the 
younger  ones  are  still  a  care  to  the  mother  at  home,  that  the  pressure 
of  family  life  is  most  felt. 

The  men  of  Section  3  have  a  very  bad  character  for  improvidence, 
and  I  fear  that  the  bulk  of  those  whose  earnings  are  irregular  are 
wanting  in  ordinary  prudence.  Provident  thrift,  which  lays  by  for 
to-morrow,  is  not  a  very  hardy  plant  in  England,  and  needs  the  regular 
payment  of  weekly  wages  to  take  root  freely. 

There  will  be  many  of  the  irregularly  employed  who  could  not  keep 
a  permanent  job  if  they  had  it,  and  who  must  break  out  from  time  to 
time;  but  the  worst  of  these  drop  into  Section  2,  and  for  the  most 
part  I  take  Section  3  to  consist  of  hard-working  struggling  people, 
not  worse  morally  than  any  other  class,  though  shiftless  and  improvi¬ 
dent,  but  out  of  whom  the  most  capable  are  either  selected  for  perma¬ 
nent  work,  or  equally  lifted  out  of  the  section  by  obtaining  preferential 
employment  in  irregular  work.  They  are  thus  a  somewhat  helpless 
class,  not  belonging  usually  to  any  trade  society,  and  for  the  most 
part  without  natural  leaders  or  organization ;  the  stevedores  are  the 
only  exception  I  know  of,  and  so  far  as  they  are  here  counted  in  No.  3, 
are  so  under  peculiarly  adverse  circumstances ;  No.  5  is  their  proper 
section. 

Labour  of  No.  3  character  is  very  common  in  London.  There  may 
be  more  of  it  proportionately  in  other  districts  than  in  the  East  End. 
In  this  class  the  women  usually  work  or  seek  for  work  when  the  men 
have  none ;  they  do  charing,  or  washing,  or  needlework,  for  very  little 
money ;  they  bring  no  particular  skill  or  persistent  effort  to  what  they 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


519 

do,  and  the  work  done  is  of  slight  value.  Those  who  work  the  most 
regularly  and  are  the  best  paid  are  the  widows. 

Class  D,  small  regular  earnings,  poor,  are  about  129,000,  or  nearly 
142  per  cent  of  the  population.  It  must  not  be  understood  that  the 
whole  of  these  have  quite  regular  work ;  but  only  that  the  earnings 
are  constant  enough  to  be  treated  as  a  regular  income,  which  is  not 
the  case  with  the  earnings  of  Class  C.  Of  D  and  C  together  we  have 
203,000,  and  if  this  number  is  equally  divided  to  represent  those  whose 
earnings  are  regular  and  irregular,  which  would  be  to  place  the  stand¬ 
ard  of  regularity  a  little  higher  than  has  been  done  in  this  inquiry,  the 
result  would  be  equal  numbers  of  each  grade  of  poverty — 100,000  of 
B  or  casual,  100,000  of  C  or  intermittent,  and  100,000  of  D  or  regular 
earnings,  out  of  a  total  population  of  900,000,  or  one-ninth  of  each 
grade. 

The  class  coincides  to  a  very  great  extent  with  Section  4  of  Labour 
(or  those  with  regular  work  at  minimum  wage),  in  which  section  have 
been  included  those  whose  labour  may  be  paid  daily  and  at  the  casual 
rates,  but  whose  position  is  pretty  secure,  and  whose  earnings,  though 
varying  a  little  from  week  to  week,  or  from  season  to  season,  are  in 
effect  constant. 

The  men  of  Section  4  are  the  better  end  of  the  casual  dock  and 
water-side  labour,  those  having  directly  or  indirectly  a  preference  for 
employment.  It  includes  also  a  number  of  labourers  in  the  gas  works 
whose  employment  falls  short  in  summer  but  never  entirely  ceases. 
The  rest  of  this  section  are  the  men  who  are  in  regular  work  all  the 
year  round  at  a  wage  not  exceeding  21s  a  week.  These  are  drawn 
from  various  sources,  including  in  their  numbers  factory,  dock,  and 
warehouse  labourers,  carmen,  messengers,  porters,  &c. ;  a  few  of  each 
class.  Some  of  these  are  recently  married  men,  who  will,  after  a  longer 
period  of  service,  rise  into  the  next  class ;  some  are  old  and  super¬ 
annuated,  semi-pensioners ;  but  others  are  heads  of  families,  and  in¬ 
stances  are  to  be  met  with  (particularly  among  carmen)  in  which  men 
have  remained  fifteen  or  twenty  years  at  a  stationary  wage  of  21  s  or 
even  less,  being  in  a  comparatively  comfortable  position  at  the  start, 
but  getting  poorer  and  poorer  as  their  family  increased,  and  improv¬ 
ing  again  as  their  children  became  able  to  add  their  quota  to  the 
family  income.  In  such  cases  the  loss  of  elder  children  by  marriage 
is  sometimes  looked  upon  with  jealous  disfavour. 


520 


THE  PROBLEM  OE  POVERTY 


Of  the  whole  section  none  can  be  said  to  rise  above  poverty, 
unless  by  the  earnings  of  the  children,  nor  are  many  to  be  classed  as 
very  poor.  What  they  have  comes  in  regularly,  and  except  in  times 
of  sickness  in  the  family,  actual  want  rarely  presses,  unless  the  wife 
drinks.  As  a  general  rule  these  men  have  a  hard  struggle  to  make  ends 
meet,  but  they  are,  as  a  body,  decent  steady  men,  paying  their  way 
and  bringing  up  their  children  respectably.  The  work  they  do  de¬ 
mands  little  skill  or  intelligence. 

In  the  whole  class  with  which  this  section  is  identified  the  women 
work  a  good  deal  to  eke  out  the  men’s  earnings,  and  the  children  begin 
to  make  more  than  they  cost  when  free  from  school :  the  sons  go  as 
van  boys,  errand  boys,  &c.,  and  the  daughters  into  daily  service,  or 
into  factories,  or  help  the  mother  with  whatever  she  has  in  hand. 

The  comfort  of  their  homes  depends,  even  more  than  in  other 
classes,  on  a  good'wife.  Thrift  of  the  "  make-the-most-of-everything  ” 
kind  is  what  is  needed,  and  in  very  many  cases  must  be  present,  or 
it  would  be  impossible  to  keep  up  so  respectable  an  appearance  as 
is  done  on  so  small  an  income. 

Class  E.  Regular  standard  earnings.  These  are  the  bulk  of  Sec¬ 
tion  5,  together  with  a  large  proportion  of  the  artisans  and  most  other 
regular  wage  earners.  I  also  include  here,  as  having  equal  means,  the 
best  class  of  street  sellers  and  general  dealers,  a  large  proportion  of  the 
small  shopkeepers,  the  best  off  amongst  the  home  manufacturers, 
and  some  of  the  small  employers.  This  is  by  far  the  largest  class  of 
the  population  under  review,  adding  up  to  377,000,  or  over  42  per  cent. 
Section  No.  5  contains  all,  not  artisans  or  otherwise  scheduled,  who 
earn  from  22 s  to  30 s  per  week  for  regular  work.  There  are  some  of 
them  who,  when  wages  are  near  the  lower  figure,  or  the  families  are 
large,  are  not  lifted  above  the  line  of  poverty ;  but  few  of  them  are 
very  poor,  and  the  bulk  of  this  large  section  can,  and  do,  lead  inde¬ 
pendent  lives,  and  possess  fairly  comfortable  homes. . 

As  a  rule  the  wives  do  not  work,  but  the  children  all  do :  the  boys 
commonly  following  the  father  (as  is  everywhere  the  case  above  the 
lowest  classes),  the  girls  taking  to  local  trades,  or  going  out  to  service. 
The  men  in  this  section  are  connected  with  almost  every  form  of 
industry,  and  include  in  particular  carmen,  porters  and  messengers, 
warehousemen,  permanent  dock  labourers,  stevedores,  and  man)' 
others.  Of  these  some,  such  as  the  market  porters  and  stevedores, 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


52i 


do  not  earn  regular  wages,  but  both  classes  usually  make  a  fair 
average  result  for  the  week’s  work,  and  only  in  exceptional  cases 
have  been  placed  in  Section  3. 

It  may  be  noted  that  Classes  D  and  E  together  form  the  actual 
middle  class  in  this  district,  the  numbers  above  and  below  them  being 
very  fairly  balanced.  The  wage  earners  of  Class  E  take  readily  any 
gratuities  which  fall  in  their  way,  and  all  those  who  constitute  it  will 
mutually  give  or  receive  friendly  help  without  sense  of  patronage  or 
degradation  ;  but  against  anything  which  could  be  called  charity  their 
pride  rises  stiffly.  This  class  is  the  recognized  field  of  all  forms  of 
co-operation  and  combination,  and  I  believe,  and  am  glad  to  believe, 
that  it  holds  its  future  in  its  own  hands.  No  body  of  men  deserves 
more  consideration;  it  does  not  constitute  a  majority  of  the  popula¬ 
tion  in  the  East  of  London,  nor,  probably,  in  the  whole  of  London, 
but  it  perhaps  may  do  so  taking  England  as  a  whole.  It  should  be 
said  that  only  in  a  very  general  way  of  speaking  do  these  people  form 
one  class,  and  beneath  this  generality  lie  wide  divergences  of  character, 
interests,  and  ways  of  life.  This  class  owns  a  good  deal  of  property  in 
the  aggregate. 

Class  F  consists  of  higher  class  labour  (Section  6),  and  the  best 
paid  of  the  artisans,  together  with  others  of  equal  means  and  position 
from  other  sections,  and  amounts  to  121,000,  or  about  13^  per  cent 
of  the  population.  The  line  between  Sections  5  and  6  of  labour  has 
not  been  pressed  closely,  and  it  is  probable  that  many  whose  earnings 
one  way  or  another  exceed  30 s  per  week  have  been  allowed  to  remain 
in  No.  5 ;  those  in  Section  No.  6  earn  certainly  more  than  30 5,  and 
up  to  455  or  505.  Besides  foremen  are  included  City  warehousemen 
of  the  better  class,  and  first  hand  lightermen ;  they  are  usually  paid 
for  responsibility,  and  are  men  of  very  good  character  and  much 
intelligence. 

This  (No.  6)  is  not  a  large  section  of  the  people,  but  it  is  a  distinct 
and  very  honourable  one.  These  men  are  the  non-commissioned  of¬ 
ficers  of  the  industrial  army.  No  doubt  there  are  others  as  good  in 
the  ranks,  and  vacant  places  are  readily  filled  with  men  no  less  honest 
and  trustworthy ;  all  the  men  so  employed  have  been  selected  out 
of  many.  The  part  they  play  in  industry  is  peculiar.  They  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  planning  or  direction  (properly  so  called)  of 
business  operations ;  their  work  is  confined  to  superintendence.  They 


522 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


supply  no  initiative,  and  having  no  responsibility  of  this  kind  they  do 
not  share  in  profits;  but  their  services  are  very  valuable,  and  their 
pay  enables  them  to  live  reasonably  comfortable  lives,  and  provide 
adequately  for  old  age.  No  large  business  could  be  conducted  with¬ 
out  such  men  as  its  pillars  of  support,  and  their  loyalty  and  devotion 
to  those  whom  they  serve  is  very  noteworthy.  Most  employers  would 
admit  this  as  to  their  own  foremen,  but  the  relation  is  so  peculiar 
and  personal  in  its  character  that  most  employers  also  believe  no  other 
foremen  to  be  equal  to  their  own. 

Their  sons  take  places  as  clerks,  and  their  daughters  get  employ¬ 
ment  in  first-class  shops  or  places  of  business;  if  the  wives  work 
at  all,  they  either  keep  a  shop,  or  employ  girls  at  laundry  work  or  at 
dressmaking. 

There  is  a  great  difference  between  these  men  and  the  artisans  who 
are  counted  with  them  as  part  of  Class  F :  the  foreman  of  ordinary 
labour  generally  sees  things  from  the  employer’s  point  of  view,  while 
the  skilled  artisan  sees  them  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  employed. 
Connected  with  this  fact  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  foremen  are  a 
more  contented  set  of  men  than  the  most  prosperous  artisans. 

Class  G.  Lower  middle  class.  Shopkeepers  and  small  employers, 
clerks,  &c.,  and  subordinate  professional  men.  A  hard-working,  sober, 
energetic  class,  which  I  will  not  more  fully  describe  here,  as  they  no 
doubt  will  be  comparatively  more  numerous  in  other  districts  of  Lon¬ 
don.  Here  they  number  34,000,  or  nearly  4  per  cent.  It  is  to  be  noted 
that  Class  G,  which  in  the  whole  district  compares  with  the  class  above 
it  as  34  to  45,  for  East  London  proper  compares  as  32  to  12.  The 
exaggeration  of  Class  H,  as  compared  to  Class  G,  is  entirely  due  to 
Hackney. 

Class  H.  Upper  middle  class.  All  above  G  are  here  lumped  together, 
and  may  be  shortly  defined  as  the  servant-keeping  class.  They  count 
up  to  about  45,000,  or  5  per  cent  of  the  population.  Of  these  more 
than  two-thirds  are  to  be  found  in  Hackney,  where  one-fifth  of  the 
population  live  in  houses  which,  owing  to  their  high  rental,  are  not 
scheduled  by  the  School  Board  visitors.  In  the  other  districts  scat¬ 
tered  houses  are  to  be  found  above  the  value  at  which  the  School 
Board  usually  draws  the  line ;  but  the  visitors  generally  know  some¬ 
thing  of  the  inmates.  In  Hackney,  however,  there  are  many  streets 
as  to  which  the  visitors  have  not  even  the  names  in  their  books.  The 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


523 


estimated  number  of  residents  in  these  unscheduled  houses  I  have 
placed  in  Class  H,  to  which  they  undoubtedly  belong,  excepting  that 
the  servants  (also  an  estimated  number)  appear  under  Class  E,  from 
which  they  are  mostly  drawn. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  dividing  lines  between  all  these 
classes  are  indistinct ;  each  has,  so  to  speak,  a  fringe  of  those  who 
might  be  placed  with  the  next  division  above  or  below ;  nor  are  the 
classes,  as  given,  homogeneous  by  any  means.  Room  may  be  found 
in  each  for  many  grades  of  social  rank. 

Two  things  are  here  very  noticeable — the  one  that  fully  half  the 
women  who  have  to  support  themselves  seek  a  livelihood  in  semi¬ 
domestic  employments,  such  as  washing  and  charing ;  and  the  other, 
that  it  is  amongst  such  occupations  and  not  amongst  the  trades, 
that  the  greatest  apparent  poverty  exists. 

Grouping  the  classes  together,  A,  B,  C,  and  D  are  the  classes  in 
poverty,  or  even  in  want,  and  add  up  to  314,000,  or  35  per  cent  of 
the  population ;  while  E,  F,  G,  and  H  are  the  classes  in  comfort,  or 
even  in  affluence,  and  add  up  to  577,000,  or  65  per  cent  of  the 
population.1 

The  Causes  oj  Poverty 

Questions  of  employment — Lack  of  work2  or  low  pay — Questions 
of  habit,  idleness,  drunkenness,  or  thriftlessness — Questions  of  cir¬ 
cumstance,  sickness,  or  large  families.  Under  these  heads  fall  all  the 
causes  of  poverty.  To  throw  some  light  on  the  proportion  which  these 
troubles  bear  to  each  other,  and  so  on  to  the  ultimate  question  of  what 
cure  can  be  found,  I  have  attempted  to  analyze  four  thousand  cases  of 
the  poor  and  very  poor  known  to  selected  School  Board  visitors  in  each 
district,  and  give  the  full  results  in  a  table  which  follows.  It  would  not 
be  safe  to  generalize  very  confidently  from  an  analysis  of  this  sort 
unless  it  can  be  supported  by  other  evidence.  The  figures  have,  how¬ 
ever,  statistically  one  great  element  of  value.  They  are  representative 
of  all  the  poor  in  the  districts  from  which  they  are  drawn,  and  not  only 
of  those  who  apply  for  relief. 

1  Booth  next  describes  the  separate  districts  and  their  institutions  in  chapters 
which  have  been  omitted  from  these  Readings.  Working  Men’s  Clubs,  Friendly 
Societies,  Co-operative  Stores,  Public-houses,  Amusements,  Settlements,  Missions, 
Hospitals,  and  Charities  are  briefly  treated. — Ed. 

2  This  cause  includes  incapacity. 


524 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Analysis  of  Causes  of  "Great  Poverty”  (Classes  A  and  B) 


Per  Cent 

• 

Per  Cent 

1.  Loafers . 

2.  Casual  work . 

3.  Irregular  work,  low  pay  .... 

4.  Small  profits . 

5.  Drink  (husband,  or  both  husband  1 

and  wife) . J 

6.  Drunken  or  thriftless  wife  .  .  . 

7.  Illness  or  infirmity . 

8.  Large  family . 

9.  Illness  or  large  family,  combined  | 

with  irregular  work.  J 

697 

141 

40 

152 

79 

170 

124 

147 

43] 

9  ( 

3  j 

;} 

10 

8 1 
9J 

60 

878 

231 

441 

4 

f  Questions  of 
88  (_  employment 

/  Questions  of 
14  l  habit 

f  Questions  of 
27  ^  circumstance 

1,610 

100 

Analysis  of  Causes  of  "Poverty”  (Classes  C  and  D) 


1.  Loafers 

2.  Low  pay  (regular  earnings)  . 

3.  Irregular  earnings . 

4.  Small  profits . 

5.  Drink  (husband,  or  both  husband 

and  wife) . 

6.  Drunken  or  thriftless  wife  . 

7.  Illness  or  infirmity . 

8.  Large  family . 

9.  Illness  or  large  family,  combined 

with  irregular  work. 


Per  Cent 

503 

20  'i 

1,052 

43  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 

>* 

1,668 

113 

sJ 

167 

71 

322 

155 

6  J 

123 

5. 

223 

9 

476 

130 

S  J 

j 

2,466 

Per  Cent 


J  Questions  of 
68 1  employment 


f  Questions  of 
18  \  habit 


f  Questions  of 
1  \  circumstance 


100 


Of  the  4000  cases,  1600  heads  of  families  belonged  to  Classes  A 
and  B  (the  "very  poor”),  and  of  them  60  are  admitted  loafers — 
those  who  will  not  work.  After  these  come  878  whose  poverty  is  due 
to  the  casual  or  irregular  character  of  their  employment,  combined 
more  or  less  with  low  pay;  then  231  whose  poverty  is  the  result  of 
drink  or  obvious  want  of  thrift,  and  finally  441  more,  who  have  been 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY  525 

impoverished  by  illness,  or  the  large  number  of  those  who  have  to  be 
supported  out  of  the  earnings. 

Of  the  remaining  2400  cases  from  Classes  C  and  D,  there  are  1600 
who  are  poor  because  of  irregular  earnings  or  low  pay,  300  whose 
poverty  can  be  directly  traced  to  drink  or  thriftless  habits,  and  500 
with  whom  the  number  of  their  children  or  the  badness  of  their 
health  is  the  cause.  No  loafers  are  counted  here.  The  amount  of 
loafing  that  brings  a  man’s  family  down  part  way  to  destitution  is 
not  very  noticeable,  or  may  perhaps  pass  as  irregular  employment. 
Such  men  live  on  their  wives. 

It  may  be  observed  that  the  proportion  of  Classes  C  and  D  who 
owe  their  poverty  to  questions  of  employment  is  greater,  while  that 
of  those  owing  it  to  questions  of  circumstance  is  less,  than  with  the 
very  poor,  while  drink  accounts  for  about  the  same  proportion  in  both 
tables.  In  the  case  of  very  poor,  low  pay  and  casual  or  irregular  work 
are  combined,  and  account  for  55  per  cent.  With  the  "poor”  these 
causes  can  be  separated,  and  we  have  43  per  cent  whose  poverty  is 
traced  to  the  irregularity  of  their  work,  and  25  per  cent  whose 
poverty  is  traced  to  their  low  pay. 

Drink  figures  as  the  cause  of  poverty  to  a  much  greater  extent 
everywhere  else  than  in  Whitechapel,  where  it  only  accounts  for  4  per 
cent  of  the  very  poor,  and  1  per  cent  of  the  poor.  This  is  no  doubt 
to  be  explained  by  the  Jewish  population,  who,  whatever  their  faults 
may  be,  are  very  sober.  To  those  who  look  upon  drink  as  the  source 
of  all  evil,  the  position  it  here  holds  as  accounting  for  only  14  per 
cent  of  the  poverty  in  the  East  End  may  seem  altogether  insufficient ; 
but  I  may  remind  them  that  it  is  only  as  principal  cause  that  it  is  here 
considered ;  as  contributory  cause  it  would  no  doubt  be  connected 
with  a  much  larger  proportion. 

The  Unemployed 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  analysis  takes  no  account  of  incapacity  for 
work  except  so  far  as  consequent  on  illness.  But  incapacity  of  two 
kinds  is  no  doubt  common  :  that  which  leads  especially  to  low  pay  and 
that  which  leads  especially  to  irregularity  of  employment.  There  are 
those  who  never  learn  to  do  anything  well  on  the  one  hand,  and  those 
who  cannot  get  up  in  the  morning  on  the  other ;  those  who  are  slow, 


526 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


taking  two  or  three  hours  to  do  what  another  man  will  do  in  one; 
and  those  who  are  too  restless  to  keep  any  employment  long ;  those 
who  are  adapted  only  for  some  employment  for  which  there  is  a  fitful 
demand,  or  no  demand  at  all ;  those  who,  without  being  counted  as  ill, 
or  infirm,  or  disabled,  are  yet  incapacitated  for  profitable  work  by 
bad  sight,  or  failing  nerves,  or  deficient  strength ;  and  lastly  there  is 
every  degree  of  weakness  of  intellect. 

I  wish  it  were  possible  for  me  to  break  up  the  mass  of  those  who 
owe  their  poverty  to  questions  of  employment,  and  to  show  what  is 
their  economic  value  compared  to  that  of  the  better  paid  and  regularly 
employed  working  people  of  Class  E,  for  it  is  essential  to  have  such 
evidence  before  any  hopeful  attempt  to  deal  with  the  question  of  the 
unemployed  can  be  made ;  not  that  I  desire  to  make  too  much  of  such 
inferiority  of  skill  or  character  as  may  sometimes  have  cost  them  their 
place  or  lost  them  a  chance,  when  places  and  chances  are  not  plentiful. 
I  do  not  doubt  that  many  good  enough  men  are  now  walking  about 
idle;  but  it  must  be  said  that  those  of  their  number  who  drop  low 
enough  to  ask  charitable  aid  rarely  stand  the  test  of  work.  Such 
usually  cannot  keep  work  when  they  get  it ;  lack  of  work  is  not  really 
the  disease  with  them,  and  the  mere  provision  of  it  is  therefore  useless 
as  a  cure.  The  unemployed  are,  as  a  class,  a  selection  of  the  unfit, 
and,  on  the  whole,  those  most  in  want  are  the  most  unfit.  This  is 
the  crux  of  the  position.  As  to  their  numbers,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  it  is  the  men  who  figure  in  my  tables  as  irregularly  employed, 
who  also  may  be,  and  are,  counted  as  the  " unemployed. ”  This  it  is 
which  makes  these  numbers  so  elastic.  In  this  sense  the  whole  of 
Sections  2  and  3  of  labour,  as  well  as  Section  1,  might  be  counted, 
besides  all  the  artisans  to  be  found  in  Classes  B  and  C.  Here  are  the 
plentiful  materials  from  which  a  Sunday  mass  meeting  of  the  unem¬ 
ployed  may  be  drawn. 

As  to  the  4400  adult  men  of  Section  1  (being  the  adult  males  out 
of  9050  estimated  population)  or  whatever  their  numbers  in  the  dis¬ 
trict  may  be,  it  is  not  only  quite  certain  that  they  do  not  really  want 
work,  but  also  that  there  is  very  little  useful  work  for  which  they  are 
fitted.  Whatever  the  duty  of  society  may  be  towards  these  men,  the 
offer  of  work  has  been  shown  over  and  over  again  not  to  fulfil  it ; 
the  work  is  either  refused  or  soon  dropped,  and  the  men  return 
to  more  congenial  pursuits.  Work  may  be  of  use  as  a  test,  but 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


527 


that  is  all ;  and  the  problem  of  the  "unemployed”  only  touches  those 
of  them  who,  by  standing  the  test,  prove  themselves  to  belong  to 
Section  2. 

As  to  Section  2,  with  its  13,000  adults,  there  are  weeks  when  most 
of  them  are  or  might  be  at  work,  and  other  weeks  when  but  few  of 
them  do  a  stroke ;  such  is  their  life.  Their  position  can  only  be  altered 
for  the  better  by  a  greater  regularity  of  work,  or  by  a  higher  scale 
of  pay ;  they  are  not  unemployed,  they  are  badly  employed. 

It  is  much  the  same  with  most  of  Section  3  ;  a  man  who  gets  good 
work  through  the  summer,  arid  is  somewhat  short  of  work  in  winter, 
is  not  even  to  be  called  badly  employed,  unless  he  does  so  badly  in 
summer  as  not  to  be  able  to  face  the  winter  slackness.  It  would  be 
pedantic  to  stretch  this  argument  very  far;  the  insufficiently  em¬ 
ployed,  those  who  might  very  well  accomplish  in  the  due  seasons  of 
their  employment  more  work  than  is  offered  them,  are  truly  unem¬ 
ployed  to  that  extent. 

Connected  with  this — with  the  ebb  of  this  or  that  industry,  or  all 
the  industries  together  for  a  time — is  the  saddest  form  of  poverty, 
the  gradual  impoverishment  of  respectability,  silently  sinking  into 
want.  The  very  large  proportion  of  both  poor  and  very  poor  who  are 
continually  short  of  work  suggests  various  considerations.  When 
they  do  not  work,  what  do  they  do  ?  What  use  do  they  make  of  their 
unoccupied  time?  Organization  of  work  needs  to  be  supplemented 
by  organization  of  leisure.  In  this  direction  the  interests  of  em¬ 
ployers  are  not  opposed  to  those  of  labour ;  but  the  movement  must 
come  from  the  men  themselves,  and  here  we  meet  the  usual  difficulty. 
The  present  system  suits  the  character  of  the  men.  They  suit  it  and  it 
suits  them,  and  it  is  impossible  to  say  where  this  vicious  circle  begins. 
It  has  been  suggested  that  adult  educational  classes  might  be  used  in 
this  direction — used,  that  is,  in  connection  with  some  systematic 
treatment  of  want  of  work.  As  it  now  is,  the  men  claim  that  their 
time  is  occupied,  or  at  least  made  otherwise  useless,  by  the  search 
after  work ;  that  they  need  to  be  always  on  hand  or  they  may  miss 
some  chance.  This  state  of  things  is  evidently  fraught  with  evil, 
and  seems  a  needless  aggravation  of  competition.  The  trades  unions, 
clubs,  or  co-operative  societies  might,  one  should  think,  provide  a 
system  which  would  make  good  use  of  days  that  would  otherwise  be 
wasted.  It  is  sad  if  no  useful  results  for  themselves  or  for  each  other 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


528 

can  be  obtained  from  the  combined  efforts  of  the  partially  employed 
in  their  leisure  hours. 

The  modem  system  of  industry  will  not  work  without  some  unem¬ 
ployed  margin — some  reserve  of  labour — but  the  margin  in  London 
to-day  seems  to  be  exaggerated  in  every  department,  and  enormously 
so  in  the  lowest  class  of  labour.  Some  employers  seem  to  think  that 
this  state  of  things  is  in  their  interest — the  argument  has  been  used 
by  dock  officials — but  this  view  appears  shortsighted,  for  labour 
deteriorates  under  casual  employment  more  than  its  price  falls.  I 
believe  it  to  be  to  the  interest  of  evefy  employer  to  have  as  many 
regularly  employed  servants  as  possible,  but  it  is  still  more  to  the  in¬ 
terest  of  the  community,  and  most  of  all  to  that  of  the  employed.  To 
divide  a  little  work  amongst  a  number  of  men — giving  all  a  share — 
may  seem  kind  and  even  just,  and  I  have  known  such  a  course  to  be 
taken  with  this  idea.  It  is  only  justifiable  as  a  temporary  expedient, 
serving  otherwise  but  to  prolong  a  bad  state  of  things. 

If  leisure  were  organized,  we  should  at  least  know  the  extent  of 
the  want  of  employment,  and  we  might  also  learn  something  definite 
about  the  effect  of  seasons  of  work:  learn  to  what  extent  the  dovetail¬ 
ing  of  employments  is  practicable  or  is  at  present  effected,  or  to  what 
extent  work  for  the  slack  season  may  be  arranged  in  the  trade  itself, 
and  now  is  arranged,  by  those  employers  who  think  it  well  to  keep 
their  workpeople  together. 

Further,  there  is,  with  regard  to  female  industries,  the  question  of 
work  which  never  pretends  to  be  other  than  the  employment  of  leisure 
time.  If  the  higher  organization  of  industry  brought  it  about  that  a 
value  not  to  be  found  in  desultory  work  were  found  in  the  entire 
service  and  undivided  energies  of  the  worker,  a  division  would  follow, 
as  to  women’s  work,  between  those  who  earn  their  living  and  those 
who  only  help  to  do  so,  or  work  for  pocket-money.  Such  special 
value  ought  to  exist.  In  connection  with  great  skill,  I  believe  it  does 
exist  to  a  very  marked  extent.  The  same  rule  applies  more  or  less  to 
all  industry.  Some  suppose  that  the  introduction  of  machinery  tends 
to  make  all  men  equal  before  the  machine,  but  this  is  a  mistake. 
Machinery  may  tend  to  accentuate  the  difference  between  skilled  and 
unskilled  labour,  but  the  machine  hand  is  always  a  skilled  worker,  not 
lightly  to  be  discharged,  and  the  regularity  of  his  employment  carries 
with  it  that  of  the  unskilled  hands.  The  value  of  the  machine  itself 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


529 

tends  in  the  same  direction.  It  is  where  machinery  is  most  used  that 
employment  is  most  constant,  and  where  it  is  least  used  that  it  is  most 
precarious.  The  higher  organization  of  industry  tends  against  every 
cause  of  irregularity  of  employment. 

However  it  is  to  be  explained,  the  fact  remains  that  neither  Class  B 
nor  Class  C  work  much  more  than  half  their  time,  and  that  there  is  no 
month  in  the  year,  taking  the  people  together,  when  this  is  not  so. 
It  is  also  a  fact  that  most  of  the  work  done  by  Class  B  is  inefficiently 
done,  both  badly  and  slowly.  It  may  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  if 
the  whole  of  Class  B  were  swept  out  of  existence,  all  the  work  they 
do  could  be  done,  together  with  their  own  work,  by  the  men,  women, 
and  children  of  Classes  C  and  D :  that  all  they  earn  and  all  they 
spend  might  be  earned,  and  could  very  easily  be  spent,  by  the  classes 
above  them ;  that  these  classes,  and  especially  Class  C,  would  be  im¬ 
mensely  better  off,  while  no  class,  nor  any  industry,  would  suffer  in  the 
least.  This  view  of  the  subject  serves  to  show  who  it  is  that  really 
bear  the  burden.  To  the  rich  the  very  poor  are  a  sentimental  interest : 
to  the  poor  they  are  a  crushing  load.  The  poverty  of  the  poor  is  mainly 
the  result  of  the  competition  of  the  very  poor.  The  entire  removal  of 
this  very  poor  class  out  of  the  daily  struggle  for  existence  I  believe  to 
be  the  only  solution  of  the  problem.  Is  this  solution  beyond  our  reach  ? 

If  it  is  true,  as  we  are  taught  and  as  I  believe,  that  the  standard  of 
life  is  rising,  and  that  the  proportion  of  the  population  in  very  poor 
circumstances  never  has  been  less,  and  is  steadily  decreasing,  it  fol¬ 
lows,  as  I  think,  that  some  day  the  individualist  community,  on  which 
we  build  our  faith,  will  find  itself  obliged  for  its  own  sake  to  take 
charge  of  the  lives  of  those  who,  from  whatever  cause,  are  incapable 
of  independent  existence  up  to  the  required  standard,  and  will  be  fully 
able  to  do  so.  Has  this  time  come  yet  ?  In  spite  of  the  poor  way  in 
which  all,  and  the  miserable  way  in  which  many,  of  these  people  live, 
they  do  not  keep  themselves ;  and  in  spite  of  the  little  pay  they  get  I 
believe  no  work  is  so  dear  as  that  which  they  do.  Indeed  it  must  be 
so,  or  else  they  would  have  more  work  given  them.  Those  who 
obtain  better  wages  and  more  regular  employment  receive  only  in 
proportion  to  what  they  give,  and  are  more  profitable  servants. 

Beyond  the  malefic  influence  which  the  imperative  needs  and  ill- 
regulated  lives  of  the  class  we  are  considering  exercise  over  the  for¬ 
tunes  of  those  who  might  otherwise  do  well  enough,  and  beyond  the 


530 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


fact  that  they  do  not  support  themselves,  but  absorb  the  charities  of 
both  rich  and  poor,  they  are  also  a  constant  burthen  to  the  State. 
What  they  contribute,  whether  in  taxes  or  rates,  is  little  compared  to 
the  expense  they  cause.  Their  presence  in  our  cities  creates  a  costly 
and  often  unavailing  struggle  to  raise  the  standard  of  life  and  health. 

The  question  of  those  who  actually  suffer  from  poverty  should  be 
considered  separately  from  that  of  the  true  working  classes,  whose  de¬ 
sire  for  a  larger  share  of  wealth  is  of  a  different  character.  It  is  the 
plan  of  agitators  and  the  way  of  sensational  writers  to  confound  the 
two  in  one,  to  talk  of  "starving  millions,”  and  to  tack  on  the  thou¬ 
sands  of  the  working  classes  to  the  tens  or  hundreds  of  distress. 
Against  this  method  I  protest.  To  confound  these  essentially  dis¬ 
tinct  problems  is  to  make  the  solution  of  both  impossible;  it  is  not 
by  welding  distress  and  aspirations  that  any  good  can  be  done. 


Poverty  and  Crowding1 


In  Volume  II  of  the  Poverty  Series  the  whole  population  (overesti¬ 
mated  at  the  time  at  4,309,000)  is  divided  and  described  as  follows: 


Per  Cent  Per  Cent 


Classes  A  and  B  (the  very  poor)  ....  354,444  8.4^ 

Classes  C  and  D  (the  poor) .  938,293  22.3/ 

Classes  E  and  F  (comfortable  working  class,  in¬ 
cluding  all  servants) . 2,166,503  51.5' 

Classes  G  and  H  ("  lower  middle,”  "  middle,” and 

"upper”  classes) .  749,930  17.8 J 

4,209,170 

Inmates  of  Institutions .  99,830 

(Estimated  population,  1889) . 4,309,000 


(In  poverty) 

30.7 


(In  comfort) 
69-3 


And  with  this  a  fairly  close  comparison  may  now  be  made: 


Per  Cent  Per  Cent 


(1  and  2 ) 2  3  or  more  persons 

' 

per  room . 

492,370 

12.0 

(Crowded) 

(3)  2  and  under  3  persons  per 

3i-5 

room . 

781,615 

I9-°\ 

19-5. 

Common  lodging  houses,  etc. 

20,087 

°-5J 

1From  Life  and  Labour  of  the  People  in  London ,  by  Charles  Booth.  Final 
Volume:  Notes  on  Social  Influences  and  Conclusion,  pp.  9-10.  Macmillan  &  Co., 
Limited,  London,  1903. 

2 The  numbers  refer  to  explanatory  tables  on  page  8  of  Final  Volume. —  Ed. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


'  (4)  1  and  under  2  persons  per 

• 

N 

1 

room . 

962,780 

234 

( 5 )  Less  than  1  person  per  room 

iS3,47i 

3-7 

Central 

(6)  Occupying  more  than  4 

rooms . 

98i,553 

23-9 

Servants . 

205,858 

5-o 

Persons  living  in  large  shops, 

6tC.  ••••••• 

15,321 

0.4  J 

(a)  4  or  more  persons  to  1 

servant . 

227,832 

5-5  | 

(b)  to  (h)  3  or  less  persons  to 

Upper  - 

1  servant . 

248,493 

6.0 

Inmates  of  hotels  and  boarding 

houses  where  servants  are 

L  keP1 . 

25,726 

0.6 

4,115,106 

96,637 

4,2ii,743 


Per  Cent 


36.4  4 


12. 1  J 


IOO. 


Per  Cent 


(Not 

crowded) 

68.5 


The  percentages  for  " crowded”  and  "not  crowded”  agree  very 
nearly  with  those  for  "in  poverty”  and  "in  comfort,”  but  no  such 
absolute  comparison  can  be  made  as  the  figures  might  suggest.  Liv¬ 
ing  in  close  quarters  is  no  certain  test  of  poverty,  and  accordingly 
while  some  districts  are  more  crowded  than  they  are  poor,  others  are 
plainly  more  poor  than  they  are  crowded.  It  is  only  when  we  take 
the  large  average  provided  by  the  whole  area  of  London,  or  by  dis¬ 
tricts  which  represent  this  average,  that  we  obtain  such  an  agreement 
as  is  shown  above. 


71.  Poverty — A  Study  of  Town  Life — in  York,  England1 

The  Poverty  Line 

The  families  living  in  poverty  may  be  divided  into  two  sections : 

1.  Families  whose  total  earnings2  are  insufficient  to  obtain  the 

\  4 

1By  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree.  Adapted  from  Poverty:  A  Study  of  Town  Life , 
pp.  87-305.  Macmillan  &  Co.,  Limited,  London,  1Q02. 

2  The  writer  has  assumed  that  the  entire'earnings  of  the  family,  including  those 
of  the  grown-up  children  living  at  hbme,  are  available  as  family  income.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  only  a  part  of  the  earnings  of  the  older  children  (i.e.  a  sum  for 
board  and  lodging  equivalent  to  that  paid  by  ordinary  lodgers)  is  contributed  to 
the  family  purse.  In  the  estimates  of  earnings  a  careful  attempt  has  been  made  to 
allow  both  for  broken  time  and  for  overtime. 


532 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


minimum  necessaries  for  the  maintenance  of  merely  physical  efficiency. 
Poverty  falling  under  this  head  may  be  described  as  -'primary  ’’poverty. 

2.  Families  whose  total  earnings  would  be  sufficient  for  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  merely  physical  efficiency  were  it  not  that  some  portion  of 
it  is  absorbed  by  other  expenditure,  either  useful1  or  wasteful.  Poverty 
falling  under  this  head  may  be  described  as  "secondary”  poverty. 

An  estimate  was  made  of  the  earnings  of  every  working-class 
family  in  York.  In  order  to  ascertain  how  many  of  these  families 
were  living  in  a  state  of  "primary”  poverty,  the  income  of  each  was 
compared  with  the  standard,2  due  allowance  being  made  in  every 
case  for  size  of  family  and  rent  paid. 

Let  us  now  see  what  was  the  result  of  this  examination.  No  less 
than  1465  families,  comprising  7230  persons,  were  living  in  "primary” 
poverty.  This  is  equal  to  15.46  per  cent  of  the  wage-earning  class  in 
York,  and  to  9.91  per  cent  of  the  whole  population  of  the  city.  The 
above  estimate,  it  should  be  particularly  noted,  is  based  upon  the  as¬ 
sumption  that  every  penny  earned  by  every  member  of  the  family  went 
into  the  family  purse,  and  was  judiciously  expended  upon  necessaries. 

With  a  view  of  showing  the  number  of  persons  but  slightly  above 
the  "primary”  poverty  line,  I  have  ascertained  what  would  have  been 
the  total  number  below  this  line  had  the  standard  of  necessary 
weekly  family  expenditure  been  increased  (1)  by  2s.  and  (2)  by  6s. 
The  results  are  shown  in  the  following  table : 


Number 
of  Per¬ 
sons 

Percentage 
of  Wage¬ 
earning 

Classes 

Percentage 
of  Total 
Population 
of  City 

Persons  below  the  "primary”  poverty  line  . 
Persons  belonging  to  families  whose  total  weekly 
earnings  are  either  below  or  not  more  than  2s. 

7,230 

15.46 

9.91 

above  the  "primary”  poverty  line  . 

Persons  belonging  to  families  whose  total  weekly 
earnings  are  either  below  or  not  more  than  6s. 

9,542 

20.40 

13.09 

above  the  "primary”  poverty  line  . 

15,727 

33-63 

21-5 

xIt  need  hardly  be  said  that  an  expenditure  may  be  in  the  truest  sense  ’'useful” 
which  is  not  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  merely  physical  efficiency. 

2 Careful  analysis  made  in  Chapter  IV  (Rowntree,  Poverty)  places  the  stand¬ 
ard  of  minimum  necessary  expenditure  per  week  at  7s.  per  one  man  or  one  woman 
and  at  21s.  8d.  for  husband,  wife,  and  three  children.  See  also  infra,  p.  545. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


533 


The  question  may  arise:  Do  the  family  earnings  comprise  the 
whole  of  the  family  income?  Are  there  not  other  sources  of  income 
which  have  not  been  taken  into  account  ?  In  the  country,  for  instance, 
the  money  wage  of  the  agricultural  labourer  by  no  means  always  rep¬ 
resents  his  total  income ;  he  is  often  able  to  augment  this  considerably 
by  means  of  the  produce  from  his  allotment,  or  by  keeping  hens,  pigs, 
etc.  Does  the  town  dweller  augment  his  income  in  some  correspond¬ 
ing  way?  Inquiry  has  been  made  into  this  question  in  York,  and  I 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  extent  to  which  incomes  are 
augmented  by  such  irregular  means  is  very  small,  and  would  not  ma¬ 
terially  affect  the  figures  we  have  been  considering. 

The  chief  possible  sources  of  such  additional  income  would  seem  to  be : 

1 .  Money  sent  home  by  children  who  are  working  and  who  are  not 
living  at  home,  e.g.  domestic  servants,  etc.  It  is  well  known  that 
amongst  the  Irish  and  Welsh  people,  children  who  are  living  away 
from  home  frequently  send  considerable  sums  to  their  parents,  but 
careful  inquiry  at  registry  offices  and  elsewhere  has  elicited  the  infor¬ 
mation  that  any  such  additions  to  the  incomes  of  working-class 
families  in  York  are  probably  very  small,  being  as  a  rule  confined  to 
gifts  at  Christmas  or  on  birthdays,  and  even  these  additions  are  to  a 
certain  extent  neutralised  by  gifts  of  clothing,  etc.,  sent  to  their 
children  by  parents. 

2.  Allotment  gardens,  keeping  hens  and  pigs,  etc.  There  are  not 
more  than  about  120  allotments  in  York,  and  these  are  for  the  most 
part  rented  by  well-to-do  working  men,  whose  money  earnings  alone 
are  sufficient  to  place  them  above  the  " primary”  poverty  line.  The 
number  of  hens  and  pigs  kept  by  working  men  in  York  is  insignificant. 

3.  " Stray ”  money.  There  are  four  "strays”  in  York.  These  are 
common  lands  held  by  the  freemen  of  York,  many  of  whom  are 
wage-earning  men.  The  profits  accruing  from  the  strays  (i.e.  sums 
received  for  pasturage)  are  distributed  yearly  amongst  the  freemen. 
But  the  sums  thus  distributed  are  small.  During  the  last  three  years 
(1897-99)  the  average  annual  sum  received  by  each  freeman  was 
under  12s.  per  annum. 

4.  Payments  for  occasional  service  and  "odd  jobs,”  such  for  in¬ 
stance  as  payments  made  to  women  for  an  occasional  day’s  washing, 
or  for  sitting  up  at  night  with  a  sick  person,  etc.,  or  payments  to 
children  for  going  errands,  etc.  In  all  cases  in  which  these  con- 


534 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


stituted  a  considerable  portion  of  the  income,  the  investigators  made  a 
note  of  the  fact,  and  included  such  earnings  in  the  family  total.  There 
will,  of  course,  be  occasional  earnings  under  this  head  which  have  not 
been  noted,  but  their  extent  would  not  be  so  large  as  materially  to 
affect  the  figures  given.  In  the  case  of  such  occupations  as  railway 
porters,  cabmen,  etc.,  an  average  allowance  for  "  tips  ”  was  always  made. 

5.  Charitable  gifts.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  amount  of  money, 
food,  etc.,  given  in  the  form  of  charity  is  considerable,  but  it  is  not 
possible  to  ascertain  the  extent  of  such  gifts.  And  for  the  purposes 
of  this  chapter  the  information  is  not  needed.  For,  broadly  speaking, 
the  recipients  of  charity  are  the  poor,  i.e.  those  who  from  causes 
"primary”  or  "secondary”  are  below  the  poverty  line;  and  the  num¬ 
ber  of  the  poor  who  are  lifted  above  it  by  charity  must  be  small.  An 
analysis  of  the  persons  in  the  city  who  are  below  the  "primary” 
poverty  line  shows  that  more  than  one  half  of  these  are  members  of 
families  whose  wage-earner  is  in  work  but  in  receipt  of  insufficient 
wages.  It  is  probable  that  the  great  bulk  of  the  charity  that  is  given 
goes  to  those  who  are  ill  or  out  of  work,  and  to  widows.  The 
serious  import  of  the  figures  given  in  this  chapter  would,  however, 
have  been  but  little  lessened  had  there  been  reason  to  believe  that  a 
considerable  number  of  those  below  the  "primary”  poverty  line  had 
been  lifted  above  it  through  private  charity.  Any  gain  in  material 
comfort  would  have  been  dearly  purchased  at  the  cost  of  independence 
of  character,  and  the  consequences  of  such  artificial  support  would  be 
grave,  economically  as  well  as  morally. 

What  is  the  Extent  of  " Secondary  ”  Poverty  in  York  ? 

At  the  beginning  of  this  chapter,  those  families  living  in  a  state 
of  "secondary”  poverty  were  defined  as  families  whose  total  earnings 
would  be  sufficient  for  the  maintenance  of  merely  physical  efficiency 
were  it  not  that  some  portion  of  it  is  absorbed  by  other  expendi¬ 
ture,  either  useful  or  wasteful.  To  ascertain  this  by  direct  inquiry 
it  would  have  been  necessary  to  know,  in  every  case,  the  average  sum 
spent  weekly  on  drink,  gambling,  and  otherwasteful  expenditure,  and  to 
ascertain  alsojvhether  the  wife  was  a  thrifty  housekeeper  or  the  reverse. 

The  number  of  persons  living  in  "secondary”  poverty  was  ascer¬ 
tained  in  the  following  way.  The  investigator,  in  the  course  of  his 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


535 


house-to-house  visitation,  noted  down  the  households  where  there  were 
evidences  of  poverty,  i.e.  obvious  want  and  squalor.  Direct  infor¬ 
mation  was  often  obtained  from  neighbours,  or  from  a  member  of 
the  household  concerned,  to  the  effect  that  the  father  or  mother  was 
a  heavy  drinker ;  in  other  cases  the  pinched  faces  of  the  ragged  chil¬ 
dren  told  their  own  tale  of  poverty  and  privation. 

Judging  in  this  way,  partly  by  appearance,  and  partly  from  infor¬ 
mation  given,  I  have  been  able  to  arrive  at  a  fair  estimate  of  the  total 
number  of  persons  living  in  poverty  in  York.  From  this  total  number 
I  subtracted  the  number  of  those  ascertained  to  be  living  in  "primary” 
poverty;  the  difference  represents  those  living  in  "secondary”  pov¬ 
erty.1  It  must  be  remembered  that  some  families  are  living  in  ap¬ 
parent  poverty  in  the  slums,  not  because  of  inadequate  income,  but 
because  of  their  attachment  to  the  neighbourhood  and  their  distaste 
for  the  effort  required  by  a  life  among  better  surroundings.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  may  be  some  families  living  in  clean  and  tidy  houses 
who  are  from  one  cause  or  another  without  the  necessaries  for  physical 
efficiency,  although  their  incomes  are  not  so  low  as  to  place  them  be¬ 
low  the  "primary”  poverty  line.  For  instance,  they  may  be  paying  off 
some  debt  contracted  at  a  time  when  the  wage-earner  was  out  of  work. 

The  investigator,  judging  by  appearances,  would  place  such  families 
above  the  poverty  line,  whilst  he  would  no  doubt  place  below  it  some 
families  living  in  the  slums  who  should  not  have  been  so  counted. 
Probably,  however,  these  sources  of  error  to  a  large  degree  cancel 
each  other. 

By  the  method  described  above,  it  was  found  that  families  com¬ 
prising  20,302  persons,  equal  to  43.4  per  cent  of  the  wage-earning 
class,  and  to  27.84  per  cent’ of  the  total  population  of  the  city,  were 
living  in  poverty.  If  the  7230  persons  found  to  be  living  in  "primary” 
poverty  are  deducted,  it  is  found  that  13,072  persons,  or  17.93  per 
cent  of  the  population,  were  living  in  "secondary”  poverty.2 

That  nearly  30  per  cent  of  the  population  are  found  to  be  living  in 
poverty  is  a  fact  of  the  gravest  significance. 

1The  total  earnings  of  every  working-class  family  in  York  were  ascertained, 
the  numbers  living  in  "primary”  poverty  being  determined  by  a  comparison  be¬ 
tween  total  family  earnings  and  necessary  family  expenditure. 

2 The  total  population  of  75,812  is  sub-classified  as  follows:  servant  keeping 
class  21,830,  servants  4296,  persons  in  public  institutions  2932,  working  classes 
above  poverty  line  26,452,  persons  in  poverty  20,302. —  Ed. 


536 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  Immediate  Causes  of  Primary  Poverty  in  York 

It  is  no  part  of  the  object  of  this  chapter  to  discuss  the  ultimate 
causes  of  poverty.  To  attempt  this  would  be  to  raise  the  whole  social 
question.  The  object  is  rather  to  indicate  the  immediate  causes  of 
(i)  "primary”  poverty,  and  (2)  "secondary”  poverty  in  York. 

These  appear  to  fall  under  the  following  headings: 

1.  Death  of  chief  wage-earner. 

2.  Incapacity  of  chief  wage-earner  through  accident,  illness,  or 
old  age. 

3.  Chief  wage-earfier  out  of  work. 

4.  Chronic  irregularity  of  work  ‘(sometimes  due  to  incapacity  or 
unwillingness  of  worker  to  undertake  regular  employment). 

5.  Largeness  of  family,  i.e.  cases  in  which  the  family  is  in  poverty 
because  there  are  more  than  four  children,  though  it  would  not  have 
been  in  poverty  had  the  number  of  children  not  exceeded  four. 

6.  Lowness  of  wage,  i.e.  where  the  chief  wage-earner  is  in  regular 
work,  but  at  wages  which  are  insufficient  to  maintain  a  moderate  family 
(i.e.  not  more  than  four  children)  in  a  state  of  physical  efficiency. 

On  analysing  the  cases  of  "primary”  poverty  in  York,  we  find 
that  they  are  immediately  due  to  one  or  other  of  the  above  causes 
in  the  following  proportions: 


Immediate  Cause  of  "Primary” 
Poverty 

Number 

of 

Children 

Affected 

N  umber 

OF 

Adults 

Affected 

Total 

Number 

Affected 

Percentage  of 
Total  Popula¬ 
tion  Living 
under  "Primary” 
Poverty  Line 

Death  of  chief  wage-earner  . 

460 

670 

1130 

15-63 

Illness  or  old  age  of  chief  wage- 

earner  . 

81 

289 

370 

5  ii 

Chief  wage-earner  out  of  work  . 

78 

89 

167 

2.31 

Irregularity  of  work  .... 

94 

III 

205 

2.83 

Largeness  of  family,  i.e.  more  than 
four  children . 

1122 

480 

1602 

22.16 

In  regular  work,  but  at  low  wages 

2380 

1376 

3756 

5i  -96 

4215 

3015 

7230 

. 

100.00 

1 

It  is  seen  that  the  wages  paid  for  unskilled  labour  in  York  are 
insufficient  to  provide  food,  shelter,  and  clothing  adequate  to  main- 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


537 


tain  a  family  of  moderate  size  in  a  state  of  bare  physical  efficiency. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  the  above  estimates  of  necessary  mini¬ 
mum  expenditure  are  based  upon  the  assumption  that  the  diet  is 
even  less  generous  than  that  allowed  to  able-bodied  paupers  in  the 
York  Workhouse,  and  that  no  allowance  is  made  for  any  expendi¬ 
ture  other  than  that  absolutely  required  for  the  maintenance  of 
merely  physical  efficiency. 

And  let  us  clearly  understand  what  " merely  physical  efficiency” 
means.  A  family  living  upon  the  scale  allowed  for  in  this  estimate 
must  never  spend  a.  penny  on  railway  fare  or  omnibus.  They  must 
never  go  into  the  country  unless  they  walk.  They  must  never  pur¬ 
chase  a  halfpenny  newspaper  or  spenji  a  penny  to  buy  a  ticket  for  a 
popular  concert.  They  must  write  no  letters  to  absent  children,  for 
they  cannot  afford  to  pay  the  postage.  They  must  never  contribute 
anything  to  their  church  or  chapel,  or  give  any  help  to  a  neighbour 
which  costs  them  money.  They  cannot  save,  nor  can  they  join  sick 
club  or  Trade  Union,  because  they  cannot  pay  the  necessary  sub¬ 
scriptions.  The  children  must  have  no  pocket  money  for  dolls, 
marbles,  or  sweets.  The  father  must  smoke  no  tobacco,  and  must 
drink  no  beer.  The  mother  must  never  buy  any  pretty  clothes  for 
herself  or  for  her  children,  the  character  of  the  family  wardrobe  as 
for  the  family  diet  being  governed  by  the  regulation,  "  Nothing  must 
be  bought  but  that  which  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  maintenance 
of  physical  health,  and  what  is  bought  must  be  of  the  plainest  and 
most  economical  description.”  Should  a  child  fall  ill,  it  must  be  at¬ 
tended  by  the  parish  doctor ;  should  it  die,  it  must  be  buried  by  the 
parish.  Finally,  the  wage-earner  must  never  be  absent  from  his  work 
for  a  single  day. 

If  any  of  these  conditions  are  broken,  the  extra  expenditure  in¬ 
volved  is  met,  and  can  only  be  met,  by  limiting  the  diet ;  or,  in  other 
words,  by  sacrificing  physical  efficiency. 

That  few  York  labourers  receiving  20s.  or  21s.  per  week  submit 
to  these  iron  conditions  in  order  to  maintain  physical  efficiency  is 
obvious.  And  even  were  they  to  submit,  physical  efficiency  would  be 
unattainable  for  those  who  had  three  or  more  children  dependent 
upon  them.  It  cannot  therefore  be  too  clearly  understood,  nor  too 
emphatically  repeated,  that  whenever  a  worker  having  three  children 
dependent  on  him,  and  receiving  not  more  than  21s.  8d,  per  week, 


S3§ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


indulges  in  any  expenditure,  beyond  that  required  for  the  barest  phys¬ 
ical  needs,  he  can  do  so  only  at  the  cost  of  his  own  physical  efficiency, 
or  of  that  of  some  members  of  his  family. 

If  a  labourer  has  but  two  children,  these  conditions  will  be  better 
to  the  extent  of  2s.  iod. ;  and  if  he  has  but  one,  they  will  be  better 
to  the  extent  of  5s.  8d.  And,  again,  as  soon  as  as  his  children  begin  to 
work,  their  earnings  will  raise  the  family  above  the  poverty  line.  But 
the  fact  remains  that  every  labourer  who  has  as  many  as  three  chil¬ 
dren  must  pass  through  a  time,  probably  lasting  for  about  ten  years, 
when  he  will  be  in  a  state  of  "primary”  poverty;  in  other  words, 
when  he  and  his  family  will  be  underfed.1 

The  life  of  a  labourer  is  marked  by  five  alternating  periods  of  want 
and  comparative  plenty.  During  early  childhood,  unless  his  father 
is  a  skilled  worker,  he  probably  will  be  in  poverty ;  this  will  last  until 
he,  or  some  of  his  brothers  or  sisters,  begin  to  earn  money  and  thus 
augment  their  father’s  wage  sufficiently  to  raise  the  family  above  the 
poverty  line.  Then  follows  the  period  during  which  he  is  earning 
money  and  living  under  his  parents’  roof ;  for  some  portion  of  this 

1Some  readers  may  be  inclined  to  say,  upon  reading  the  above,  "This  surely 
is  an  over-statement.  Look  at  the  thousands  of  families  with  incomes  of  18s.  to 
21s.,  or  even  less,  where  the  men  do  smoke  and  do  spend  money  upon  drink, 
and  the  women  do  spend  money  on  dress  and  recreation,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  it 
all,  they  seem  happy  and  contented,  and  the  men  make  good  workmen!”  Such 
arguments  against  the  actual  pressure  and  the  consequences  of  poverty  will,  how¬ 
ever,  upon  closer  investigation  be  found  to  be  illusory.  They  come  amongst  a 
class  of  arguments  against  which  Bastiat,  the  French  economist,  warned  his  read¬ 
ers  in  a  series  of  articles  entitled,  "That  which  is  seen,  and  that  which  is  not  seen.” 
In  these  articles  the  writer  pointed  out  the  danger  of  forming  judgments  upon 
social  and  economic  questions  without  thoroughly  investigating  them. 

In  the  argument  referred  to  above,  the  money  spent  by  the  poor  upon  drink, 
dress,  or  recreation  is  one  of  the  "things  that  are  seen.”  There  are,  however, 
consequences  of  poverty  which  are  "not  seen.” 

We  see  that  many  a  labourer,  who  has  a  wife  and  three  or  four  children,  is 
healthy  and  a  good  worker,  although  he  only  earns  a  pound  a  week.  What  we  do 
not  see  is  that  in  order  to  give  him  enough  food,  mother  and  children  habitually 
go  short,  for  the  mother  knows  that  all  depends  upon  the  wages  of  her  husband. 

We  see  the  man  go  to  the  public-house  and  spend  money  on  drink ;  we  do  not 
see  the  children  going  supperless  to  bed  in  consequence. 

These  unseen  consequences  of  poverty  have,  however,  to  be  reckoned  with  — 
the  high  death-rate  among  the  poor,  the  terribly  high  infant  mortality,  the 
stunted  stature  and  dulled  intelligence, —  all  these  and  others  are  not  seen  unless 
we  look  beneath  the  surface ;  and  yet  all  are  having  their  effect  upon  the  poor, 
and  consequently  upon  the  whole  country. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


539 


period  he  will  be  earning  more  money  than  is  required  for  lodging, 
food,  and  clothes.  This  is  his  chance  to  save  money.  If  he  has  saved 
enough  to  pay  for  furnishing  a  cottage,  this  period  of  comparative 
prosperity  may  continue  after  marriage  until  he  has  two  or  three 
children,  when  poverty  will  again  overtake  him.  This  period  of  pov¬ 
erty  will  last  perhaps  for  ten  years,  i.e.  until  the  first  child  is  fourteen 
years  old  and  begins  to  earn  wages ;  but  if  there  are  more  than  three 
children  it  may  last  longer.1  While  the  children  are  earning,  and 
before  they  leave  the  home  to  marry,  the  man  enjoys  another  period 
of  prosperity — possibly,  however,  only  to  sink  back  again  into  pov¬ 
erty  when  his  children  have  married  and  left  him,  and  he  himself  is 
too  old  to  work,  for  his  income  has  never  permitted  his  saving  enough 
for  him  and  his  wife  to  live  upon  for  more  than  a  very  short  time. 

A  labourer  is  thus  in  poverty,  and  therefore  underfed — 

1.  In  childhood — when  his  constitution  is  being  built  up. 

2.  In  early  middle  life — when  he  should  be  in  his  prime. 

3.  In  old  age. 

The  accompanying  diagram  may  serve  to  illustrate  this : 


It  should  be  noted  that  the  women  are  in  poverty  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  period  that  they  are  bearing  children. 

We  thus  see  that  the  7230  persons  shown  by  this  inquiry  to  be  in  a 
state  of  " primary”  poverty,  represent  merely  that  section  who  hap¬ 
pened  to  be  in  one  of  these  poverty  periods  at  the  time  the  inquiry 
was  made.  Many  of  these  will,  in  course  of  time,  pass  on  into  a 
period  of  comparative  prosperity ;  this  will  take  place  as  soon  as  the 

1  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  family  are  in  poverty,  and  consequently  are  under¬ 
fed,  during  the  first  ten  or  more  years  of  the  children’s  lives. 


540 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


children,  now  dependent,  begin  to  earn.  But  their  places  below  the 
poverty  line  will  be  taken  by  others  who  are  at  present  living  in  that 
prosperous  period  previous  to,  or  shortly  after,  marriage.  Again, 
many  now  classed  as  above  the  poverty  line  were  below  it  until  the 
children  began  to  earn.  The  proportion  of  the  community  who  at  one 
period  or  other  of  their  lives  suffer  from  poverty  to  the  point  of  phys¬ 
ical  privation  is  therefore  much  greater,  and  the  injurious  effects  of 
such  a  condition  are  much  more  widespread  than  would  appear  from 
a  consideration  of  the  number  who  can  be  shown  to  be  below  the 
poverty  line  at  any  given  moment. 

The  above  remarks  regarding  the  poverty  periods  in  a  labourer’s 
life  emphasise  the  fact  that  the  great  opportunity  for  a  labourer  to 
save  money  is  after  he  has  reached  manhood,  and  before  marriage. 
In  view  of  this  consideration,  it  was  felt  that  it  would  be  of  interest 
to  ascertain  whether  the  age  at  which  labourers  marry  is  early  in 
comparison  with  that  of  other  sections  of  the  community. 

With  this  object  the  writer  has  obtained  particulars  regarding  the 
marriages  which  took  place  in  York  during  1898  and  1899,  the  age 
and  occupation  of  the  bridegroom  and  the  age  of  the  bride  being  as¬ 
certained  in  each  case.  In  most  cases  the  street  in  which  the  bride¬ 
groom  lived  was  ascertained,  but  the  name  of  bride  or  bridegroom 
was  not  ascertained  in  any  case.  Information  was  obtained  regarding 
1123  marriages  of  persons  belonging  to  the  working  class.  In  the  case 
of  626  of  these  the  bridegrooms  were  skilled  workers,  while  497  were 
unskilled  labourers. 

An  examination  of  the  ages  at  which  these  1123  persons  married 
shows  that  while  nearly  one-third  of  the  labourers  married  under 
twenty-three  years  of  age,  less  than  one-fifth  of  the  skilled  workers 
did  so,  and  that  58  per  cent  of  the  labourers  married  under  twenty- 
six  years  as  compared  with  49  per  cent  of  the  skilled  workers. 

In  view  of  the  above  figures,  it  is  clear  that  a  considerably  larger 
proportion  of  labourers  than  of  skilled  workers  marry  young.  This 
fact  no  doubt  indicates  how  the  exercise  of  prudence  and  of  fore¬ 
thought  increases  as  you  advance  in  the  social  scale,  but  two  other 
important  causes  of  early  marriages  amongst  the  labouring  class  must 
not  be  overlooked,  viz. : 

1.  The  overcrowded  condition  of  the  homes  from  which  the  labourers 
chiefly  come  makes  them  anxious  to  have  a  home  of  their  own,  in 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


54i 


which,  at  any  rate,  so  long  as  there  are  no  children,  they  will  be 
free  from  the  many  inconveniences  inseparable  from  overcrowded 
surroundings. 

2 .  Generally  speaking  the  labourers  have  fewer  intellectual  interests 
and  pleasures  than  skilled  workers,  and  doubtless  some  of  them  enter 
upon  marriage  partly  with  a  view  to  relieving  the  monotony  of 
their  lives. 

Immediate  Causes  of  " Secondary  ”  Poverty 

Number  of  persons  living  in  "secondary  ”  poverty  in  York  13,072 


Percentage  of  total  population .  18 

Percentage  of  working-class  population .  28 


It  will  be  remembered  that  the  amount  of  "secondary”  poverty  was 
arrived  at  by  estimating  the  total  poverty  in  York,  and  then  subtract¬ 
ing  the  "primary”  poverty,  which  had  been  previously  ascertained. 

The  amount  of  "primary”  poverty  was  based  upon  a  low  estimate 
of  the  minimum  expenditure  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  physi¬ 
cal*  efficiency.  Had  a  higher  estimate  been  adopted,  the  effect  would 
have  been  to  increase  the  proportion  of  "primary”  poverty  and  to 
decrease  the  proportion  of  "secondary”  poverty. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  in  addition  to  those  returned  as  being 
in  "primary”  poverty,  there  are  no  fewer  than  2312  persons  belonging 
to  families  with  incomes  only  2  s.  above  the  standard  adopted  in 
fixing  the  "primary”  poverty  line.  In  other  words,  these  families 
are  living  practically  on  the  "primary”  poverty  line.  Had  they  been 
included  amongst  those  returned  as  being  in  "primary”  poverty,  the 
proportion  of  "primary”  to  total  poverty  would  have  been  raised 
from  35.6  per  cent  to  47  per  cent,  and  the  proportion  of  "secondary” 
to  total  poverty  would  have  fallen  correspondingly  from  64.4  per 
cent  to  53  per  cent.  It  is  thus  seen  that  the  point  at  which  "primary” 
passes  into  "secondary”  poverty  is  largely  a  matter  of  opinion,  de¬ 
pending  upon  the  standard  of  well-being  which  is  considered  neces¬ 
sary.  But  even  if  a  higher  standard  were  chosen  than  that  adopted 
(see  supra ,  page  532)  when  fixing  the  "primary”  poverty  line,  there 
would  still  remain  a  considerable  amount  of  poverty  indisputably 
"secondary”  which  would  appear  to  be  mainly  due  to  the  following 
immediate  causes,  namely :  drink,  betting,  and  gambling,  ignorant  or 


542 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


careless  housekeeping,  and  other  improvident  expenditure,  the  latter 
often  induced  by  irregularity  of  income. 

It  is  not  possible  to  ascertain  the  proportion  of  "secondary” 
poverty  assignable  to  each  of  the  above  causes;  probably  all  are 
factors  in  the  poverty  of  many  households,  and  they  act  and  react 
powerfully  upon  each  other.  There  can  be  but  little  doubt,  however, 
that  the  predominant  factor  is  drink.  I  have  been  unable  to  form 
any  close  estimate  of  the  average  sum  spent  weekly  upon  drink  by 
working-class  families  in  York,  but  a  careful  estimate  has  been  made 
by  others  of  the  average  sum  expended  weekly  by  working-class 
families  throughout  the  United  Kingdom.  This  average  is  arrived 
at,  in  the  first  instance,  by  dividing  that  portion  of  the  yearly  national 
drink-bill  which  competent  authorities  assign  to  the  working  classes 
by  the  number  of  working-class  families  in  England.  This  results  in 
a  figure  of  6s.  iod.  as  the  average  weekly  sum  spent  upon  drink  by 
each  such  family.  This  estimate  has  been  examined  in  great  detail 
by  Messrs.  Rowntree  and  Sherwell,  who  have  tested  the  figure  in  a 
great  number  of  ways.1  The  result  of  their  investigation  is  summed 
up  as  follows: 

That  a  large  proportion  of  the  working  classes  spend  very  much  less 
than  the  amount  suggested  is  certain,  but  it  is  equally  certain  that  a  con¬ 
siderable  number  spend  very  much  more,  and  when  all  possible  deductions 
have  been  made,  it  is  doubtful  if  the  average  family  expenditure  of  the 
working  classes  upon  intoxicants  can  be  reckoned  at  less  than  6s.  per  week. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  average  sum  spent  upon 
drink  by  working-class  families  in  York  is  lower  than  the  average  for 
the  United  Kingdom.  An  expenditure  of  6s.  per  family  upon  drink 
would  absorb  more  than  one-sixth  of  the  average  total  family  income 
of  the  working  classes  of  York. 

With  regard  to  betting  and  gambling,  it  is  obviously  not  possible 
to  obtain  even  approximate  statistics  regarding  the  extent  to  which 
the  habit  prevails  amongst  the  working  classes,  or  to  measure  the 
amount  of  poverty  which  it  causes.  There  is,  however,  ample  evidence 
that  it  is  very  largely  indulged  in  not  only  by  working  men,  but  also 
by  women,  and,  to  a  lesser  extent,  even  by  children. 

1See  The  Temperance  Problem  and  Social  Reform ,  by  Rowntree  and  Sherwell, 
7th  and  subsequent  editions,  p.  20.  Some  of  the  figures  used  in  forming  their 
estimate  were  collected  in  York. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


543 


Though  we  speak  of  the  above  causes  as  those  mainly  accounting 
for  most  of  the  "  secondary  ”  poverty,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
they  are  themselves  often  the  outcome  of  the  adverse  conditions 
under  which  too  many  of  the  working  classes  live.  Housed  for  the 
most  part  in  sordid  streets,  frequently  under  overcrowded  and  un¬ 
healthy  conditions,  compelled  very  often  to  earn  their  bread  by 
monotonous  and  laborious  work,  and  unable,  partly  through  limited 
education  and  partly  through  overtime  and  other  causes  of  physical 
exhaustion,  to  enjoy  intellectual  recreation,  what  wonder  that  many 
of  these  people  fall  a  ready  prey  to  the  publican  and  the  bookmaker  ? 
The  limited  horizon  of  the  mother  has  a  serious  effect  upon  her  chil¬ 
dren  ;  their  home  interests  are  narrow  and  unattractive,  and  too  often 
they  grow  up  prepared  to  seek  relief  from  the  monotony  of  their  work 
and  environment  in  the  public-house,  or  in  the  excitement  of  betting. 

The  writer  is  not  forgetful  of  the  larger  questions  bearing  upon  the 
welfare  of  human  society  which  lie  at  the  back  of  the  considerations 
just  advanced.  It  would,  however,  lead  into  fields  of  thought  be¬ 
yond  the  scope  of  this  volume  adequately  to  state  these  problems. 
Probably  it  will  be  admitted  that  they  include  questions  dealing  with 
land  tenure,  with  the  relative  duties  and  powers  of  the  State  and  of  the 
individual,  and  with  legislation  affecting  the  aggregation  or  the  dis¬ 
tribution  of  wealth.  While  the  immediate  causes  of  " secondary” 
poverty  call  for  well-considered  and  resolute  action,  its  ultimate 
elimination  will  only  be  possible  when  these  causes  are  dealt  with  as  a 
part  of,  and  in  relation  to,  the  wider  social  problem. 

Summary  and  Conclusion 

Method  and  scope  oj  inquiry.  The  information  regarding  the  num¬ 
bers,  occupation,  and  housing  of  the  working  classes  was  gained  by 
direct  inquiry,  which  practically  covered  every  working-class  family 
in  York.  In  some  cases  direct  information  was  also  obtained  re¬ 
garding  earnings,  but  in  the  majority  of  cases  these  were  estimated, 
the  information  at  the  disposal  of  the  writer  enabling  him  to  do 
this  with  considerable  accuracy. 

The  poverty  line.  Having  thus  made  an  estimate,  based  upon  care¬ 
fully  ascertained  facts,  of  the  earnings  of  practically  every  working- 
class  family  in  York,  the  next  step  was  to  show  the  proportion  of 


544 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


the  total  population  living  in  poverty.'  Families  regarded  as  living 
in  poverty  were  grouped  under  two  heads:  primary  poverty  and 
secondary  poverty. 

To  ascertain  the  total  number  living  in  " primary”  poverty  it  was 
necessary  to  ascertain  the  minimum  cost  upon  which  families  of  vari¬ 
ous  sizes  could  be  maintained  in  a  state  of  physical  efficiency.  This 
question  was  discussed  under  three  heads,  viz.  the  necessary  expendi¬ 
ture  for  (i)  food;  (2)  rent;  and  (3)  all  else.  It  was  then  shown 
that  for  a  family  of  father,  mother,  and  three  children,  the  minimum 
weekly  expenditure  upon  which  physical  efficiency  can  be  maintained 
in  York  is  21s.  8d.,  made  up  as  follows: 


s.  d. 

Food . 12  9 

Rent  (say) . 4  0 

Clothing,  light,  fuel,  etc . 411 

21  8 


The  necessary  expenditure  for  families  larger  or  smaller  than  the 
above  will  be  correspondingly  greater  or  less.  This  estimate  was  based 
upon  the  assumptions  that  the  diet  is  selected  with  a  careful  regard 
to  the  nutritive  values  of  various  food  stuffs,  and  that  these  are  all 
purchased  at  the  lowest  current  prices.  It  only  allows  for  a  diet  less 
generous  as  regards  variety  than  that  supplied  to  able-bodied  paupers 
in  workhouses.  It  further  assumes  that  no  clothing  is  purchased  which 
is  not  absolutely  necessary  for  health,  and  assumes  too  that  it  is  of  the 
plainest  and  most  economical  description.  No  expenditure  of  any 
kind  is  allowed  for  beyond  that  which  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the 
maintenance  of  merely  physical  efficiency.  The  number  of  persons 
whose  earnings  are  so  low  that  they  cannot  meet  the  expenditure 
necessary  for  the  above  standard  of  living,  stringent  to  severity  though 
it  is,  and  bare  of  all  creature  comforts,  was  shown  to  be  no  less  than 
7230,  or  almost  exactly  10  per  cent  of  the  total  population  of  the  city. 
These  persons,  then,  represent  those  who  are  in  "primary”  poverty. 

The  number  of  those  in  "secondary”  poverty  was  arrived  at  by  as¬ 
certaining  the  total  number  living  in  poverty,  and  subtracting  those 
living  in  "primary”  poverty.  The  investigators,  in  the  course  of  their 
house-to-house  visitation,  noted  those  families  who  were  obviously 
living  in  a  state  of  poverty,  i.e.  in  obvious  want  and  squalor.  Some- 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


545 


times  they  obtained  definite  information  that  the  bulk  of  the  earnings 
was  spent  in  drink  or  otherwise  squandered,  sometimes  the  external 
evidence  of  poverty  in  the  home  was  so  clear  as  to  make  verbal 
evidence  superfluous.  In  this  way  20,302  persons,  or  27.84  per  cent 
of  the  total  population,  were  returned  as  living  in  poverty.  Subtract¬ 
ing  those  whose  poverty  is  "  primary,”  we  arrive  at  the  number 
living  in  "secondary”  poverty,  viz.  13,072,  or  17.93  Per  cent  °f  the 
total  population. 

One  naturally  asks,  on  reading  these  figures,  how  far  they  represent 
the  proportion  of  poverty  in  other  towns.  The  only  statistics  which 
enable  us  to  form  an  opinion  upon  this  point  are  those  collected  in 
London  by  Mr.  Charles  Booth,  and  set  forth  in  his  Life  and  Labour 
of  the  People  in  London.  The  objects  of  Mr.  Booth’s  inquiry,  as 
explained  by  himself,  were  "to  show  the  numerical  relation  which 
poverty,  misery,  and  depravity  bear  to  regular  earnings,  and  to  de¬ 
scribe  the  general  conditions  under  which  each  class  lives.”  In  East 
London  Mr.  Booth  obtained  information  from  the  School  Board 
visitors  regarding  every  family  scheduled  by  the  Board  in  which  there 
were  children  of  school  age.  These  families  represented  about  one- 
half  of  the  working-class  population,  and  Mr.  Booth  assumed  that 
the  condition  of  the  whole  population  was  similar  to  that  of  the  part 
tested.  In  the  other  districts  of  London  Mr.  Booth,  in  order  to  com¬ 
plete  his  inquiry  in  a  reasonable  time,  was  obliged  to  adopt  a  rougher 
classification. 

From  the  information  thus  obtained,  which  he  checked  and  supple¬ 
mented  in  various  ways,  Mr.  Booth  estimated  that  30.7  per  cent  of 
the  total  population  of  London  were  living  in  poverty.1  Supposing, 
then,  that  the  same  standard  of  poverty  had  been  adopted  in  the 
two  inquiries,  a  comparison  between  the  poverty  in  York  and  that  of 
London  would  be  possible.  From  the  commencement  of  my  inquiry 
I  have  had  opportunities  of  consulting  with  Mr.  Booth,  and  com¬ 
paring  the  methods  of  investigation  and  the  standards  of  poverty 
adopted.  As  a  result  I  feel  no  hesitation  in  regarding  my  estimate  of 
the  total  poverty  in  York  as  comparable  with  Mr.  Booth’s  estimate 
of  the  total  poverty  in  London,  and  in  this  Mr.  Booth  agrees. 

xIn  estimating  the  poverty  in  London  Mr.  Booth  made  no  attempt  to  dif¬ 
ferentiate  between  ''primary”  and  "secondary”  poverty. 


546 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  proportions  arrived  at  for  the  total  population  living  in  poverty 
in  London  and  York  respectively  were  as  under: 

London . 3°-7  percent 

York . 27.84  per  cent 

the  proportion  of  the  population  living  in  poverty  in  York  may  be 
regarded  as  practically  the  same  as  in  London,  especially  when  we 
remember  that  Mr.  Booth’s  information  was  gathered  in  1887-1892,  a 
period  of  only  average  trade  prosperity,  whilst  the  York  figures  were 
collected  in  1899,  when  trade  was  unusually  prosperous. 

This  agreement  in  result  is  so  striking  that  it  is  perhaps  best  to  say 
that  I  did  not  set  out  upon  my  inquiry  with  the  object  of  proving  any 
preconceived  theory,  but  to  ascertain  actual  facts,  and  that  I  was 
myself  much  surprised  to  obtain  the  above  result.  We  have  been  ac¬ 
customed  to  look  upon  the  poverty  in  London  as  exceptional,  but  when 
the  result  of  careful  investigation  shows  that  the  proportion  of  poverty 
in  London  is  practically  equalled  in  what  may  be  regarded  as  a  typical 
provincial  town,  we  are  faced  by  the  startling  probability  that  from 
25  to  30  per  cent  of  the  town  populations  of  the  United  Kingdom  are 
living  in  poverty.  If  this  be  the  fact,  its  grave  significance  may  be 
realised  when  it  is  remembered  that,  in  1901,  77  per  cent  of  the  popu¬ 
lation  of  the  United  Kingdom  is  returned  as  "urban”  and  only  23  per 
cent  as  "rural.” 

The  results  0)  poverty.  The  facts  regarding  the  proportion  of  pov¬ 
erty  are  perhaps  the  most  important  which  have  been  dealt  with  in 
this  volume,  but  the  conditions  under  which  the  poor  live,  and  the 
effects  of  those  conditions,  especially  upon  their  physical  stamina,  will 
have  also  claimed  the  serious  attention  of  the  reader. 

Housing.  It  has  been  shown  that  in  York  4705  persons,  or  6.4  per 
cent  of  the  total  population,  are  living  more  than  two  persons  to  a 
room,  whilst  the  actual  number  who  are  living,  and  especially  sleeping, 
in  rooms  which  provide  inadequate  air-space  for  the  maintenance  of 
health  is  undoubtedly  very  much  greater.  Moreover,  the  impos¬ 
sibility  of  maintaining  the  decencies  of  life  in  these  overcrowded 
houses  is  a  factor  which  cannot  fail  to  affect  the  morals  of  their  in¬ 
habitants.  The  close  relation  which  exists  between  overcrowding 
and  poverty  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  94  per  cent  of  the  over¬ 
crowded  families  are  in  poverty  either  "primary”  or  "secondary.” 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


547 


Rent.  Although  rents  in  York  are  much  lower  than  in  many  towns, 
still  the  proportion  of  total  earnings  spent  in  rent  by  the  working 
classes  in  York  is  high,  varying  from  9  per  cent  in  the  few  favoured 
cases  where  the  total  earnings  reach  or  exceed  60s.,  to  29  per  cent  for 
those  whose  total  family  earnings  fall  below  18s.  weekly.  The  average 
proportion  of  total  family  earnings  spent  in  rent  by  all  sections  of  the 
working  classes  in  York  is  over  14  per  cent.  Although  York  is  not  a 
large  city,  and  freehold  land  within  three  miles  of  the  centre  of  the 
city  may  be  bought  for  £60  to  £80  an  acre,  it  nevertheless  contains 
slums  as  degradingly  filthy  as  any  to  be  found  in  London. 

Relation  of  poverty  to  health.  Turning  now  to  the  relation  of 
poverty  to  health,  it  has  been  shown  in  the  preceding  pages  how  low 
is  the  standard  of  health  amongst  the  very  poor.  This  was  tested 
not  only  by  the  general  and  infant  mortality  of  the  city,  but  by  an 
examination  of  the  physique  of  a  large  number  of  school  children. 
The  inferences  drawn  from  this  latter  examination  are  corroborated 
by  the  general  statistics  which  refer  to  the  health  standard  of  those 
who  seek  enlistment  in  the  army.  It  therefore  becomes  obvious  that 
the  widespread  existence  of  poverty  in  an  industrial  country  like  our 
own  must  seriously  retard  its  development. 

Workmen’s  household  budgets.  Concrete  evidence  is  advanced  as 
to  the  inadequate  nutrition  of  the  poorer  sections  of  the  labouring 
classes.  An  inquiry  into  the  diet  of  various  sections  of  the  com¬ 
munity  revealed  the  facts  (1)  that  the  diet  of  the  middle  classes  is 
generally  more  than  adequate ;  ( 2 )  that  of  the  well-to-do  artisan  is  on 
the  whole  adequate;  but  (3)  that  of  the  labouring  class  is  seriously 
inadequate.  Indeed,  the  labouring  class  receive  upon  the  average 
2  5  per  cent  less  food  than  has  been  proved  by  scientific  experts  to  be 
necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  physical  efficiency.  This  statement 
is  not  intended  to  imply  that  labourers  and  their  families  are  chroni¬ 
cally  hungry,  but  that  the  food  which  they  eat  (although  on  account 
of  its  bulk  it  satisfies  the  cravings  of  hunger)  does  not  contain  the 
nutrients  necessary  for  normal  physical  efficiency.  A  homely  illus¬ 
tration  will  make  the  point  clear.  A  horse  fed  upon  hay  does  not  feel 
hungry,  and  may  indeed  grow  fat,  but  it  cannot  perform  hard  and 
continuous  work  without  a  proper  supply  of  corn.  Just  so  the 
labourer,  though  perhaps  not  hungry,  is  unable  to  do  the  work  which 
he  could  easily  accomplish  upon  a  more  nutritious  diet. 


548 


THE  PROBLEM  OE  POVERTY 


As  the  investigation  into  the  conditions  of  life  in  this  typical 
provincial  town  has  proceeded,  the  writer  has  been  increasingly  im¬ 
pressed  with  the  gravity  of  the  facts  which  have  unfolded  themselves. 
That  in  this  land  of  abounding  wealth,  during  a  time  of  perhaps 
unexampled  prosperity,  probably  more  than  one-fourth  of  the  popu¬ 
lation  are  living  in  poverty,  is  a  fact  which  may  well  cause  great 
searchings  of  heart.  There  is  surely  need  for  a  greater  concentra¬ 
tion  of  thought  by  the  nation  upon  the  well-being  of  its  own  people, 
for  no  civilisation  can  be  sound  or  stable  which  has  at  its  base  this 
mass  of  stunted  human  life.  The  suffering  may  be  all  but  voiceless, 
and  we  may  long  remain  ignorant  of  its  extent  and  severity,  but 
when  once  we  realise  it  we  see  that  social  questions  of  profound  im¬ 
portance  await  solution.  What,  for  instance,  are  the  primary  causes 
of  this  poverty  ?  How  far  is  it  the  result  of  false  social  and  economic 
conditions?  If  it  be  due  in  part  to  faults  in  the  national  character, 
what  influences  can  be  exerted  to  impart  to  that  character  greater 
strength  and  thoughtfulness  ? 

The  object  of  the  writer,  however,  has  been  to  state  facts  rather 
than  to  suggest  remedies.  He  desires,  nevertheless,  to  express  his  be¬ 
lief  that  however  difficult  the  path  of  social  progress  may  be,  a  way 
of  advance  will  open  out  before  patient  and  penetrating  thought  if 
inspired  by  a  true  human  sympathy.  The  dark  shadow  of  the  Mal¬ 
thusian  philosophy  has  passed  away,  and  no  view  of  the  ultimate 
scheme  of  things  would  now  be  accepted  under  which  multitudes  of 
men  and  women  are  doomed  by  inevitable  law  to  a  struggle  for  exist¬ 
ence  so  severe  as  necessarily  to  cripple  or  destroy  the  higher  parts 
of  their  nature. 

72.  Conditions  of  Life  and  Labor  Among  the 
Wage-Earners  of  Pittsburgh1 

At  the  close  of  the  field  work  in  1908  we  summed  up  under  eight 
heads  the  results  of  the  Pittsburgh  Survey  as  to  the  conditions  of  life 
and  labor  among  the  wage-earners  of  the  American  steel  district. 
We  found :  ■ 

1  By  Edward  T.  Devine.  From  The  Pittsburgh  District  Civic  Frontage ,  pp.  3— 
4.  The  Pittsburgh  Survey,  edited  by  Paul  U.  Kellogg.  Copyright,  1914,  by  the 
Russell  Sage  Foundation,  New  York. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CAUSES  OF  POVERTY 


549' 


I.  An  altogether  incredible  amount  of  overwork  by  everybody,  reach¬ 
ing  its  extreme  in  the  twelve-hour  shift  for  seven  days  in  the  week  in 
the  steel  mills  and  the  railway  switchyards. 

II.  Low  wages  for  the  great  majority  of  the  laborers  employed  by  the 
mills,  not  lower  than  in  other  large  cities,  but  low  compared  with  prices, — 
so  low  as  to  be  inadequate  to  the  maintenance  of  a  normal  American  stand¬ 
ard  of  living;  wages  adjusted  to  the  single  man  in  the  lodging  house,  not  to 
the  responsible  head  of  a  family. 

III.  Still  lower  wages  for  women,  who  receive  for  example  in  one  of  the 
metal  trades,  in  which  the  proportion  of  women  is  great  enough  to  be  menac¬ 
ing,  one  half  as  much  as  unorganized  men  in  the  same  shops  and  one  third  as 
much  as  the  men  in  the  union. 

IV.  An  absentee  capitalism,  with  effects  strikingly  analogous  to  those 
of  absentee  landlordism,  of  which  also  Pittsburgh  furnishes  examples. 

V.  A  continuous  inflow  of  immigrants  with  low  standards,  attracted 
by  a  wage  which  is  high  by  the  standards  of  southeastern  Europe,  and  which 
yields  a  net  pecuniary  advantage  because  of  abnormally  low  expenditures 
for  food  and  shelter,  and  inadequate  provision  for  the  contingencies  of  sick¬ 
ness,  accident,  and  death. 

VI.  The  destruction  of  family  life,  not  in  any  imaginary  or  mystical 
sense,  but  by  the  demands  of  the  day’s  work,  and  by  the  very  demonstrable 
and  material  method  of  typhoid  fever  and  industrial  accidents;  both  pre¬ 
ventable,  but  costing  in  single  years  in  Pittsburgh  considerably  more  than  a 
thousand  lives,  and  irretrievably  shattering  nearly  as  many  homes. 

VII.  Archaic  social  institutions,  such  as  the  aldermanic  court,  the  ward 
school  district,  the  family  garbage  disposal,  and  the  unregenerate  charitable 
institution,  still  surviving  after  the  conditions  to  which  they  were  adapted 
have  disappeared. 

VIII.  The  contrast — which  does  not  become  blurred  by  familiarity  with 
any  detail —  .  .  .  between  the  prosperity  on  the  one  hand  of  the  most 
prosperous  of  all  the  communities  of  our  western  civilization,  with  its 
vast  natural  resources,  the  generous  fostering  of  government,  the  human 
energy,  the  technical  development,  the  gigantic  tonnage  of  the  mines  and 
mills,  the  enormous  capital  of  which  the  bank  balances  afford  an  indication  ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  neglect  of  life,  of  health,  of  physical  vigor,  even 
of  the  industrial  efficiency  of  the  individual.  Certainly  no  community  be¬ 
fore  in  America  or  Europe  has  ever  had  such  a  surplus,  and  never  before 
has  a  great  community  applied  what  it  had  so  meagerly  to  the  rational  pur¬ 
poses  of  human  life.  Not  by  gifts  of  libraries,  galleries,  technical  schools, 
and  parks,  but  by  the  cessation  of  toil  one  day  in  seven  and  sixteen  hours  in 
the  twenty-four,  by  the  increase  of  wages,  by  the  sparing  of  lives,  by  the 
prevention  of  accidents,  and  by  raising  the  standards  of  domestic  life,  should 
the  surplus  come  back  to  the  people  of  the  community  in  which  it  is  created. 


CHAPTER  XX 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING  AND  WAGE-EARNERS’  BUDGETS 

73.  The  Standard  of  Life1 

Necessaries.  It  is  common  to  divide  wealth  into  necessaries,  com¬ 
forts,  and  luxuries ;  the  first  class  including  all  things  required  to  meet 
wants  which  must  be  satisfied,  while  the  latter  consist  of  things  that 
meet  wants  of  a  less  urgent  character.  But  here  again  there  is  a 
troublesome  ambiguity.  When  we  say  that  a  want  must  be  satisfied, 
what  are  the  consequences  which  we  have  in  view  if  it  is  not  satisfied'? 
Do  they  include  death  ?  Or  do  they  extend  only  to  the  loss  of  strength 
and  vigour?  In  other  words,  are  necessaries  the  things  which  are 
necessary  for  life,  or  those  which  are  necessary  for  efficiency  ? 

The  term  Necessaries,  like  the  term  Productive,  has  been  used 
elliptically,  the  subject  to  which  it  refers  being  left  to  be  supplied  by 
the  reader;  and  since  the  implied  subject  has  varied,  the  reader  has 
often  supplied  one  which  the  writer  did  not  intend,  and  thus  misunder¬ 
stood  his  drift.  In  this,  as  in  the  preceding  case,  the  chief  source  of 
confusion  can  be  removed  by  supplying  explicitly  in  every  critical 
place  that  which  the  reader  is  intended  to  understand. 

The  older  use  of  the  term  Necessaries  was  limited  to  those  things 
which  were  sufficient  to  enable  the  labourers,  taken  one  with  another, 
to  support  themselves  and  their  families.  Adam  Smith  and  the  more 
careful  of  his  followers  observed  indeed  variations  in  the  standard  of 
comfort  and  "decency”:  and  they  recognized  that  differences  of 
climate  and  differences  of  custom  make  things  necessary  in  some  cases, 
which  are  superfluous  in  others.  But  Adam  Smith  was  influenced  by 
reasonings  of  the  Physiocrats:  they  were  based  on  the  condition  of 
the  French  people  in  the  eighteenth  century,  most  of  whom  had  no 
notion  of  any  necessaries  beyond  those  which  were  required  for  mere 

xBy  Alfred  Marshall,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  formerly  Professor  of  Political  Economy 
at  Cambridge  University.  Adapted  from  Principles  of  Economics ,  pp.  67-70,  529- 
532,  689-690.  Macmillan  &  Co.,  Limited,  London,  1920. 

55° 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


55i 


existence.  In  happier  times,  however,  a  more  careful  analysis  has 
made  it  evident  that  there  is  for  each  rank  of  industry,  at  any  time 
and  place,  a  more  or  less  clearly  defined  income  which  is  necessary  for 
merely  sustaining  its  members;  while  there  is  another  arid  larger 
income  which  is  necessary  for  keeping  it  in  full  efficiency. 

It  may  be  true  that  the  wages  of  any  industrial  class  might  have 
sufficed  to  maintain  a  higher  efficiency,  if  they  had  been  spent  with 
perfect  wisdom.  But  every  estimate  of  necessaries  must  be  relative 
to  a  given  place  and  time ;  and  unless  there  be  a  special  interpretation 
clause  to  the  contrary,  it  may  be  assumed  that  the  wages  will  be  spent 
with  just  that  amount  of  wisdom,  forethought,  and  unselfishness, 
which  prevails  in  fact  among  the  industrial  class  under  discussion. 
With  this  understanding  we  may  say  that  the  income  of  any  class  in 
the  ranks  of  industry  is  below  its  necessary  level,  when  any  increase 
in  their  income  would  in  the  course  of  time  produce  a  more  than  pro¬ 
portionate  increase  in  their  efficiency.  Consumption  may  be  econo¬ 
mized  by  a  change  of  habits,  but  any  stinting  of  necessaries  is  wasteful. 

Some  detailed  study  of  the  necessaries  for  efficiency  of  different 
classes  of  workers  will  have  to  be  made,  when  we  come  to  inquire  into 
the  causes  that  determine  the  supply  of  efficient  labour.  But  it  will 
serve  to  give  some  definiteness  to  our  ideas,  if  we  consider  here  what 
are  the  necessaries  for  the  efficiency  of  an  ordinary  agricultural  or  of 
an  unskilled  town  labourer  and  his  family,  in  England,  in  this  genera¬ 
tion.  They  may  be  said  to  consist  of  a  well-drained  dwelling  with 
several  rooms,  warm  clothing,  with  some  changes  of  underclothing, 
pure  water,  a  plentiful  supply  of  cereal  food,  with  a  moderate  allow¬ 
ance  of  meat  and  milk,  and  a  little  tea,  etc.,  some  education  and  some 
recreation,  and  lastly,  sufficient  freedom  for  his  wife  from  other  work 
to  enable  her  to  perform  properly  her  maternal  and  her  household 
duties.  If  in  any  district  unskilled  labour  is  deprived  of  any  of  these 
things,  its  efficiency  will  suffer  in  the  same  way  as  that  of  a  horse  that 
is  not  properly  tended,  or  a  steam-engine  that  has  an  inadequate 
supply  of  coals.  All  consumption  up  to  this  limit  is  strictly  produc¬ 
tive  consumption:  any  stinting  of  this  consumption  is  not  economical, 
but  wasteful. 

Conventional  necessaries.  In  addition,  perhaps,  some  consumption 
of  alcohol  and  tobacco,  and  some  indulgence  in  fashionable  dress  are 
in  many  places  so  habitual,  that  they  may  be  said  to  be  conventionally 


552  THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 

necessary,  since  in  order  to  obtain  them  the  average  man  and  woman 
will  sacrifice  some  things  which  are  necessary  for  efficiency.  Their 
wages  are  therefore  less  than  are  practically  necessary  for  efficiency, 
unless  they  provide  not  only  for  what  is  strictly  necessary  consump¬ 
tion,  but  include  also  a  certain  amount  of  conventional  necessaries. 

The  consumption  of  conventional  necessaries  by  productive  workers 
is  commonly  classed  as  productive  consumption  ;  but  strictly  speaking 
it  ought  not  to  be ;  and  in  critical  passages  a  special  interpretation 
clause  should  be  added  to  say  whether  or  not  they  are  included.  It 
should  however  be  noticed  that  many  things  which  are  rightly  de¬ 
scribed  as  superfluous  luxuries,  do  yet,  to  some  extent,  take  the  place 
of  necessaries ;  and  to  that  extent  their  consumption  is  productive 
when  they  are  consumed  by  producers. 

Relation  of  Standard  to  Work  and  Wages 

There  is  a  certain  consumption  which  is  strictly  necessary  for  each 
grade  of  work  in  this  sense,  that  if  any  of  it  is  curtailed  the  work 
cannot  be  done  efficiently :  the  adults  might  indeed  take  good  care  of 
themselves  at  the  expense  of  their  children,  but  that  would  only  defer 
the  decay  of  efficiency  for  one  generation.  Further  there  are  conven¬ 
tional  necessaries,  which  are  so  strictly  demanded  by  custom  and 
habit,  that  in  fact  people  generally  would  give  up  much  of  their  neces¬ 
saries,  strictly  so  called,  rather  than  go  without  the  greater  part  of 
these.  Thirdly  there  are  habitual  comforts,  which  some,  though  not 
all,  would  not  entirely  relinquish  even  when  hardly  pressed.  Many 
of  these  conventional  necessaries  and  customary  comforts  are  the 
embodiment  of  material  and  moral  progress.  Their  extent  varies  from 
age  to  age  and  from  place  to  place. 

Most  of  that  expenditure  which  is  not  strictly  economical  as  a  means 
towards  efficiency,  yet  helps  to  form  habits  of  ready  resourceful  en¬ 
terprise,  and  gives  that  variety  to  life  without  which  men  become  dull 
and  stagnant,  and  achieve  little  though  they  may  plod  much ;  and  it 
is  well  recognized  that  even  in  western  countries  skilled  labour  is 
generally  the  cheapest  where  wages  are  the  highest.  It  may  be  ad¬ 
mitted  that  the  industrial  development  of  Japan  is  tending  to  show 
that  some  of  the  more  expensive  conventional  necessaries  might  con¬ 
ceivably  be  given  up  without  a  corresponding  diminution  of  efficiency : 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


553 


but,  though  this  experience  may  be  fruitful  of  far-reaching  results  in 
the  future,  yet  it  has  little  bearing  on  the  past  and  the  present.  It 
remains  true  that,  taking  man  as  he  is,  and  has  been  hitherto,  in  the 
western  world  the  earnings  that  are  got  by  efficient  labour  are  not 
much  above  the  lowest  that  are  needed  to  cover  the  expenses 
of  rearing  and  training  efficient  workers,  and  of  sustaining  and  bring¬ 
ing  into  activity  their  full  energies. 

We  conclude  then  that  an  increase  of  wages,  unless  earned  under 
unwholesome  conditions,  almost  always  increases  the  strength,  physi¬ 
cal,  mental,  and  even  moral  of  the  coming  generation ;  and  that,  other 
things  being  equal,  an  increase  in  the  earnings  that  are  to  be  got  by 
labour  increases  its  rate  of  growth;  or,  in  other  words,  a  rise  in  its 
demand-price  increases  the  supply  of  it.1 

Standard  of  Life 

The  term  the  standard  of  life  is  here  taken  to  mean  the  standard  of 
activities  adjusted  to  wants.  Thus  a  rise  in  the  standard  of  life  im¬ 
plies  an  increase  of  intelligence  and  energy  and  self-respect ;  leading 
to  more  care  and  judgment  in  expenditure,  and  to  an  avoidance  of 
food  and  drink  that  gratify  the  appetite  but  afford  no  strength,  and  of 
ways  of  living  that  are  unwholesome  physically  and  morally.  A  rise 
in  the  standard  of  life  for  the  whole  population  will  much  increase 
the  national  dividend,  and  the  share  of  it  which  accrues  to  each  grade 
and  to  each  trade.  A  rise  in  the  standard  of  life  for  any  one  trade  or 
grade  will  raise  their  efficiency  and  therefore  their  own  real  wages :  it 
will  increase  the  national  dividend  a  little ;  and  it  will  enable  others 
to  obtain  their  assistance  at  a  cost  somewhat  less  in  proportion  to 
its  efficiency. 

But  many  writers  have  spoken  of  the  influence  exerted  on  wages  by 
a  rise  not  in  the  standard  of  life,  but  in  that  of  comfort ;  — a  term  that 
may  suggest  a  mere  increase  of  artificial  wants,  among  which  perhaps 
the  grosser  wants  may  predominate.  It  is  true  that  every  broad 
improvement  in  the  standard  of  comfort  is  likely  to  bring  with  it  a 
better  manner  of  living,  and  to  open  the  way  to  new  and  higher 

1  Wages  tend  to  equal  the  net  product  of  labour ;  its  marginal  productivity  rules 
the  demand-price  for  it;  and,  on  the  other  side,  wages  tend  to  retain  a  close 
though  indirect  and  intricate  relation  with  the  cost  of  rearing,  training,  and  sus¬ 
taining  the  energy  of  efficient  labour. 


554 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


activities ;  while  people  who  have  hitherto  had  neither  the  necessaries 
nor  the  decencies  of  life,  can  hardly  fail  to  get  some  increase  of  vitality 
and  energy  from  an  increase  of  comfort,  however  gross  and  material 
the  view  which  they  may  take  of  it.  Thus  a  rise  in  the  standard  of 
comfort  will  probably  involve  some  rise  in  the  standard  of  life ;  and, 
in  so  far  as  this  is  the  case,  it  tends  to  increase  the  national  dividend 
and  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  people. 

Some  writers  howTever  of  our  own  and  of  earlier  times  have  gone 
further  than  this,  and  have  implied  that  a  mere  increase  of  wants  tends 
to  raise  wages.  But  the  only  direct  effect  of  an  increase  of  wants  is  to 
make  people  more  miserable  than  before.  And  if  we  put  aside  its 
possible  indirect  effect  in  increasing  activities,  and  otherwise  raising 
the  standard  of  life,  it  can  raise  wages  only  by  diminishing  the  supply 
of  labour. 

74.  The  Standard  of  Living  and  Engel’s  Law1 

Satisfactorily  to  define  the  standard  of  living  is  extremely  difficult. 
Professor  Charles  J.  Bullock,  for  instance,  writes,  "Each  class  of 
people  in  any  society  is  accustomed  to  enjoy  a  greater  or  less  amount 
of  the  comforts  or  luxuries  of  life.  The  amount  of  comforts  or  luxu¬ 
ries  customarily  enjoyed  by  any  class  of  men  forms  the  'standard  of 
living’  of  that  class.”2  That  is  to  say,  the  standard  of  living,  as  the 
expression  is  usually  understood,  consists  simply  of  what  men  actually 
do  enjoy.  On  the  other  hand,  there  always  are  felt  but  unsated  wants 
that  prompt  men  to  struggle  for  higher  wages ;  these  reasonable  un¬ 
filled  desires  are  the  motive  power  of  progress. 

Professor  Bullock’s  definition  is  particularly  valuable  in  suggesting 
two  important  truths.  First,  it  properly  emphasizes  comforts  and 
luxuries.  The  fact  is  that  in  every-day  affairs  effort  is  often  directed 
more  to  securing  superfluities  than  to  providing  necessities.  In  the 
second  place,  the  extent  and  content  of  the  unsated  wants  in  a  man’s 
ideal  standard  is  largely  determined  by  actual  satisfactions.  This 
truth  is  emphasized  by  Mr.  Frank  Tucker  when  he  says,  "A  standard 

aBy  Frank  Hatch  Streightoff,  Associate  Professor  of  Business  Administration 
in  Indiana  University.  Adapted  from  The  Standard  of  Living  among  the  Indus¬ 
trial  People  of  America,  pp.  2-8,  12-13,  20.  Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  Boston 
and  New  York.  tqii.  Copyright,  iqii,  by  Hart,  Schaffner  &  Marx;  all  rights 
reserved.  2  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Economics,  p.  126. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


555 


of  living  is  a  measurement  of  life  expressed  in  a  daily  routine  which 
is  determined  by  income  and  conditions  under  which  it  is  earned, 
economic  and  social  environment,  and  the  capacity  for  distributing 
the  income.”1 

Having  noted  these  fundamental  principles,  it  is  possible  to  take 
another  step.  Each  individual  has  his  own  more  or  less  rational  con¬ 
cept  of  what  is  essential  to  the  maintenance  of  his  own  social  position ; 
and  he  knows  exactly  what  this  position  is,  whether  he  be  the  bank 
clerk  who  delights  in  horse-races,  or  the  man  who  shares  the  same 
desk  and  plays  on  his  Sunday-school  ball  team.  They  live  in  dif¬ 
ferent  worlds,  they  have  individual  criteria:  so  each  man  has  his  own 
standard  of  living.  But  it  will  be  noted  that  the  bank  clerks  as  a  class 
have  some  wants  in  common  in  contrast  to  the  mechanics,  for  instance. 
Thus  the  class  standard  of  living  may  be  compared  to  a  composite 
photograph ;  certain  features  are  emphasized,  while  others  are  faint 
or  blurred  according  to  the  proportion  of  individuals  possessing  the 
character — or  feeling  the  want.  On  the  other  hand,  development  of 
the  individual  is  so  largely  influenced  by  his  environment  that  his 
notions  are,  in  the  main,  those  of  his  class.  So  the  class  standard  of 
living  is  the  product  of  the  ideals  and  resources  of  its  members,  and, 
in  turn,  modifies  their  criteria. 

But  class  is  not  the  only  factor  within  the  community  in  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  individual’s  ideal  standard  of  living.  Aside  from  its 
large  determining  influence  in  the  matter  of  class  membership,  income 
has  an  important  part  to  play ;  purchasing  power  limits  the  quality 
and  quantity  of  obtainable  satisfactions.  So  the  individual’s  ideal  is 
limited  by  his  income ;  the  higher  he  climbs  on  the  ladder  of  success, 
the  wider  is  his  view ;  the  more  he  sees,  the  more  he  seeks. 

Another  determinant  of  the  standard  of  living  is  the  progress  of 
civilization.  There  is  a  constant,  though  irregular,  rise  of  the  standard 
of  living  as  civilization  becomes  more  complex.  The  standard,  then, 
is  a  result  of  two  forces,  environment,  comprising  time,  income,  and 
class,  and  individuality. 

It  will  not  do,  however,  to  leave  the  problem  at  this  point.  As  the 
standard  determines  the  manner  of  living,  it  is  important  to  distin¬ 
guish  between  worthy  and  unworthy,  or  high  and  low  standards.  It 
may  reasonably  be  doubted  whether  the  standards  of  the  very  rich  are 

1  Charities  and  the  Commons,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  300. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


556 

ideally  any  higher  than  those  of  industrial  workers.  A  normal  stand¬ 
ard  of  living,  on  the  other  hand,  is  one  which  conduces  to  healthy 
symmetrical  development,  physical,  mental,  and  moral.  The  standard 
is  properly  counted  ideally  high  in  proportion  as  it  achieves  this  end, 
and  especially  as  its  emphasis  falls  upon  the  intellectual  and  moral 
elements. 

What,  then,  is  the  content  of  the  lowest  tolerable  standard  of  living  ? 
In  the  first  place,  there  must  be  food,  clothing,  and  shelter  sufficient 
to  maintain  economic  efficiency.  Even  those  persons  who  believe  that 
the  sole  end  of  existence  is  production,  must  grant  this  proposition,  at 
least  in  its  general  application.  Under  shelter  is  included  light,  fuel, 
and  necessary  furniture.  If  economic  efficiency  is  to  be  preserved,  there 
must  be  provision  against  sickness  and  unemployment;  for,  unless 
his  strength  is  maintained  during  idleness,  when  he  returns  to  work 
the  individual  is  unfit  for  his  stint.1  Moreover,  the  man’s  standard 
must  include  a  family,  else,  in  a  generation,  production  will  cease. 

But  this  view  of  the  purpose  of  man  is  far  too  narrow.  Few  people 
would  to-day  have  the  hardihood  to  deny  that  man’s  life  should  con* 
tain  the  largest  possible  amounts  of  wholesome  pleasure.  "One  of 
the  strongest  human  wants  is  the  desire  for  the  society  of  one’s  fel¬ 
lows.”2  This  means  that  with  a  normal  standard  of  living  the  house 
should  contain  a  room  fit  for  entertainment  of  company,  that  the 
family  should  have  clothes  which  will  enable  them  to  appear  in  public 
without  shame,  and  that  the  routine  should  include  some  leisure  for 
polite  intercourse.  Still  if  man  is  to  be  an  end  in  himself,  he  must 
have  more  than  this ;  he  needs  some  education,  books,  pictures,  and 
wholesome  recreation ;  he  must  have  time  for  home  life.  Modern 
scientific  charity  recognizes  a  very  real  social  value  in  the  home. 
Beside  all  these  things,  a  normal  standard  of  living  contains  provision 
for  all  emergencies,  sickness,  accident,  unemployment,  and  death,  and 
for  material  advance — savings :  religion  too  should  be  in  the  routine. 
So  the  ideal  standard  of  living  demands  the  satisfaction  of  reasonable 
wants  of  both  body  and  intellect,  and  includes  an  ambition  to  improve. 

A  clear  understanding  of  what  the  standard  of  living  is  permits  some 
appreciation  of  its  significance.  In  the  first  place,  unless  the  standard 
includes  adequate  food,  clothing,  and  shelter,  health  will  inevitably 

iNinth  Special  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Labor,  1897,  Italians  in  Chi¬ 
cago ,  pp.  44-46.  2  Bullock,  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Economics ,  p.  8c. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


557 


suffer  and  the  race  will  degenerate  physically.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
men  obtain  a  proper  satisfaction  of  these  fundamental  wants,  not 
only  will  health  be  preserved  and  improved,  but  a  foundation  will  be 
laid  for  intellectual  progress.  A  step  farther  may  be  taken  along  this 
line:  unless  they  believe  that  their  descendants  will  be  able  to  main¬ 
tain  the  parental  standard,  men  will,  if  thoughtful,  refuse  to  become 
fathers.  Again,  if  women  would  rather  dress  showily  than  enjoy  homes 
of  their  own,  married  or  unmarried,  they  will  refuse  to  assume  the 
burden  of  motherhood.1  Thus,  in  two  distinct  ways,  the  standard  of 
living  tends  to  determine  population.  By  this  limiting  of  propagation, 
the  standard  of  living  limits  the  number  of  wage-workers,  and  so,  if 
high  enough,  it  can  change  the  ratio  of  supply  to  demand  for  labor 
and  thus  raise  compensation.  In  a  much  more  simple  and  direct  way, 
however,  the  desire  for  a  higher  standard  of  living  decides  the  mini¬ 
mum  pay  demanded  by  trades  unions  and  operates  to  increase  earn¬ 
ings.  More  satisfactions  will  breed  new  wants,  yet  higher  wages  will 
be  sought,  and  so  the  process  will  continue.  In  this  way  the  " ideal” 
standard  of  living  is  the  key  to  the  material  progress  of  the  industrial 
classes. 

Moreover,  "in  most  cases  increased  wages  have  meant  the  gratifica¬ 
tion  of  the  intellectual  and  artistic  sense  of  the  workers ;  have  meant 
books  and  pictures ;  have  meant  a  few  extra  rooms  in  the  house  and 
more  decent  surroundings  generally ;  have  meant  a  few  years  extra 
schooling  for  the  children ;  have  meant,  finally,  a  general  uplifting  of 
the  whole  working  class.”2  The  pursuit  of  a  higher  standard  of  living 
is,  then,  the  inspiration  of  intellectual  advance ;  upon  it  depends  the 
physical  and  mental  and  moral  welfare  of  the  people,  the  development 
of  the  commonwealth.  Two  things,  therefore,  are  essential  to  the 
progress  of  a  nation:  first,  that  the  individuals  receive  so  much  mate¬ 
rial  wealth  as  will  enable  them  to  satisfy  their  reasonable  wants,  and, 
second,  that  they  continually  discover  new  and  wholesome  desires. 

EngcVs  Law 

It  is  the  object  of  these  inquiries  to  determine  how  much  working¬ 
men  spend,  and  how  they  spend  it.  The  classical  effort  in  this  field, 

^an  Vorst,  The  Woman  Who  Toils,  chap.  ii. 

2 Mitchell,  Organized  Labor,  p.  153- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


558 

the  model  of  all  subsequent  study,  was  the  achievement  of  Dr.  Engel,1 
who,  in  1857,  compared  the  budgets  in  Le  Play’s  famous  "Family 
Monographs,”  added  data  of  his  own,  and  formulated  his  schedule  of 
the  normal  distribution  of  expenditures  in  their  relation  to  income. 


Engel’s  Table  of  Proportionate  Expenditures 


Object:  Percentage 
income  of : 


of  the  expenditure  for  family 
$225-$300  $45o-$6oo 


of  a  man  with 
$75o-$iooo 


Subsistence  .... 

.  .  .62' 

55' 

5o' 

Clothing . 

Lodging  ..... 

.  16 

.  12 

*95 

18 

12 

*  90 

18 

► 

12 

Firing  and  lighting 

•  •  •  5, 

5. 

5. 

Education,  religion,  etc.  . 

...  2I 

3-5 

5-5' 

Legal  protection  . 

...  1 

”  5 

2. 

.  TO 

3-  „ 

Care  of  health  .... 

1 

2. 

3- 

Comfort,  recreation 

1 

2 -5 , 

• 

3-5  , 

From  this  table  Engel  deduced  four  famous  laws : 

1.  As  the  income  of  a  family  increased,  a  smaller  percentage  of  it 
wras  expended  for  food. 

2.  As  the  income  of  a  family  increased,  the  percentage  of  expendi¬ 
ture  for  clothing  remained  approximately  the  same. 

3.  With  all  the  incomes  investigated,  the  percentage  of  expenditure 
for  rent,  fuel,  and  light  remained  invariably  the  same. 

4.  As  the  income  increased  in  amount  a  constantly  increasing  percent¬ 
age  was  expended  for  education,  health,  recreation,  amusements,  etc.2 

Engel’s  laws  need  considerable  modification  before  they  can  be 
applied  to  American  workingmen  of  the  present  time.  They  may  be 
restated  thus: 

As  the  income  increases : 


1.  The  proportionate  expenditure  for  food 

(a)  decreases  for  the  country  at  large  from  50  per  cent  to  37  per  cent, 
but 

1 "  Ernst  Engel  (1821-1896)  had,  as  a  student,  accompanied  Le  Play  on  some  of 
his  excursions,  and  recalled  them  in  1895  as  red-letter  days  ( Lichtpunkte  meines 
Lebens).  He  was,  in  1850,  placed  at  the  head  of  the  Saxon  Statistical  Bureau, 
and  in  1857,  in  an  effort  to  estimate  the  balance  between  production  and  con¬ 
sumption  in  the  kingdom,  made  a  thorough  statistical  elaboration  of  the  figures 
of  Ducpetiaux  and  Le  Play.”  See  page  n  of  Chapin’s  Standard  of  Living. —  Ed. 

-  Bullock,  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Economics,  pp.  99-100. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING  559 

(6)  in  New  York  City,  it  amounts  to  almost  45  per  cent  of  the  total 
outlay  until  an  income  of  $1000  is  attained. 

2.  There  is  a  strong  tendency  for  the  percentage  of  expenditure  for  cloth¬ 

ing  to  increase. 

3.  Relative  expenditures  for  housing 

(а)  remain  about  constant  for  the  country  at  large,  falling  very 
slightly  after  $400  incomes  have  been  reached,  but 

(б)  decrease  rapidly  from  30  per  cent,  or  more,  to  16  per  cent  in  New 
York  City. 

4.  Proportionate  expenditures  for  fuel  and  light  decrease. 

5.  Expenditure  for  culture  wants  increases  absolutely  and  relatively. 


75.  Pioneer  Studies  of  Family  Budgets1 

The  distressing  condition  of  the  laborers  of  England  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century  gave  rise  to  much  discussion  of  wages,  prices, 
and  the  poor  laws.  Two  works  of  this  period  are  notable  for  their 
attempts  to  get  at  the  exact  facts  by  means  of  reports  of  actual  family 
budgets.  These  books  are  Davies7  Case  oj  the  Laborers  in  Husbandry 
(1795),  and  the  better  known  State  oj  the  Poor ,  by  Sir  Frederick 
Morton  Eden  (1797). 

Davies  was  a  clergyman  in  Barkham,  Berkshire,  and  the  purpose 
of  his  book  is  indicated  by  its  motto:  "The  labourer  is  worthy  of  his 
hire.”  Davies  collected  accounts  on  his  visits  to  families  of  his  parish 
in  the  spring  of  1787.  Six  of  them  he  printed  and  sent  around  to 
friends  throughout  England,  asking  them  to  get  similar  accounts  in 
their  own  localities.  These  friends  for  the  most  part  were  clergymen 
and  country  squires.  Their  returns  were  printed  in  full  in  the  ap¬ 
pendix,  which  contains,  with  Davies7  own  contributions,  accounts  from 
15  counties  in  England,  2  in  Wales  and  3  in  Scotland — 133  family 
budgets  in  all.  The  method  employed  was  to  set  down  the  weekly 
costs  of  bread  and  other  items  of  food  expenditure,  with  candles  and 
thread.  This  was  added  together  (8s.  nd.  for  Davies7  first  family) 
and  multiplied  by  52  (£23  4s.  9d.).  To  this  was  added  a  fixed  annual 
sum  covering  rent,  clothing,  fuel,  expenses  occasioned  by  sickness, 

1  From  The  Standard  of  Living* among  Workingmen's  Families  in  New  York 
City  (pp.  5-9),  by  Robert  Coit  Chapin,  Ph.D.,  formerly  Horace  White  Professor 
of  Economics  and  Finance  in  Beloit  College,  Wisconsin.  Charities  Publication 
Committee,  New  York,  1909.  Copyright,  1909,  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


560 

deaths,  and  births, — estimated  in  1787  at  6  pounds  (later  7  pounds) 
for  a  family  of  five. 

The  earnings  per  week  of  father,  mother,  and  children  were  set 
down  and  multiplied  by  52.  In  balancing,  a  deficit  appeared  in  prac¬ 
tically  every  case,  even  where  poor-relief  was  figured  in.  It  is  interest¬ 
ing  to  note  in  passing  that  Davies  proposed  to  have  the  justices  fix  a 
minimum  wage  (Part  III,  Section  V),  and  that  one  of  his  correspond¬ 
ents  complained  of  the  exploitation  of  the  poor  by  "the  harpy  claws 
of  pettifogging  lawyers,”  by  the  short  weights  of  retailers,  and  by  the 
small  loaves  of  the  sellers  of  bread  (p.  163). 

Of  greater  scientific  importance  is  Eden’s  State  of  the  Poor } 
Besides  getting  information  through  clergymen  and  other  friends,  he 
sent  out  "a  competent  person”  and  furnished  him  with  an  exhaustive 
questionnaire.  His  question-sheet  included  these  questions:  "Usual 
diet  of  labourers”;  "Earnings  and  expenses  of  labourer’s  family  for  a 
year ;  distinguishing  the  number  and  ages  of  family ;  and  price  and 
quantity  of  their  articles  of  consumption.”  This  "faithful  and  in¬ 
telligent  person”  he  kept  in  the  field  for  more  than  a  year,  going  the 
round  of  the  English  counties.  The  budgets,  from  whatever  source 
derived,  are  published,  54  of  them  collectively,  in  Appendix  XII, 
Vol.  Ill  of  Eden’s  work,  and  perhaps  as  many  more  sandwiched 
in  between  the  workhouse  accounts  and  the  "parochial  reports” 
(Volumes  II  and  III).  Engel  found  73  of  them  complete  enough  to 
tabulate  and  average.  The  method  is  the  same  as  Davies’ :  a  weekly 
statement  of  earnings,  multiplied  by  52  ;  a  weekly  statement  of  cost 
of  food,  multiplied  by  52  ;  an  annual  statement  for  other  items  of 
expenditure,  but  figured  independently  for  each  family.  Fifty-seven 
of  the  73  summarized  by  Engel  reported  a  deficiency;  19  spent  more 
for  food  than  their  total  earnings.  The  method  of  calculating  food- 
expenditures  may  explain  this  result,  although  food-prices  in  1795 
were  exceptionally  high. 

The  difficulties  of  collecting  information  regarding  family  expendi¬ 
tures  are  well  stated  by  Eden. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  whole  annual  earnings  of  the  laborer  can 
seldom  be  ascertained  with  great  precision.  Some  men  are  so  habitually 
careless  that  they  are  totally  unable  to  give  any  satisfactory  information; 

1  Marx  says  that  Eden  is  the  only  disciple  of  Adam  Smith  that  produced  a  work 
of  importance. —  Capital  (English  translation),  Vol.  II,  p.  269. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


56i 

others,  who  could  give  tolerable  answers,  think  that  inquiries  concerning 
them  can  have  no  important  object  in  view,  and  are  therefore  inaccurate; 
and  a  third  class  (which  is  by  far  the  most  numerous),  are  so  apprehensive 
that  the  ultimate  object  of  questioning  them  is  to  effect  a  reduction  in 
wages,  or  something  equally  disagreeable,  that  they  are  unchangeably 
mysterious  and  insincere.1 

No  marked  improvement  on  Eden’s  method  appears  until  the  second 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Then  we  have  the  remarkable 
work  of  Le  Play,2  who  carried  the  intensive  study  of  family  accounts 
to  the  highest  degree  of  excellence.  From  1829  to  1856  he  spent  a 
large  portion  of  his  vacations  (he  was  professor  of  metallurgy  in 
Paris),  in  traveling  through  the  countries  of  Europe,  studying  the 
condition  of  workingmen’s  families.  His  method  was  to  make  in  each 
place  careful  inquiry  of  clergy,  teachers,  and  others  until  he  found 
what  was  considered  to  be  a  really  typical  family,  whether  a  Sheffield 
cutler  or  a  Dutch  fisherman,  and  then  he  would  arrange  to  live  with 
the  family  for  some  weeks  if  necessary,  observing  their  whole  manner 
of  living.  He  would  ask  questions,  make  notes  of  what  he  saw  and 
heard,  and  when  he  had  gathered  his  material,  would  prepare  a  family 
monograph,  containing  in  fifteen  or  twenty  octavo  pages  a  photo¬ 
graphic  picture  of  the  given  family  group.  In  1855  he  published 
thirty-six  of  these  monographs  in  three  volumes,  entitled  Les  Ouvriers 
Europeens.  He  subsequently  (1877-1879)  added  two  volumes  of 
monographs  and  one  introductory  volume  on  method.  He  made 
studies  during  the  long  period  of  his  activity  of  some  300  families,  but 
carried  only  fifty-seven  of  them  to  the  point  where  he  was  willing  to 
have  them  published.  The  schedule  he  employed  displays  the  thor¬ 
oughness  of  his  method.  The  only  criticisms  that  can  fairly  be  made 
are :  first,  that  the  families  are  not  necessarily  typical ;  second,  that 
the  details  are  carried  to  an  illusive  degree  of  overrefinement.  For 
instance,  the  festival-clothes  of  his  Dutch  family  are  valued,  and  one- 
hundredth  of  the  value  is  set  down  in  the  annual  budget,  implying 
that  they  will  last  one  hundred  years.  Some  hint  of  his  tact  in  win¬ 
ning  the  confidence  of  the  families  that  he  approached  may  be  gained 

1  State  of  the  Poor,  Preface  to  Vol.  I,  p.  xxvi. 

2Le  Play  was  born  in  1806,  and  died  in  1882.  A  good  account  of  his  work,  by 
Henry  Higgs,  may  be  found  in  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics ,  Vol.  IV, 
p.  408. 


562 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


from  his  statement  of  the  expedients  which  he  used  for  this  purpose. 
Le  Play  says1  that  he  always  had  the  good-will  even  affection,  of 
families  investigated,  and  thinks  that  it  was  due  to  the  method ;  but 
he  observed  the  following  expedients  for  gaining  the  good-will  of  the 
families: 

Not  to  be  abrupt  in  pushing  inquiries, — an  introduction  from  a  well- 
chosen  source  helps  in  abridging  the  preliminaries ;  to  secure  the  confidence 
and  sympathy  of  the  family  by  explaining  the  public  utility  of  the  inquiry, 
and  the  disinterestedness  of  the  observer;  to  sustain  the  attention  of  the 
people  by  interesting  conversation;  to  indemnify  them  in  money  for  time 
taken  by  the  investigation ;  to  praise  with  discrimination  the  good  qualities 
of  different  members;  to  make  judicious  distribution  of  little  gifts  to  all.2 

The  work  of  Le  Play  was  continued  by  his  followers  in  a  serial  pub¬ 
lication  entitled  Les  Ouvriers  des  Deux  Mondes.  The  volumes  are 
made  up  of  family  monographs  prepared  on  the  same  plan  as  those 
of  Le  Play  himself.  Ninety-one  of  these  monographs  are  included  in 
the  ten  volumes  of  the  series  published.  The  last  volume,  the  tenth, 
appeared  in  1899. 

The  transition  to  the  use  of  the  average  in  combining  workingmen’s 
budgets  passed  through  three  stages :  First,  the  Brussels  Statistical 
Congress,  in  1853  ;  second,  the  preliminary  inquiry  in  Belgium  under 
direction  of  Ducpetiaux,  in  1853  ;  third,  the  elaboration  of  the  data 
of  Ducpetiaux  and  Le  Play  by  Ernst  Engel,  in  1857. 

76.  Minimum  of  Subsistence  and  Minimum  Comfort 

Budget3 

•  Various  students  of  the  subject  have  endeavored  to  establish  the 
amount  of  income  necessary  to  support  a  family  in  health  and  de¬ 
cency.  In  doing  so  several  budget  levels  of  living  have  been  analyzed. 
The  two  most  clearly  distinguished  are : 

1  La  Methods  Sociale ,  1879,  pp.  222,  223.  (Vol.  I  of  Les  Ouvriers  Europeens, 
edition  of  1879.) 

2,A  translation  of  one  of  Le  Play’s  monographs  may  be  found  in  Appendix  VIT, 
p.  326,  of  Robert  C.  Chapin’s  Standard  of  Living  in  New  York  City. —  Ed. 

3 Published  in  the  Report  on  the  Steel  Strike  of  1919,  from  report  made  by  the 
Bureau  of  Applied  Economics,  Washington,  D.  C.,  November,  1910,  for  the  Com¬ 
mission  of  Inquiry,  Interchurch  World  Movement,  Bishop  Francis  ].  McConnell, 
Chairman.  Appendix  A,  pp.  255-263.  Copyright,  1920,  by  Harcourt,  Brace  and 
Howe,  Inc.,  New  York. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


563 


1.  The  minimum  oj  subsistence  level.  This  level  is  based  essen¬ 
tially  on  animal  well  being  with  little  or  no  attention  to  the  comforts 
or  social  demands  of  human  beings. 

2.  The  minimum  oj  comfort  level.  This  represents  a  level  some¬ 
what  above  that  of  mere  animal  subsistence  and  provides  in  some 
measure  for  comfortable  clothing,  insurance,  a  modest  amount  of 
recreation,  etc.  This  level  provides  for  health  and  decency  but  for 
very  few  comforts,  and  is  probably  much  below  the  idea  had  in  mind 
in  the  frequent  but  indefinite  expression  "The  American  Standard  of 
Living.” 

All  of  the  studies  have  taken  as  a  basis  a  family  of  five — husband, 
wife,  and  three  children.  This  is  done  (1)  because  the  average  Ameri¬ 
can  family  is  of  this  size  and  (2)  because  it  is  necessary  that  marriage 
should  be  practically  universal  and  result  in  a  minimum  of  three  chil¬ 
dren  if  the  race  is  to  perpetuate  itself. 

The  results  of  the  various  studies  are  closely  similar  and  indicate 
that  the  annual  cost  of  maintaining  a  family  of  five  at  a  minimum  of 
subsistence  level  at  prices  prevailing  in  the  latter  part  of  1919  was 
approximately  $1575.  This  would  be  equivalent  in  purchasing  power 
to  approximately  $885  in  1914. 

The  cost  of  maintaining  the  minimum  of  comfort  level  has  not  been 
so  thoroughly  studied.  Professor  Ogburn’s  estimate  as  of  June,  1918, 
was  $i  760.  With  an  increase  of  15  per  cent  in  living  costs  since  that 
time  the  cost  of  this  budget  would  now  be  approximately  S2000.  This 
sum  would  be  equivalent  in  purchasing  power  to  approximately  Si  125 
in  1914.  Professor  Ogburn’s  conclusions  may  be  taken  as  a  conserva¬ 
tive  minimum,  as  it  is  much  below  the  estimate  recently  put  forth  by 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  as  to  the  cost  of  maintain¬ 
ing  a  government  employee’s  family  in  Washington  at  a  level  of  health 
and  decency.  This  budget,  at  August,  1919,  prices,  cost  S2262. 

All  of  the  studies  referred  to  dealt  with  larger  Eastern  cities,  chiefly 
New  York.  The  costs  would,  therefore,  not  be  strictly  applicable  to 
all  cities  and  towns  of  the  country.  The  differences,  however,  except 
.  in  a  few  exceptional  cases,  would  not  be  very  great. 

A  more  detailed  analysis  of  these  studies  is  made  in  the  following 
paragraphs : 


5^4 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


i.  The  Cost  oj  a  Minimum  oj  Subsistence  Budget 

Professor  W.  F.  Ogburn,  of  Columbia  University,  and  one  of  the 
best  known  authorities  on  cost  of  living,  in  a  recently  published  article 
made  a  very  careful  analysis  of  all  preceding  studies  of  minimum  of 
subsistence  levels  and  also  submits  a  carefully  prepared  budget  of  his 
own.1  Professor  Ogburn’s  calculations  are  all  based  on  prices  prevail¬ 
ing  in  June,  1918.  Prices  between  that  time  and  the  autumn  of  1919 
have  advanced  about  15  per  cent,  and  these  changes,  of  course,  would 
have  to  be  taken  into  consideration  in  arriving  at  the  cost  of  the 
budgets  at  the  present  time.  In  order,  however,  to  make  the  reason¬ 
ing  entirely  clear  the  details  of  the  various  studies  are  first  summarized 
from  Professor  Ogburn’s  article. 

a.  Professor  Ogb urn's  Budget 


Food . $615 

Clothing: 

Man . 76 

Woman . 55 

11  to  14  years . 40 

7  to  10  years . 33 

4  to  6  years . 30 

Rent . 180 

Fuel  and  light . 62 

Insurance . 40 

Organizations . 12 

Religion  . . 7 

Street-car  fare . 40 

Papers,  books,  etc . 9 

Amusements,  drinks,  and  tobacco . 50 

Sickness . 60 

Dentist,  oculist,  glasses,  etc.  .  3 

Furnishings . 35 

Laundry . 4 

Cleaning  supplies . 15 

Miscellaneous . 20 

Total . $1386 


This  budget  is  for  a  large  eastern  city  and  is  the  result  of  studies  of 
600  actual  budgets  of  shipyard  workers  in  the  New  York  ship¬ 
building  district. 

1  Published  in  Standards  of  Living ,  Bureau  of  Applied  Economics,  Washing¬ 
ton,  IQIQ. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


S6S 


b.  Professor  Chapin’s  budget  brought  up  to  date.  Another  way 
of  estimating  a  minimum  budget  for  the  American  subsistence  level 
in  1918  is  to  take  minimum  budgets  of  past  years  that  have  been  ac¬ 
cepted  as  standard  and  apply  the  increases  from  the  date  of  the  budget 
to  the  present  time  in  the  prices  of  the  various  items  of  the  budget, 
thus  bringing  them  up  to  date.  This  method  assumes  no  change  in 
minimum  standards.  It  is  of  course  subject  to  possible  inaccuracies 
in  measuring  the  rising  cost  of  living  between  specific  dates  for  specific 
places.  This  inaccuracy  is  thought  to  be  slight,  however. 

For  instance,  one  of  the  most  famous  and  perhaps  most  generally 
accepted  budget  estimates  is  that  of  Professor  Chapin,  who  made  a 
study  lasting  several  years  of  New  York  families,  publishing  his  result 
in  1907.  He  said,  "An  income  under  $800  is  not  enough  to  permit 
the  maintenance  of  a  normal  standard.  An  income  of  $900  or  over 
probably  permits  the  maintenance  of  a  normal  standard  at  least  as 
far  as  the  physical  man  is  concerned.”  If  we  take  the  increase  in  the 
cost  of  living  from  1907  to  June,  1918,  to  be  55  per  cent,  then  Chapin’s 
$900  becomes  $1395.  If  we  take  the  increase  to  be  60  per  cent  then 
Chapin’s  $900  becomes  $1440.  Probably  the  best  estimates  of  in¬ 
creasing  cost  of  living  place  the  increase  from  January  1,  1915,  to 
June  1,  1918,  as  55  per  cent. 

c.  Minimum  budget  of  New  York  Factory  Commission  brought 
up  to  date.  In  1915  the  New  York  State  Factory  Investigation 
Commission  set  a  minimum  budget  for  1914  in  New  York  City 
at  the  figure  $876.  Applying  increases  in  items  of  the  budget  by 
classes  from  January  1,  1915,  to  June  1,  1918,  we  get,  as  seen  from 
the  following  table,  a  budget  of  $1356. 


• 

Budget,  New  York 
Factory  Commission, 
1914 

Increase  in  Cost  ok 
Living  to  June  i, 
1918 

New  York  Factory 
Budget  brought 
up  to  Date 

Food  .... 

$325 

Per  Cent 

65 

S536 

Rent  .... 

200 

29 

258 

Fuel  and  light  . 

20 

44 

28 

Clothing  . 

14O 

76 

246 

Sundries  . 

IQI 

5i 

288 

'  $876 

$1356 

560 


THE  PROBLEM  OE  POVERTY 


Minimum  Budget  of  the  New  Factory  Investigation 

Commission,  1915 


Estimate  of  Cost  of  Living  of  Normal  Family  of  Five  in  New  York  City 


Food  . $325-00 

Rent  . 200.00 

Fuel  and  light . 20.00 

Clothing  . 140.00 

Carfare . 31-20 

Insurance : 

Man . 20.00 

Family . i5-6o 

Health . 22.00 

Furnishings  . 7-oo 

Education,  newspaper . 5-63 

Recreation  and  amusement . 50-00 

Miscellaneous . 40.00 

Total . 487643 


d.  Minimum  budget  of  New  York  Board  of  Estimate  brought  up 
to  date.  In  February,  1915,  the  Bureau  of  Personal  Service  of  the 
Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  of  New  York  City  made  a  mini¬ 
mum  budget  estimate  for  an  unskilled  laborer’s  family  in  New  York 
City  of  $845.  Applying  increases  in  items  of  the  budget  by  classes 
from  January  1,  1915,  to  June  1,  1918,  we  get,  as  seen  from  the 
following  table,  a  budget  of  $1317. 


Budget,  New  York 
Board  of  Estimate, 

1915 

Increase  in  Cost  of 
Living  to  June  i,  1918 

New  York  Board 
of  Estimate  Budget 
BROUGHT  UP  TO  DATE 

Food  .... 

$384 

Per  Cent 

65 

$634 

Rent  .... 

168 

20 

217 

Fuel  and  light 

43 

44 

62 

Clothing 

104 

76 

183 

Sundries 

146 

Si 

221 

Total 

$845 

$1317 

It  is  possible  to  criticize  this  budget  as  being  too  low  in  allowances 
for  health,  furniture,  and  education,  and  very  low  indeed  in  other 
sundries. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


567 


Budget  of  New  York  Board  of  Estimate,  1915 


Housing . $168.00 

Car  fare . 30.30 

Food  . 383.81 

Clothing . 104.20 

Fuel  and  light . 42.75 

Health . 20.00 

Insurance . 22.88 

/ 

Papers  and  other  reading  matter . 5.00 

Recreation . 40.00 

Furniture,  utensils,  fixtures,  moving  expenses,  etc.  .  .  .  18.00 

Church  dues . 5.00 

Incidentals — soap,  washing  material,  stamps,  etc.  ...  5.00 

*  - 

Total . $844.94 


e.  Estimating  the  budget  jrom  jood  expenditure .  It  is  generally  ac¬ 
cepted  that  a  man  at  moderate  physical  labor  needs  3500  calories  a 
day  and  Atwater  has  estimated  the  needs  of  the  individual  members 
of  his  family  in  per  cents  of  his  needs.  Thus  his  wife  consumes  0.8 
as  much ;  a  boy  of  16  years  of  age,  0.9  as  much  ;  a  girl  15  to  16  years, 
0.8 ;  a  child  from  6  to  9  years,  0.5  ;  and  so  on.  We  thus  express  a 
family  in  terms  of  adult  males.  We  say  that  a  family  of  five — man, 
wife,  and  three  children — will  equal  3.3  adult  males  when  the  children 
are  at  a  certain  age. 

The  average  food  budget  of  600  families  of  shipyard  workers  in  the 
New  York  district  collected  by  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  was 
found  to  cost  $607  for  3.6  equivalent  adult  males.  This  was  sub¬ 
mitted  to  calory  analysis  and  fielded  3115  calories  of  energy  for  man 
per  day,  not  including  any  waste.  This  means  that  $607  did  not  fur¬ 
nish  enough  food  for  the  New  York  families.  A  food  expert  might 
have  bought  the  necessary  amount,  but  the  families  in  actual  practice 
did  not. 

Dietaries  should  be  well  balanced  also,  but  this  analysis  was  not  un¬ 
dertaken.  So  the  important  conclusion  results  that  in  the  New  York 
shipbuilding  area  $607  is  not  enough  of  an  allowance  for  food. 

Professor  Chapin’s  study  shows  that  at  the  point  where  the  families 
cease  to  be  undernourished,  food  is  44  per  cent  of  the  total  budget. 
Now  if  the  low  figure  of  $615  is  taken  as  the  food  allowance  for  a 
family  of  3.3  or  3.4  equivalent  adult  males  and  estimated  at  44  per 
cent  of  the  budget,  we  get  a  minimum  budget  of  $1396. 


568 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Summary  oj  Estimates  on  Minimum  Budgets  for  American 

Subsistence  Level  in  iqi8 

From  three  angles,  therefore,  an  estimate  may  be  formed  of  a  mini¬ 
mum  budget;  (i)  from  study  of  actual  budgets,  (2)  from  applying 
increased  costs  of  living  to  recognized  standard  budgets,  (3)  from  esti¬ 
mates  of  adequate  food  allowance  and  its  percentage  of  expenditures. 

These  estimates  for  New  York  district  in  1918  are  as  follows: 


1.  Ogburn’s  detailed  budget  from  family  studies  ....  $1386 

2.  Chapin’s  budget  brought  to  date . 1395 

New  York  Factory  Investigation  Commission  budget 

brought  to  date . 1356 

New  York  Board  of  Estimate  budget  brought  to  date  .  .  1317 

3.  Budget  compiled  from  food  allowance . 1396 


The  above  studies  brought  up  to  iqiq.  The  above  estimates  were 
all  made  as  of  June,  1918,  or,  if  made  at  an  earlier  date,  were  brought 
up  only  to  that  date  in  Professor  Ogburn’s  analysis.  Between  June, 
1918,  and  the  present  time  (i.e.  the  latter  part  of  1919)  figures  com¬ 
piled  by  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  show  an  in¬ 
crease  of  about  15  per  cent  in  general  cost  of  living.  Applying  this 
percentage  increase  to  the  figures  compiled  by  Professor  Ogburn  in 
the  preceding  table,  the  following  results  are  obtained : 

Various  Authoritative  Estimates  of  the  Annual  Cost  of  Main¬ 
taining  a  Family  at  a  Minimum  of  Subsistence  Level,  brought  up 

to  August,  1919 

« 


June,  1918 

August,  1919 

Ogburn’s  budget . 

$1386 

$1594 

Chapin’s  budget . 

1395 

1604 

New  York  Factory  Investigation  Commission  . 

1356 

1 559 

New  York  Board  of  Estimate  budget  .... 

1317 

1S1S 

Budget  compiled  from  food  allowance  .... 

1396 

1603 

Average  of  all  five  estimates . 

$1370 

$i575 

Inasmuch  as  these  various  estimates  are  so  closely  similar,  the 
average  of  the  five — namely  $1575 — may  be  taken  as  the  approxi¬ 
mate  amount  necessary  to  maintain  a  family  of  five  at  a  minimum  of 
subsistence  level  at  prices  prevailing  in  the  latter  part  of  1919. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


569 


2.  The  Cost  oj  a  Minimum  of  Comfort  Budget 

1.  Professor  Ogburn’s  budget.  Professor  W.  F.  Ogburn  prepared  in 
1918,  for  the  consideration  of  the  National  War  Labor  Board  and  of 
Judge  Samuel  Alschuler,  arbitrator  in  the  Chicago  packing  house  in¬ 
dustries,  a  budget  for  an  average  workingman’s  family  of  five  which 
would  include  not  only  subsistence  requirements  but  a  minimum  of 
comfort  and  recreation.  The  cost  of  this  budget  was  placed  at  $1760. 
This  was  at  prices  prevailing  in  June,  1918.  Since  that  date  the  cost 
of  living,  as  above  noted,  has  increased  15  per  cent.  This  would  make 
the  present  cost  of  the  budget  $2024.  By  major  items,  this  budget 
was  distributed  as  follows : 


Cost  June,  1918 

Cost  August,  1919 

Food . 

$625.00 

Clothing . 

3I3-50 

Rent,  fuel,  and  light . 

295.OO 

Sundries . 

527.OO 

Total . 

$1760.50 

$2024.00 

2.  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics’  budget  for  government 
employee’s  family.  The  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  has 
just  published,  after  very  considerable  investigation,  a  quantity  and 
cost  budget  for  a  Government  employee’s  family  in  Washington,  D.C. 
The  budget  level  aimed  at  is  one  of  health  and  decency1 — that  is  to 
say — a  level  at  which  the  family  will  have  just  enough  to  maintain 
itself  in  health  and  decency,  but  with  none  of  the  "trimmings”  and 
very  few  of  the  comforts  of  life.  This  budget  had  in  mind  primarily 
the  clerical  employee,  but  except  possibly  in  the  matter  of  clothes 
there  seems  no  reason  why  the  level  of  a  clerical  worker  should  be 
more  costly  than  that  of  a  mechanic  or  laborer.  On  the  other  hand, 
Washington  prices  were  undoubtedly  above  the  average  for  the  coun¬ 
try  as  a  whole. 

This  budget,  at  August,  1919,  prices,  cost  $2262.  The  distribution 
of  its  principal  items  is  shown  in  the  following  table : 

1In  this  "Tentative  Quantity  and  Cost  Budget”  the  comforts  include  clothing 
sufficient  "to  maintain  the  wearer’s  instinct  of  self-respect,”  also  insurance  against 
death,  disability,  and  fire,  good  education  for  the  children,  some  amusement,  and 
some  expenditures  for  self-development. —  Ed. 


570 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Summary  of  Budget 
Cost  of  Quantity  Budget  at  Market  Prices 


I.  Food . $773-93 

II.  Clothing : 

Husband . $121.16 

Wife . 166.46 

Boy  (n  years) . 96.60 

Girl  (5  years) . 82.50 

Boy  (2  years) . 47-°o  513.72 

III.  Housing,  fuel,  and  light . 428.00 

IV.  Miscellaneous . 546.82 

Total  budget  at  market  prices . $2262.47 


Possible  saving  upon  market  cost  by  a  family  of  extreme  thrift,  of  high  intelli¬ 
gence,  great  industry  in  shopping,  good  fortune  in  purchasing  at  lowest  prices, 
and  in  which  the  wife  is  able  to  do  a  maximum  amount  of  home  work 


I.  Food  (75  per  cent) . $58.04 

II.  Clothing  (10  per  cent) . 51.37 

III.  Housing . 30.00 

IV.  Miscellaneous  . . 97-50 

Total  economies . $236.91 

Total  budget  minus  economies . $2025.56 


Savings.  No  provision  is  made  in  this  budget  for  savings,  other 
than  the  original  cost  of  household  furniture  and  equipment,  which 
would  average  about  $1000  in  value.  No  definite  estimate,  of  course, 
can  be  made  as  to  the  amount  which  a  low-salaried  Government  em¬ 
ployee  should  be  expected  to  save.  But  an  average  saving  of  12^  per 
cent  of  yearly  salary  during  an  employee's  single  and  early  married 
life  would  seem  to  be  the  maximum  which  could  be  expected.  Over 
a  period  of,  say,  15  years  this  would  result  in  a  total  accumulation 
of  about  $2000.  Assuming  $1000  of  this  to  be  invested  in  household 
equipment,  there  would  be  a  net  sum  of  $1000  available  for  invest¬ 
ment  in  a  home  or  in  other  direct  income-producing  form.  In  any  case, 
it  would  represent  an  annual  income  of  approximately  $50  per  year. 

Recognizing  the  high  prices  prevailing  in  Washington,  and  recog¬ 
nizing  also  that  the  Government  employee's  family  may  have  certain 
necessary  expenses  not  falling  upon  the  workingman’s  family,  it  would 
seem  that  the  fact  that  this  budget  cost  $2662  would  tend  to  confirm 
the  $2000  minimum  comfort  budget  of  Professor  Ogburn  as  conserva¬ 
tive  for  workingmen's  families  generally  in  the  country  as  a  whole. 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


571 


77.  Wages  in  Iron  and  Steel  and  Other  Industries1 

Wages  and  Hours  in  the  Steel  Industry  compared  with  Other 
Industries ,  for  the  Country  as  a  Whole 

The  table  on  page  572  gives  the  hourly  earnings,  full  time  hours  per 
week,  and  full  time  earnings  per  week,  for  specified  classes  of  labor  in 
the  steel  industry  and  in  other  important  industries  for  which  infor¬ 
mation  in  comparable  form  is  available.  All  figures  are  for  1919,  and, 
with  few  exceptions,  for  the  latter  part  of  1919. 

The  full  time  hours  per  week,  it  is  important  to  note,  are  the  regular 
weekly  working  hours  for  the  occupation.  The  actual  hours  worked 
by  individuals  and,  in  consequence,  their  weekly  earnings  may  be 
considerably  less. 

Pittsburgh  District.  Wages  and  Hours  of  Labor  in  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Industry  compared  with  W ages  in  Other  Industries  in  the 

Pittsburgh  District 

The  table  on  page  573  compares  hourly  earnings,  full  time  hours  per 
week,  and  full  time  weekly  earnings  in  the  iron  and  steel  industry  with 
other  industries  in  the  Pittsburgh  District  for  which  information  was 
available.  As  available  information  is  not  very  extensive  the  compari¬ 
son  was  necessarily  limited,  but  is  believed  to  be  sufficient  to  indicate 
how  wage  rates  and  hours  of  employees  in  the  steel  industry  compare 
with  other  lines  of  employment. 

Inasmuch  as  the  primary  comparison  desired  is  one  which  will  bring 
out  the  extent  to  which  the  relatively  high  full  time  weekly  earnings 
in  the  steel  industry  may  be  due  to  long  hours,  there  is  added  to  a 
table  a  column  showing  how  much  would  be  earned  by  each  group  for 
44  hours  per  week,  at  the  prevailing  hourly  rates.  In  doing  so,  44 
hours  is  used  as  a  base  simply  because  a  number  of  trades  in  the  table 
were  already  working  44  hours  per  week.  For  the  purpose  of  the 
comparison,  of  course,  it  would  make  no  difference  what  base  were 
chosen. 

1  Published  in  the  Report  on  the  Steel  Strike  of  1919 ,  from  report  made  by  the 
Bureau  of  Applied  Economics,  Washington,  D.  C.,  November,  1919,  for  the  Com¬ 
mission  of  Inquiry,  Interchurch  World  Movement,  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell, 
Chairman.  Appendix  B,  pp.  264-268.  Copyright,  1920,  by  Harcourt,  Brace  and 
Howe,  Inc.,  New  York. 


Average  Hourly  Earnings  and  Hours  per  Full  Time  Week  in 

Various  Industries 


Average 

Hourly 

Rate 

Full  Time 
Hours  per 
Week 

Earnings 
per  Full 
Week 

Iron  and  Steel 

All  employees . 

68.1 

68.7 

$46.78 

Common  labor . 

46.2 

74.0 

34-19 

Other  labor  (including  skilled  and  semi- 

skilled) . 

■~~i 

00 

L 

66.0 

51-74 

Mining 

1 .  Anthracite : 

Company  miners . 

58.1 

51.6 

29.98 

Contract  miners . 

84.2 

51-6 

43-45 

Company  miners’  laborers  .... 

52.6 

51-6 

27.14 

Contract  miners’  laborers  .... 

63-9 

51.6 

32-97 

Laborers  . 

5i-9 

52.2 

26.90 

Average  for  all  inside  occupations  . 

67-3 

52.0 

35-oo 

2.  Bituminous: 

Miners,  hand . 

78.4 

47-3 

37-o8 

Miners,  machine . 

94-7 

48.1 

45-55 

Loaders . 

80.2 

474 

38.01 

Laborers . 

57-5 

52.0 

29.90 

Average  for  all  inside  occupations  . 

74-4 

5i-9 

38.42 

United  States  Arsenals  : 

Common  labor . 

46.0 

48.0 

22.08 

All  other  employees,  average  .... 

♦ 

76.1 

48.0 

36.53 

Building  Trades  : 

Average  for  all  building  trades  . 

854 

44.0 

37-58 

Common  labor . 

52.0 

44.0 

22.88 

Bricklayers . 

89-3 

44.2 

39-47 

Carpenters . 

78.2 

44.2 

34-56 

Cement  workers  and  finishers 

80.8 

44-9 

36.28 

Wiremen,  inside . 

79-9 

44-3 

35-40 

Painters . 

76.2 

42.8 

32.61 

Plasterers  . 

89-5 

43-6 

39.02 

Plumbers . 

92.4 

44.0 

40.66 

Sheet-metal  workers . 

80.9 

44.0 

35-6o 

Steam  fitters . 

92.8 

44.0 

40.83 

Structural  iron  workers . 

94-2 

44.0 

41-45 

New  York,  N.Y. 

Average  for  all  building  trades  . 

83  -5 

44.0 

36.74 

572 


STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


573 


Again,  it  is  important  to  emphasize  that  the  weekly  hours  here 
presented  are  the  regular  full  time  hours  per  week  of  the  occupation, 
not  the  actual  hours  worked  by  individuals. 

Comparison  of  Earnings  per  Hour,  Regular  Full  Time  Hours  per 
Week,  and  Earnings  per  Full  Time  Week  in  Various  Industries  and 
Occupations  in  the  Pittsburgh  (Pa.)  District 


Average 

Hourly 

Rate 

Regular 
Hours  per 
Week 

Earnings 
per  Full 
Week 

Earnings 

for 

44  Hours 
per  Week 

Iron  and  Steel: 

All  employees . 

72.8 

74.2 

$54-02 

$32.03 

Common  labor . 

48.0 

77.8 

37-34 

21.12 

Other  labor  (including  skilled  and 
semi-skilled) . 

87.I 

72.I 

62.80 

38.32 

Bituminous  Coal  Mining: 

Miners,  hand . 

78.4 

47-3 

37.08 

34-50 

Miners,  machine . 

94-7 

48.1 

45-55 

41.67 

Loaders . 

80.2 

474 

38.01 

35.29 

Laborers . 

57-5 

S2.o 

29.90 

25-30 

Average  for  all  inside  occupations 

744 

Si-9- 

38.61 

32.74 

Metal  Trades  : 

Blacksmiths . 

70.0 

48.0 

33  -6o 

30.80 

Boilermakers . 

66.0 

50.0 

33-00 

29.04 

Molders,  iron . 

75-o 

48.0 

36.00 

33-oo 

Railroad  Employees  : 

Shopmen 

Machinists . 

72.0 

48.0 

34-56 

31.68 

Blacksmiths . 

72.0 

48.0 

34-56 

31.68 

Boilermakers . 

72.0 

48.0 

34-56 

31.68 

Road  freight 

Firemen  . 

60.0 

48.0 

28.80 

26.40 

Building  Trades  : 

Laborers 

Building  laborers . 

50.0 

48.0 

24.00 

22.00 

Hod  carriers . 

70.0 

44.0 

30.80 

30.80 

Plasterers’  laborers  . 

70.0 

44.0 

30.80 

30.80 

Average  for  laborers  .... 

63-3 

45-3 

28.67 

2  7-85 

Bricklayers . 

112.5 

44.0 

49-50 

49-5o 

Carpenters . 

90.0 

44.0 

39.60 

39-6o 

Cement  finishers . . 

82. 5 

44.0 

36.30 

36.30 

Granite  cutters,  inside  .... 

84.4 

44.0 

37-14 

37-14 

Wiremen,  inside . 

90.0 

44.0 

39.60 

39.60 

Painters . 

87.5 

44.0 

38.50 

38.50 

Plasterers  . 

97-5 

44.0 

42.90 

42.90 

Plumbers . 

93-8 

44.0 

41.27 

41.27 

Sheet-metal  workers  .... 

90.0 

44.0 

39-60 

39.60 

Structural  iron  workers 

100.0 

44.0 

44.00 

44.00 

Street  Railway  Employees: 
Motormen  and  conductors  . 

54-0 

56.4 

30.16 

23.76 

CHAPTER  XXI 

ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY 
78.  The  Statistical  Study  of  Causes  of  Destitution1 

In  regard  to  the  causes  of  poverty,  and  of  the  degree  of  poverty  that 
may  be  designated  as  destitution  and  leads  to  dependency,  there  are 
found  in  the  literature  of  the  social  sciences  a  few  formal  discussions, 
but  more  frequently  only  remarks  made  in  passing,  or  more  or  less 
obvious  implications.  The  usual  manner  of  treatment  is  descriptive 
rather  than  analytic,  and  is  confined  to  particular  causes  and  condi¬ 
tions.  Professor  Warner,  one  of  the  few  writers  who  have  airtied  at  a 
comprehensive  treatment  of  the  subject,  points  out  that  three  tolerably 
distinct  methods  of  investigation  have  been  tried.2  First,  there  is 
the  method  of  writers  like  Malthus,  Marx,  and  Henry  George,  "who 
from  the  well-known  facts  of  social  organization  have  sought  to  de¬ 
duce  the  causes  tending  to  poverty.”  Secondly,  there  is  the  study  of 
"the  classes  not  yet  pauperized  to  determine  by  induction  what  forces 
are  tending  to  crowd  individuals  downward  across  the  pauper  line. 
.  .  .  The  best  example  of  such  work  is  probably  that  of  Mr.  Charles 
Booth  in  his  Labor  and  Life  of  the  People.  Almost  all  of  the  reports 
of  our  labor  statisticians,  the  works  on  occupational  mortality  and 
morbidity,  and  in  fact  everything  of  a  descriptive  nature  that  has  been 
written  about  modern  industrial  society,  can  be  used  in  this  second 
method  of  seeking  for  the  causes  of  poverty.”  Thirdly,  there  is  the 
"inductive  study  of  concrete  masses  of  pauperism,  usually  separating 
the  mass  into  its  individual  units,  seeking  to  ascertain  in  a  large  num¬ 
ber  of  particular  cases  what  causes  have  operated  to  bring  about 
destitution.” 

1  By  Gustav  Kleene,  Professor  of  Economics,  Trinity  College.  Adapted  from 
the  Publications  of  the  American  Statistical  Association,  Vol.  XI,  No.  83,  pp.  273- 
285. 

2 American  Charities,  pp.  22-117.  See  also  articles  by  Professor  Warner  in 
Volumes  I  and  IV  of  the  Publications  of  the  American  Statistical  Association. 

574 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  575 


It  is  proposed  in  the  following  to  examine  the  third  method  only. 
This  method,  that  of  case-counting,  has  been  applied  by  Warner  to 
the  records  of  American  charity  organization  societies  and  by  Charles 
Booth  to  English  paupers.  The  National  Conference  of  Charities  some 
years  ago  appointed  a  committee  to  prepare  a  statistical  blank  for  the 
use  of  charity  organization  societies  in  collecting  data  for  studies  of 
this  kind.  Mr.  Booth  sought  for  each  case  the  '’principal  or  obvious” 
and  one  "contributing”  cause,  and  has  tabulated  his  data  so  as  to 
show  the  number  of  cases  of  pauperism  attributable  to  each  cause  as 
principal,  and  also  the  number  of  cases  attributable  to  each  combina¬ 
tion  of  principal  and  contributory  cause.  The  following  is  taken  from 
his  tabulation  of  almshouse  paupers  at  Stepney : 


.  •  ' 

Contributory  Causes 

Principal  or  Obvious  Cause 

Tot  a  1. 

Per 

Cent 

Drink 

Pauper  Asso¬ 
ciation  and 
Heredity 

Sick¬ 

ness 

Old 

Age 

1 .  Drink . 

80 

12.6 

- - 

23 

II 

II 

2.  Immorality . 

16 

2-5 

3 

3 

3 

I 

3.  Laziness . 

12 

I.Q 

6 

5 

I 

3 

4.  Incapacity,  temper,  etc.  . 

24 

3-8 

4 

5 

2 

6 

5.  Extravagance  .... 

8 

i-3 

4 

2 

— 

3 

6.  Lack  of  work  or  trade 

misfortune  .... 

28 

4.4 

4 

5 

13 

7.  Accident . 

30 

4-7 

4 

2 

1 

14 

8.  Death  of  husband  . 

26 

4.1 

3 

2 

10 

8 

9.  Desertion . 

3 

•5 

3 

~ 

1 

1 

10.  Mental  derangement  . 

11 

1-7 

1 

2 

— • 

2 

1 1 .  Sickness  . 

169 

26.7 

24 

38 

5 

4i 

12.  Old  age . 

208 

32.8 

22 

18 

44 

— 

13.  Pauper  association  and 

heredity . 

7 

i.i* 

1 

2 

2 

14.  Other  causes  .... 

12 

i-9 

6 

6 

2 

2 

Professor  Warner  gives  only  the  number  and  percentage  of  cases 
attributable  to  each  cause  as  principal  (see  Table  IV,  American 
Charities).  He  admits  that  this  is  unsatisfactory  because  there  are 
few  cases  in  which  destitution  has  resulted  from  a  single  cause,  and 
for  many  cases  "to  pick  out  one  cause  and  call  it  the  most  important 
is  a  purely  arbitrary  proceeding.”  He  proposed  at  one  of  the  meetings 


Misconduct  vs.  Misfortune 


576 


1  From  pages  46  and  47  of  the  third  edition  of  Amos  G.  Warner’s  American  Charities,  as  revised  bv  Mary  Roberts  Coolidge,  Ph.D. 
Reprinted  by  permission  of  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  Company,  New  York. 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  577 

of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  "to  consider  the  influences 
resulting  in  destitution  in  each  case  as  making  up  ten  units,  and  indi¬ 
cate  the  relative  force  of  each  cause  by  a  proportionate  number  of 
units.”  The  method  was  rejected  as  too  complicated,  but  has  been 
used  by  Mr.  A.  M.  Simons  in  a  study  of  cases  treated  by  the  Chicago 
Bureau  of  Associated  Charities.1  The  tabulated  results  are  as  follows : 


Stock  Yards 
District 

Englewood 

Lack  of  employment . 

456 

499 

Intemperance . 

157 

105 

Sickness . 

154 

95 

Incompetence . 

61 

36 

Desertion  of  breadwinner . 

51 

22 

Laziness . 

34 

160 

Old  age  . 

33 

54 

Death  of  breadwinner . 

33 

29 

Pauper  association . 

17 

0 

Insanity . 

4 

0 

In  Professor  Lindsay’s  report  to  the  National  Conference2  the 
method  employed  by  Warner  is  used.  A  condensed  statement  is  here 
given : 3 

A.  Causes  indicating  misconduct : 

Drink,  5-23;  immorality,  none ;  shiftlessness  and  inefficiency,  4.93-14; 

crime  and  dishonesty,  0-1.5;  roving  disposition,  0-3.26. 

B.  Causes  indicating  misfortune : 

1.  Lack  of  normal  support. 

Imprisonment  of  breadwinner,  0-2;  orphans  and  abandoned  chil¬ 
dren,  0-1.5;  neglect  by  relatives,  0-2.3;  no  male  support,  3. 6-7. 22. 

2.  Matters  of  employment. 

Lack  of  employment,  12-37.67;  insufficient  employment,  0-14.47; 
poorly  paid  employment,  0-10.5;  unhealthy  and  dangerous  em¬ 
ployment,  0-.6. 

1  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  III. 

2 Report  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities,  1899,  p.  369. 

3 The  numbers  in  this  statement  are  percentages  of  cases.  The  range  from  the 
lowest  percentage  in  any  city  for  one  year  to  the  highest  is  given.  Thus  the  lowest 
percentage  assigned  to  drink  is  five  for  the  year  1894-95  in  Baltimore,  the  highest 
is  twenty-three  per  centum  for  the  year  1889-90,  and  also  for  1892-93  in  Boston. 
The  cities  studied  are  New  York,  1 889-98;  Boston,  1 889-93  5  and  Baltimore,  1889-95- 


578 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


3.  Matters  of  personal  capacity. 

Ignorance  of  English,  0-1 ;  accident,  1.2-5;  sickness  or  death  in 
family,  13.75-26.50;  physical  defects,  1.28-7;  insanity,  .25-1; 
old  age,  0-7. 

C.  Not  classified  : 

Large  family,  0-4.5;  nature  of  abode,  0-1;  other  or  unknown,  .35-10. 

What  can  be  said  of  the  scientific  value  of  these  studies?  The 
case-counting  method,  dealing  as  it  does  with  actual  cases,  with  the 
"facts,”  seems  at  first  sight  to  offer  the  most  direct  line  of  approach 
to  the  problem.  Its  statistical  appearance  arouses  the  hope  that  the 
effect  of  various  causes  may  be  measured  and  the  importance  of  causes 
disclosed  by  quantitative  comparison.  Upon  the  important  causes 
ameliorative  efforts  could  then  be  concentrated,  and  the  practical  value 
of  this  method  of  study  be  demonstrated.  Closer  examination,  how¬ 
ever,  will  show  that  suggestive  as  the  study  of  concrete  cases  of  desti¬ 
tution  may  be,  nothing  is  gained  by  the  application  of  statistical 
methods.  In  other  words,  the  relative  weight  of  causes  of  poverty 
cannot  be  established  by  counting  cases. 

We  come  to  the  fundamental  difficulty  of  the  case-counting  method. 
It  has  employed  data  for  only  a  small  proportion  of  the  world’s  desti¬ 
tution,  and  incomplete  information  at  best  in  all  cases.  Yet,  if  all  the 
facts  open  to  observation  and  record  were  given,  their  interpretation 
would  meet  insuperable  difficulties.  How  is  one  to  pick  out  a  "prin¬ 
cipal”  cause  from  a  tangle  of  interacting  forces?  Take  this  entirely 
possible  instance  suggested  by  A.  M.  Simons:1 

The  husband,  a  not  very  competent  workman,  and  an  occasional  drinker, 
is  thrown  out  of  employment  by  the  stopping  of  the  factory  where  he  has 
been  working.  A  child  falls  sick,  owing  to  defective  drainage,  and  this  un¬ 
usual  expense  causes  him  to  allow  his  trades-union  dues  to  lapse  just  before 
a  period  of  general  financial  depression.  Discouraged  and  tired  of  "looking 
for  work"  and  his  resources  exhausted,  he  applies  for  charity.  Is  the 
"cause  of  distress"  lack  of  employment,  incompetency,  intemperance,  sick¬ 
ness,  bad  sanitation,  trades-unionism,  or  "general  social  conditions ”  beyond 
the  control  of  the  individual? 

How  far  back  of  the  immediate  cause  is  it  permissible  to  go? 
Warner  holds  that  the  method  should  deal  only  with  immediate  causes, 
and  therefore  objects  to  the  inclusion  in  the  list  of  causes  of  "pauper 

1  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  III. 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  579 


association  and  heredity’7  and  of  ''nature  and  location  of  abode.” 
"Both  of  these,”  he  states,  "are  by  their  nature  predisposing  causes 
rather  than  immediate  or  exciting  causes;  and  it  is  confusing  to  mix 
the  two.”  Dr.  Ayers,1  however,  in  discussing  the  new  blank  prepared 
by  the  committee  of  the  National  Conference,  advises  that : 

t 

In  cases  where  it  is  doubtful  which  of  several  causes  should  be  indicated, 
some  within  and  some  outside  the  family,  the  emphasis  should  be  thrown 
upon  the  primary  cause,  as  it  is  surely  known  and  can  be  stated.  A  sug¬ 
gestion  from  the  Baltimore  Charity  Organization  Society  may  be  safely  fol¬ 
lowed:  "Give  the  cause  that  is  farthest  back  provided  you  really  know  it!  ” 

Evidently  there  is  no  agreement  as  to  the  object  of  the  inquiry. 

In  many  instances  the  chain  of  causes  appears  to  return  upon  itself, 
the  effect  becoming  a  cause  and  forming,  in  a  sense,  a  "vicious  circle.” 
A  man  is  destitute  because  of  unemployment,  unemployed  because  of 
physical  weakness,  weak  because  of  nature  of  abode  and  insufficiency 
of  nutritious  food,  confined  to  insanitary  dwelling-places  and  poorly 
fed  and  depressed  because  of  his  destitution.  What  point  in  this  circle 
should  be  selected  for  tabulation  ?  Obviously,  the  latitude  that  must 
be  given  to  individual  judgment  puts  agreement  out  of  question.  The 
individual  judgments,  though  issuing  in  a  numerical  statement  with 
all  the  delusive  aspect  of  exactness  that  "figures”  give,  are  the  out¬ 
come  of  a  struggle  in  the  investigator’s  mind  between  indeterminate 
factors.  Prejudice  or,  in  more  courteous  phrase,  the  "personal  equa¬ 
tion”  decides  what  part  of  a  circular  causal  movement  will  be  desig¬ 
nated  or  how  far  back  of  the  immediate  causes  the  inquiry  will  be 
pushed.  Moreover,  the  investigator’s  judgment  is  not  likely  to  be 
entirely  undisturbed  by  strong  feeling.  In  regard  to  the  subject  of 
intemperance,  for  instance,  an  American  until  recently  found  it  dif¬ 
ficult  to  think  calmly.  He  abominated  either  the  liquor  traffic  or  the 
frenzied  language  of  the  temperance  advocate.  That  the  bias  of  one 
student  will  exactly  offset  that  of  another  is  by  no  means  certain.2 
The  nature  and  amount  of  popular  discussion  given  to  any  factor 

1  Charities  Review,  December,  i8q8. 

2  Professor  Warner  refers  to  the  tendency  of  bias  to  become  corrected  in  grand 
totals,  and  then  suggests  that  variation  is,  after  all,  rather  slight.  Thus  "causes 
indicating  misconduct  vary  only  between  7.5  and  32.5.”  This  only  is  almost  ludi¬ 
crous.  If  variations  of  25  points  are  to  be  regarded  as  trivial,  the  use  of  numerical 
data  can  have  little  meaning. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


580 

largely  determines  the  bulk  it  assumes  in  each  investigator’s  mind. 
Intemperance  as  a  cause  of  destitution  cannot  be  disregarded.  "  Nature 
of  abode,”  however,  has  been  overlooked.  The  small  percentage  of 
cases  attributed  to  it  (2.2  and  1  at  the  highest  in  Warner’s  and  Lind¬ 
say’s  tables,  respectively,  and  nothing  for  most  cities)  will  astonish 
any  one  acquainted  with  the  life  of  tenement  districts.  The  attention 
given  to  housing  conditions  in  recent  years  and  the  impression  made 
upon  the  public  mind  will  possibly  be  reflected  in  future  tabulations, 
and  result  in  some  approach  to  a  correct  percentage.  Such  tables  are, 
however,  at  best  but  records  of  the  more  or  less  confused  impressions 
and  reactions  of  more  or  less  prejudiced  minds.  They  indicate  the 
course  of  popular  thought  and  feeling,  of  subjective  rather  than  of  objec¬ 
tive  conditions.  They  can  never  give  a  rightly  proportioned  picture  of 
the  facts.  How  widely  they  depart  from  the  reality  it  is  idle  to  inquire. 

A  statistical  blank  such  as  that  formerly  recommended  by  the  Na¬ 
tional  Conference  is,  by  its  very  nature,  misleading.  Consisting  of  a 
list  of  causes,  headings  under  which  data  are  to  be  entered,  its  use 
can  be  defended  only  on  the  assumption  that  the  list  is  exhaustive  so 
far  as  causes  that  can  be  considered  principal  are  concerned,  or  that 
the  omitted  causes  are  a  negligible  quantity.  Such  listing  leads  to  the 
oversight  of  causes  not  listed.  The  caption  "  Causes  not  named  or 
unknown”  is  an  insufficient  safeguard.  Placed  at  the  end  of  the  list, 
it  attracts  too  little  notice.  Attention  is  inevitably  centred  upon  the 
more  conspicuous  headings.  The  difficulty  of  securing  accurate  and 
complete  data  and  of  interpreting  them,  however,  makes  it  clear  that 
even  the  attempt  to  compare  only  a  few  conspicuous  causes  can  lead 
to  no  trustworthy  conclusions. 

The  case-counting  method,  we  may  conclude,  is,  and  always  will  be, 
a  complete  failure.  Comparing  causes,  not  by  any  possible  accurate 
measure  of  their  effects,  but  by  counting  cases  and  assuming  that  they 
are  of  equal  value ;  taking  into  consideration  only  a  small  proportion 
of  the  total  of  cases  without  assurance  that  those  taken  are  truly 
representative  of  the  whole ;  based  for  the  cases  actually  investigated 
on  incomplete  data  and  on  the  untenable  assumption  that  a  principal 
cause  may  be  picked  out  from  a  tangled  network  of  causes ;  limited 
artificially  to  a  printed  list  of  causes  suggested  by  the  dominant  in¬ 
terests  of  the  time  in  advance  of  any  real  investigation, — it  throws 
light  neither  on  what  is  fundamental  nor  on  the  relative  importance 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  581 


of  the  superficial  phenomena  and  it  gives  no  adequate  study  of  any 
distinct  class  of  the  destitute  or  trustworthy  comparison  of  any  special 
groups  of  causes.  It  follows,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  it  can  yield 
no  conclusion  of  sufficient  generality  to  be  of  service  in  establishing 
principles  of  poor-relief.  A  few  factors,  indeed,  in  such  a  study  acquire 
prominence, — intemperance,  matters  of  employment,  sickness.  That 
these  are  in  numerous  cases  among  the  immediate  causes  of  distress 
may  be  granted.  General  observation  will  lead  to  that  conclusion, 
and  statistical  proof  is  unnecessary.  The  only  legitimate  inference, 
however,  is  that  of  all  the  forces  at  work  they  are  the  conspicuous 
ones.  It  is  not  proved  that  they  are  the  most  important. 

79.  Poverty  and  its  Vicious  Circles1 

The  word  Poverty,  as  used  in  the  following  pages,  may  be  defined 
as  the  condition  of  a  person  who  lacks  the  necessaries  for  subsistence 
and  efficiency.  Vicious  Circle  is  the  process  by  which  a  primary  dis¬ 
order  provokes  a  reaction  which  aggravates  such  disorder. 

In  the  ordinary  course  of  economic  law  the  reaction  provoked  by 
a  social  disorder  tends  to  arrest  such  disorder.  For  example,  idleness 
is  checked  by  indigence,  crime  by  social  ostracism,  alcoholism  by 
dyspepsia,  insanitation  by  ill-health.  By  this  natural  process  the 
social  organism  maintains  itself  in  health.  Where  a  Vicious  Circle  is 
present,  the  ordinary  sequence  is  modified.  The  reactions  which 
should  be  beneficent  are  maleficent  and  intensify  the  disorder.  Pov¬ 
erty,  one  of  the  most  important  of  social  evils,  is  to  some  extent 
subject  to  the  usual  economic  law,  since  it  has  sequelae  which  render 
it  disagreeable  and  therefore  to  be  avoided.  Unfortunately,  however, 
there  are  other  potent  factors  which  aggravate  in  lieu  of  arresting  the 
primary  disorder,  and  cause  poverty  to  become  self-perpetuating.  As 
Solomon  pointed  out  many  centuries  ago:  "The  destruction  of  the 
poor  is  their  poverty.” 

Some  sociologists  have  taught  that  poverty  cures  itself,  and  have 
advocated  a  laissez-faire  policy.  The  following  study  shows  that  such 
a  principle  cannot  be  consistently  adhered  to,  unless  we  do  outrage  to 
all  feelings  of  our  common  humanity.  Too  often  does  the  vis  medica- 

1By  Jamieson  B.  Hurry,  formerly  Medical  Officer  at  University  College, 
Reading,  England.  Adapted  from  Poverty  and  its  Vicious  Circles,  pp.  xi,  xii, 
2-4,  9>  18,  19,  28-31,  135-160.  J.  and  A.  Churchill,  London,  1917. 


582 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


trix  become  the  vis  devastatrix  against  which  not  only  individuals, 
but  whole  classes  of  society,  are  powerless  to  contend.  There  is  a 
close  similarity  between  physical  and  social  disease.  In  each  case 
problems  of  pathology,  diagnosis,  prognosis,  prophylaxis,  and  thera¬ 
peutics  present  themselves  for  solution.  In  each  case  training,  skill,  and 
philosophic  insight  are  required  by  those  who  seek  to  cure  the  disorder. 


Circles  associated  with  defective  housing.  Poverty  breeds  poverty 
through  the  insanitary  and  overcrowded  homes  in  which  the  poor  are 
often  obliged  to  live.  Physical,  mental,  and  moral  health  suffers,  with 
the  result  that  earning  power  is  diminished  and  poverty  is  aggravated. 
We  may  deal  in  turn  with  each  of  these  results  of  defective  housing, 
whether  this  latter  is  due  to  insufficient  cubic  space,  to  excessive  sur¬ 
face  density,  to  want  of  drainage,  or  to  other  insanitary  conditions. 
The  impaired  physique  frequently  takes  the  form  of  chronic  ill- 
health.  Recuperation  after  exhausting  labour  depends  on  pure  air  for 
respiration  and  digestion,  and  on  peaceful  surroundings  for  refreshing 
sleep.  Where  these  are  absent,  there  is  a  more  or  less  serious  de¬ 
preciation  of  muscular  activity  and  a  tendency  to  rapid  exhaustion. 

Circles  associated  with  malnutrition.  One  of  the  commonest  results 
of  poverty  is  deficiency  in  the  quantity  and  quality  of  food.  Such 
deficiency  is  followed  by  malnutrition  and  debility  which  in  their  turn 
diminish  earning  power  and  thus  lead  back  to  poverty.  Every  suc¬ 
cessful  farmer  knows  that  it  is  profitable  to  feed  his  horses  sufficiently 
well  to  keep  them  in  good  health,  since  otherwise  much  of  their  pos¬ 
sible  output  in  labour  is  lost.  But  the  employer  of  human  labour 
takes  far  less  trouble  to  ensure  that  his  employees  have  the  food  they 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  583 

require  in  order  to  produce  their  maximum  work.  As  impossible  is 
it  for  the  human  machine,  when  short  of  food,  to  produce  the  maxi¬ 
mum  output  as  for  the  steam-engine  when  short  of  coal.  Efficient, 
production  is  economical  production.  Malnutrition  is  especially  dis¬ 
astrous  to  children  since  it  retards  development,  lowers  mental  calibre, 
and  tends  to  handicap  them  during  the  rest  of  life. 

Circles  associated  with  unemployment .  A  large  proportion  of  the 
poor  suffer  periodically  from  unemployment,  and,  speaking  generally, 
the  poorest  suffer  most.  Their  ignorance  is  greater,  their  outlook  is 
more  limited,  their  adaptability  is  less.  When  unemployed,  they  are 
less  in  touch  with  openings  where  work  may  be  had,  while  their  limited 
savings  prevent  their  traveling  far  in  search  of  it.  All  these  difficulties 
tend  to  intensify  poverty. 

Recurrent  unemployment  and  its  associated  hand-to-mouth  exist¬ 
ence  weaken  morale.  The  weary  tramp  in  search  of  a  job,  the  frequent 
disappointments,  the  anxiety  about  wife  and  children  only  too  often 
loosen  all  family  ties.  In  course  of  time  all  desire  for  regular  oc¬ 
cupation  passes  away ;  a  casual  life  leads  to  such  deterioration  of 
character  that  the  affected  individual  only  cares  for  casual  labour. 
Frequently  unemployment  drives  a  man  to  drink,  and  drunkenness 
keeps  him  in  the  ranks  of  the  unemployed. 

Circles  associated  with  anxiety.  Under  the  general  term  anxiety 
may  be  included  various  psychical  conditions  which  are  sometimes 
associated  with  poverty.  These  psychical  conditions  may  take  the 
form  of  worry,  of  melancholy,  or  even  of  despair,  according  to  their 
severity.  Each  of  them  may  induce  insomnia  and  neurasthenia  which 
lower  efficiency  and  intensify  poverty. 

Up  to  a  certain  point  anxiety  may  be  a  beneficial  reaction  and  stim¬ 
ulate  a  man  to  exert  himself  to  the  utmost  to  keep  his  family  in  com¬ 
fort  and  decency,  or,  short  of  that,  out  of  the  workhouse.  But  there 
is  always  a  danger,  especially  with  neurotic  individuals,  lest  pro¬ 
longed  anxiety  arouse  injurious  reactions.  Some  degree  of  worry  in¬ 
deed  seems  inevitable,  since  the  poor  are  liable  to  many  sources  of 
irritation  from  which  persons  in  comfortable  circumstances  are  free. 
Especially  are  worries  injurious  when  they  create  auto-suggestions 
and  phobias  which  magnify  the  primary  irritability.  Thus  there 
may  be  an  ever-present  nightmare  of  unemployment,  of  sickness,  or 
other  ill.  Poverty  sometimes  leads  a  worried  wage-earner  to  over- 


V 


5«4 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


tax  his  strength,  forgetful  that  inadequate  rest  in  the  long  run  dimin¬ 
ishes  output  and  aggravates  poverty.  The  increased  productivity  of 
shorter  spells  of  work  is  one  of  the  main  arguments  for  the  eight 
hour  movement. 

There  are  many  other  forms  of  injurious  correlations  between  mind 
and  body.  A  common  illustration  is  seen  in  neurotic  dyspepsia,1  a 
condition  which  has  been  well  described  by  C.  W.  Saleeby : 

In  nervous  dyspepsia  we  see  illustrated,  in  the  fullest  degree,  that  action 
and  reaction  between  mind  and  body,  which  most  perfectly  demonstrates 
the  meaning  of  the  phrase*-  a  Vicious  Circle.  In  this  case,  which  followed 
an  absolutely  typical  course,  a  purely  mental  disturbance  caused  a  physical 
disorder,  and  this  produced  a  mental  disturbance  similar  to  the  original  one, 
but  utterly  different  in  causation.  The  problem  now  was  to  break  the  Circle 
by  attacking  the  physical  disorder ;  and  the  difficulty  of  doing  so  depended 
upon  the  fact  that  it  was  a  Vicious  Circle  which  had  to  be  dealt  with.  For 
all  the  physical  means — such  as  regulation  of  the  diet,  drugs,  massage,  and 
so  forth — appropriate  to  the  physical  disorder,  had  to  contest  the  ground, 
inch  by  inch,  with  the  opposing  influence  of  the  worry  which  that  disorder 
had  engendered,  and  which  in  turn  tendered  to  perpetuate  it.2 

In  other  cases  of  poverty  the  mental  disorder  takes  the  form  of 
profound  melancholia,  associated  with  loss  of  physical  and  mental 
vigour  as  well  as  with  malnutrition.  Thus  Muller  writes:  "The  men¬ 
tal  depression  reacts  on  nutrition,  sleep,  and  the  other  vital  functions, 
and  thus  creates  a  distressing  Vicious  Circle,  which  aggravates  the 
primary  disorder.”3 

The  gravest  form  of  anxiety  is  that  which  provokes  a  condition 
approaching  to  despair.  Especially  is  this  result  likely  to  follow  when 
poverty  has  been  accompanied  by  prolonged  mental  or  physical  strain, 
or  when  a  precarious  hand-to-mouth  struggle  has  been  followed  by 
unemployment.  Even  a  brave  light-hearted  man  may  under  such 
circumstances  give  way  to  pessimism  and  plunge  his  family  into 
abject  misery.4  All  these  forms  of  psychical  disorder  raise  the  in¬ 
cidence  of  disease  and  of  accident,  and  so  tend  to  intensify  poverty. 
Worry  is  by  no  means  an  uncommon  cause  of  death. 

1  Compare  also  The  Vicious  Circles  of  Neurasthenia ,  by  J.  B.  Hurry,  p.  29. 

2  Worry,  the  Disease  of  the  Age,  p.  139. 

3  Handbuch  der  N eurasthenie,  p.  61. 

4  In  many  cases  self-drugging  has  been  resorted  to,  followed  by  rapid  increase 
of  poverty. 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  585 


The  Breaking  of  the  Vicious  Circle 

Every  Vicious  Circle  has  one  excellent  virtue,  viz.  there  are  at 
least  two  points  in  its  circumference  at  which  interruption  is  possible. 
When  the  locus  minoris  resistentiae  has  been  discovered,  a  breach 
must  be  effected  and  the  gyration  arrested. 

The  methods  by  which  the  Vicious  Circles  associated  with  poverty 
can  be  broken  may  be  grouped  under  three  headings :  I.  Legislation ; 
II.  Voluntary  Organisations ;  III.  Personal  Effort.1 

Each  of  these  methods  has  its  advantages.  The  legislature,  through 
the  control  of  taxation,  can  raise  the  necessary  funds  for  coping  with 
great  national  problems,  and  can  exert  compulsory  powers.  Its  weak¬ 
ness  lies  in  a  want  of  adaptability  to  circumstances,  in  the  risk  of 
harsh  bureaucratic  methods,  and  in  the  difficulty  of  experimental 
investigations. 

^Voluntary  Organisations  have  the  advantage  of  varied  counsels 
and  of  a  more  or  less  impartial  and  independent  survey.  In  many 
cases  they  enjoy  much  prestige,  which  inspires  confidence  and  en¬ 
ables  them  to  exert  a  wide-spread  influence  over  large  sections  of 
the  community.  Considerable  elasticity  can  be  combined  with  free¬ 
dom  in  initiating  fresh  methods  of  betterment.  Indeed  many  writers 
believe  that  such  Organisations  are  better  fitted  than  is  the  State 
to  solve  social  problems  and  in  time  should  make  State  interference 
unnecessary. 

Personal  effort  enjoys  an  advantage  over  all  other  methods  in  being 
able  to  inquire  into  personal  and  environmental  conditions  and  ad¬ 
justing  the  remedy,  both  as  regards  its  nature  and  strength,  to  the 
disorder.  The  weakness  associated  with  personal  effort  arises  from 
the  insufficiency  of  trained  workers  with  a  wide  outlook  on  the  ulti¬ 
mate  as  well  as  the  immediate  effects  of  remedial  schemes,  and  from 
the  risk  of  over-lapping. 

xThis  classification  seems  preferable  to  that  adopted  by  E.  Miinsterberg,  who 
divides  measures  of  relief  into  (1)  public;  (2)  religious;  (3)  private.  Conrad, 
Handworterbuch  der  Staatswissenschaften,  Vol.  II,  p.  143. 

Schonberg,  in  his  excellent  article  on  "Die  gewerbliche  Arbeiterfrage”  says 
that  social  reform  needs  the  co-operation  of  the  workers,  the  well-to-do,  the 
legislature,  and  the  Church.  His  three  main  forces  are:  Selbsthilfe  (self-help), 
Gesellschaftshilfe  (organised  help),  and  Staatshilfe  (State  help).  Schonberg, 
Volkswirtschaftslehre ,  Vol.  II,  p.  648. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


586 

The  ideal  arrangement  is  doubtless  found  in  a  judicious  co-operation 
of  the  various  methods  of  relief.  For  example  the  Charity  Organisa¬ 
tion  Society  has  long  urged  that  the  Poor  Law  should  confine  itself 
to  institutional  relief  humanely  and  adequately  bestowed,  and  that 
outdoor  relief  should  be  left  to  voluntary  organisations. 

Legislation.  It  is  only  in  comparatively  modern  times  that  the 
legislature  has  attempted  to  deal  with  poverty.  In  classical  and  me¬ 
diaeval  days  the  poor  were  relieved  by  religious  bodies  or  by  private 
charity.1  This  modern  development  may  be  attributed  to  a  growth 
of  sympathy  with  the  less  fortunate  members  of  the  community,  as 
well  as  to  the  fact  that  the  State  as  representing  the  entire  community 
is  alone  competent  to  deal  with  so  gigantic  an  evil  as  poverty  is  to-day. 
At  all  events  every  civilised  State  has  recognised  the  necessity  of  re¬ 
sorting  to  law  in  order  to  break  the  various  Vicious  Circles  which 
complicate  so  many  social  evils.  England  is  generally  regarded  as 
having  led  the  way  in  such  legislative  reform. 

Social  legislation  was  strongly  reprobated  by  the  older  school  of 
economists  who  believed  that  the  policy  of  laissez-faire  was  the 
wisest  in  the  long  run,  and  argued  that  poverty  in  course  of  time 
would  cure  itself.  And  indeed  there  are  modern  individualists  who 
hold  that  it  is  better  for  men  to  carve  their  own  lives,  to  learn  their 
own  lessons  by  experience,  even  if  they  make  blunders,  than  for  the 
State  to  interfere.  Such  interference  in  their  view  is  injurious,  since 
it  weakens  the  self-reliance  and  diminishes  the  independence  of  the 
individual. 

But  there  are  but  few  economists  to-day,  who  apply  this  doctrine 
consistently  to  every  social  disorder.  It  is  all  very  well  to  argue  that 
the  self-interest  of  parents  and  employers  ought  to  have  rendered  the 
long  series  of  our  Factory  Acts  superfluous.  Far-sighted  manufac¬ 
turers  might  surely  have  recognised  that  excessive  hours  of  work  in  an 
unwholesome  environment  rendered  labour  in  the  long  run  both  ineffi¬ 
cient  and  costly.  But  it  is  notorious  that  they  did  not  recognise  where 
their  true  interests  lay,  and  that  interference  was  urgently  demanded. 

Even  Fawcett,  one  of  the  staunchest  upholders  of  a  laissez-faire 
policy,  admitted  that  compulsory  education  was  justified  by  its  enor¬ 
mous  benefits,  and  by  the  fact  that  the  ignorance  of  parents  did  not, 

t 

1  Athens,  however,  is  an  exception,  since  its  poor  citizens  were  supported  by 
the  State. 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  587 


as  it  should  do,  make  them  desire  that  their  children  should  be  well 
educated,  but,  on  the  contrary,  so  often  made  them  content  with 
ignorance  in  their  children.1  It  may  therefore  be  accepted  that  the 
policy  of  laissez-faire  must  under  certain  circumstances  be  abandoned, 
that  there  are  circumstances  in  which,  owing  to  ignorance,  helpless¬ 
ness,  immobility,  or  lost  freedom  of  bargaining,  there  is  no  hope  of 
breaking  the  Circle  without  extraneous  aid.  Arnold  Toynbee  puts 
this  argument  clearly : 

We  have  not  abandoned  our  old  belief  in  liberty,  justice,  and  self-help; 
but  we  say  that,  under  certain  conditions,  people  cannot  help  themselves,  and 
that  then  they  should  be  helped  by  the  State  representing  directly  the  whole 
people.  In  giving  this  State  help,  we  make  three  conditions  :  first,  the  mat¬ 
ter  must  be  one  of  primary  social  importance  ;  next,  it  must  be  proved  to  be 
practicable;  thirdly,  the  State  interference  must  not  diminish  self- reliance. * 

The  problem  therefore  resolves  itself  into  the  question  of  how  to 
interfere  with  economic  laws  without  weakening,  more  than  need  be, 
the  self-reliance  of  the  people.  The  policy  of  temporary  relief  is  so 
much  easier,  and  involves  so  much  less  thought  and  trouble  than  does 
effectual  cure,  that  our  legislature  is  apt  to  yield  to  the  temptation 
to  choose  the  broad  in  lieu  of  the  narrow  way.  S.  and  B.  Webb  thus 
describe  this  policy: 

In  some  of  the  legislation  that  has  been  passed  during  the  last  two 
decades,  and  in  a  good  many  of  the  projects  put  forward  by  each  political 
party  in  turn,  we  see  the  fatal  attraction  of  the  easy  policy  of  "relief,”  in 
contrast  with  the  arduous  mental  labour  involved  in  mastering  the  technique 
of  prevention.  Great  Britain,  in  fact,  finds  it  difficult  to  break  out  of  a 
Vicious  Circle.  Our  governing  class  —  Ministers,  Members  of  Parliament, 
Judges,  Civil  Servants  —  do  not  seem  yet  to  have  realised  that  social  recon¬ 
structions  require  as  much  specialised  training  and  sustained  study  as  the 
building  of  bridges  and  railways,  the  interpretation  of  the  law,  or  technical 
improvements  in  machinery  and  mechanical  processes.  The  result  is  that 
the  amount  of  knowledge  available,  even  of  knowledge  of  facts,  when  a 
Minister  is  faced  by  a  problem,  is  always  ludicrously  insufficient,  whilst 
adequately  trained  expert  students  of  the  subject  are  seldom  to  be  found. 
Meanwhile,  the  bulk  of  the  electorate,  the  organised  working-class,  can 
hardly  be  expected  to  have  time  to  think  out  for  themselves  the  necessary 
changes  in  environment  or  to  develop  any  new  social  technique;  and  in 
default  of  intellectual  leadership  they  are  apt  to  alternate  between  a  some- 

1  Pauperism:  its  Causes  and  Remedies ,  pp.  124-132. 

2  The  Industrial  Revolution  of  the  18th  Century  in  England,  p.  219. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


588 

what  cynical  apathy  and  an  impartial  acceptance  of  the  first  easy-looking 
device  for  improving  their  condition  that  is  presented  to  them.  The  first 
condition  of  effective  social  progress  in  this  country  is  that  we  should  get 
out  of  this  Vicious  Circle.1 

Doubtless  there  will  always  be  difference  of  opinion  as  to  where 
the  line  should  be  drawn.  The  self-regulation  of  economic  forces 
is  of  such  enormous  value  that  it  must  only  be  interfered  with  after 
the  most  careful  consideration.  Nevertheless  there  is  every  reason 
to  think  that  such  social  legislation  as  has  been  referred  to  above  will 
be  largely  extended  in  future  years.  Much  remains  to  be  done  to  im¬ 
prove  the  homes  of  the  people.  There  is  still  a  vast  amount  of  over¬ 
crowding  of  individual  houses,  and  far  too  many  houses  are  allowed  on 
a  given  area  of  land.  More  supervision  is  required  to  ensure  that  each 
house  shall  be  well  built,  well  drained,  and  well  ventilated.  Over¬ 
crowding  in  the  towns  will  also  be  relieved  by  the  development  of  small 
holdings  and  increased  facilities  of  locomotion.  The  registration  of 
titles  to  house  property  will  greatly  facilitate  administrative  action. 

Further  measures  are  called  for  to  improve  the  health  of  the  people, 
including  a  pure  milk  supply,  especially  for  infants.  A  more  sys¬ 
tematic  inspection  of  dairy  farms  and  milk  shops  is  required,  and 
encouragement  should  be  given  to  farmers  anxious  to  free  their  herds 
from  tuberculosis.  Refrigerating  vans  for  conveying  milk  at  least 
during  hot  weather  are  desirable,  and  many  antiquated  forms  of  milk 
churns  should  be  abolished. 

The  complex  problem  of  temperance  reform,  when  once  satisfac¬ 
torily  solved,  will  give  a  powerful  impetus  to  social  progress. 

In  the  field  of  education  much  leeway  remains  to  be  made  up.  Uni¬ 
versal  education  as  to  the  best  way  of  supplying  the  elementary  wants 
of  humanity  is  urgently  required.  Especially  should  girls  be  taught 
household  economy  and  mothercraft.  This  in  itself  will  break  many 
of  the  Circles  associated  with  ignorance  and  inefficiency.  Again,  the 
war  has  emphasised,  as  perhaps  nothing  else  could  have  done,  the 
importance  of  a  high  standard  of  technical  education. 

A  further  extension  of  legislation  on  the  lines  of  the  National 
Insurance  Act  will  be  a  boon  to  the  labouring  classes.  Germany  has 
led  the  way  in  such  beneficent  legislation  which  breaks  many  of  the 
Circles  associated  with  unemployment,  accident,  and  disease. 

xThe  Prevention  of  Destitution ,  p.  331. 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  589 


Voluntary  organisation.  A  great  number  of  Societies  and  Organi¬ 
sations  have  been  established  whose  raison  d’etre  is  the  prevention 
and  the  breaking  of  Circles  associated  with  poverty.  Some  of  these 
deal  with  disease,  some  with  unemployment,  some  with  insanitation, 
some  with  drunkenness,  some  with  crime,  some  with  immorality, 
some  with  inefficiency,  and  so  forth.  Space  does  not  allow  of  even  a 
general  summary  of  all  that  they  accomplish  in  the  direction  of  social 
reform.  But  a  few  examples  may  be  singled  out  to  illustrate  their 
modus  operandi. 

Amongst  the  more  important  are  the  Trade  Unions  which  have 
greatly  benefited  the  working  classes  as  a  whole,  both  by  developing 
their  intelligence  and  by  increasing  their  economic  strength.  Although 
the  results  have  mainly  accrued  to  their  own  members,  these  Unions 
have  done  much  to  emancipate  the  employed  class  as  a  whole  from 
undue  domination  of  capital,  to  diminish  unemployment,  to  shorten 
hours  of  work,  to  establish  a  standard  rate  of  wages  by  collective  bar¬ 
gaining,  and  to  raise  the  worker  to  something  approaching  equality 
with  the  employer.  By  means  of  their  sick  funds,  their  unemploy¬ 
ment  funds,  their  accident  funds,  their  death  funds,  they  have  in¬ 
culcated  principles  of  self-help  and  self-respect,  and  to  a  large  extent 
have  broken  the  Circles  of  inefficiency,  ignorance,  and  immobility.1 

Another  example  may  be  mentioned — the  Friendly  Societies.  These 
are  mutual  insurance  associations  by  means  of  which  the  working 
classes  protect  themselves  and  each  other  against  many  of  the  troubles 
of  life.  By  inculcating  habits  of  thrift  and  self-help,  these  Societies, 
like  Trade  Unions,  have  done  much  to  promote  a  high  standard  of 
life  and  conduct. 

A  third  example  may  be  found  in  the  Co-operative  Movement 
which  has  proved  a  valuable  economic  expedient  for  increasing  the 
health  and  happiness  of  the  poor  man’s  home.  Encouraged  by  an 
enthusiastic  propaganda,  multitudes  of  working  men  have  been  en¬ 
abled  to  save  money,  to  practise  moral  and  prudential  virtues,  in  brief 
to  live  with  an  ideal.  Humble  workers  who  had  never  possessed 
any  reserve,  came  under  the  magic  influence  of  a  little  capital  which 
reacted  on  their  moral  and  physical  condition.  Independence,  once 

1  Sometimes,  however,  Trade  Unions  create  a  Vicious  Circle,  e.g.  when  they 
foment  strife  and  diminish  production  in  order  to  obtain  higher  wages,  which 
can  only  be  paid  out  of  increased  production. 


590 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


acquired,  led  to  further  thrift,  to  increased  comfort,  and  to  a  higher 
standard  of  life  and  self-respect.  At  Rochdale,  the  birth-place  of  the 
movement,  the  whole  material,  intellectual,  and  moral  condition  re¬ 
ceived  a  powerful  impetus. 

The  three  great  Organisations  just  referred  to  have  been  in  the 
main  initiated  and  controlled  by  the  working  classes  themselves.  The 
prospects  of  even  greater  usefulness  seem  bright. 

To  another  group  of  Voluntary  Organisations  belong  Hospitals, 
Convalescent  Homes,  Orphanages,  and  a  multitude  of  religious  and 
social  Institutions,  whether  national,  civic,  or  parochial. 

There  is  immense  variety  in  the  objects  and  methods  of  these 
Organisations,  but  in  one  way  or  another  they  seek  to  solve  the  com¬ 
plex  problems  arising  out  of  poverty.  A  special  tribute  should  be 
paid  to  those  enlightened  Societies  which  in  this  and  other  countries 
have  pointed  out  the  danger  o‘f  indiscriminate  charity  and  the  impor¬ 
tance  of  giving  such  relief  as  will  render  the  recipient  more  self- 
reliant  than  before.  "Give  adequate  relief”  is  another  way  of  saying 
"break  the  Circle.”  Amongst  them  may  be  mentioned  the  Charity 
Organisation  Societies  in  England  and  America,  Le  Bureau  Central 
des  Oeuvres  de  Bienfaisance  in  Paris,  Der  Deutsche  Verein  f. 
Arrnenpflege  und  Wohlthatigkeit. 

Individual  effort.  The  third,  but  by  no  means  the  least  important, 
agency  in  dealing  with  poverty  is  to  be  found  in  the  activity  of  the 
vast  army  of  individual  workers  who  bring  the  best  powers  of  head 
and  heart  and  hand  to  the  solution  of  the  complex  problems  presented 
to  them. 

There  are  many  Circles  from  which  the  poor  man  can  extricate 
himself,  if  he  has  courage,  perseverance,  and  prudence.  For  example 
abstinence  from  tobacco  and  beer  will  in  some  cases  so  largely  supple- 
ment  the  weekly  income  that  more  can  be  spent  on  rent,  food,  and 
clothing.  Hence  will  result  improved  health  and  respectability,  both 
tending  to  still  higher  wages,  and  diminished  desire  for  self-indulgence. 
Prudence  in  the  purchase  of  the  necessities  of  life  will  permit  the  ac¬ 
cumulation  of  savings  which  may  be  deposited  in  a  savings  bank  for 
a  rainy  day.  The  remembrance  of  Malthus’s  doctrine  that  a  man 
should  only  marry  when  able  to  maintain  a  family,  or,  at  least,  that 
he  should  limit  the  number  of  his  children  according  to  his  resources 
would  check  the  excessive  fecundity  that  proves  so  common  a  source 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  DEPENDENCY  591 


of  poverty.  Increased  economy  will  allow  more  home  comfort,  better 
education  for  the  children,  and  greater  happiness  in  life. 

Unfortunately,  however,  poverty  so  frequently  blinds  a  man  to  his 
highest  interests  and  paralyses  his  efforts  to  escape  from  the  snares 
in  which  he  is  caught,  that  some  extraneous  assistance  is  required  to 
effect  his  deliverance.  It  is  here  that  the  judicious  help  of  the  social 
worker  can  render  such  priceless  services. 

Illustrations  of  a  number  of  Circles,  together  with  the  factors  into 
which  they  may  be  analysed,  have  already  been  given  in  the  plates  on 
page  582.  The  following  Table  gives  concisely  some  additional  ones: 

I.  Poverty — Anxiety1 — Insomnia — Lowered  Efficiency — Poverty. 

II.  Poverty — Improvidence — Want  of  Reserve — Poverty. 

III.  Poverty — Indolence — Waste  of  Time — Poverty. 

IV.  Poverty — Sickness — U nemployment — Poverty. 

V.  Poverty — Sweated  Labour — Low  Wages — Poverty. 

VI.  Poverty — Immobility — Loss  of  Opportunity — Poverty. 

VII.  Poverty ; — Unequal  Taxation — Poverty. 

VIII.  Poverty — Unequal  Justice  —  Poverty. 

IX.  Poverty; — Inability  to  Bargain — Lessened  Choice — Poverty. 

X.  Poverty — Employment  of  Women — Increased  Competition  — 
Lowered  Wages — Poverty. 

XI.  Poverty — Wastefulness — Poverty. 

XII.  Poverty — Demoralisation — Poverty. 

The  methods  required  by  the  social  worker  are  infinite  in  number 
and  variety.  Every  judicious  effort 

to  remove  insanitation 
to  improve  nutrition 
to  promote  education 
to  check  intemperance 
to  relieve  unemployment 
to  increase  efficiency 
to  cure  disease 
to  prevent  wastefulness 
to  lessen  immorality 
!  to  arrest  crime 

to  encourage  self-help 
to  raise  ideals 

will  remove  some  pebbles  from  the  via  dolorosa  along  which  so  many 
of  our  unfortunate  brethren  have  to  journey. 


►  amongst  the  poor, 


CHAPTER  XXII 


f 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY— ECONOMIC  FACTORS 
80.  Income  in  the  United  States1 

One  reason  why  economics  continues  so  largely  a  speculative  science 
is  that  we  still  lack  exact  information  touching  upon  the  economic 
facts  which  most  vitally  concern  us.  No  questions  are  more  funda¬ 
mental  than  those  relating  to  the  amount  and  distribution  of  income. 
What  is  the  total  income  of  the  people  of  the  United  States?  How 
has  it  changed  during  the  last  ten  years  ?  How  is  it  shared  among  in¬ 
dividuals  and  groups  of  individuals  ?  What  proportion  of  the  total  goes 
to  the  well-to-do  classes  and  what  proportion  to  wage  earners  ?  Are 
the  rich  really  growing  richer  as  the  poor  grow  poorer  ?  What  would 
the  average  income  be  if  there  were  an  equal  per  capita  distribution  ? 
On  these  questions  we  are  favored  with  endless  controversy  for  the 
simple  reason  that  authoritative  answers  to  them  have  been  lacking. 

The  first  report  of  the  National  Bureau  of  Economic  Research2 
based  on  over  a  year’s  investigation  by  its  able  staff  goes  far  to  supply 
this  lack.  In  the  absence  of  a  census  of  incomes,  such  as  was  taken 
by  Australia  in  1915,  the  bureau  has  been  compelled  to  piece  together 
all  the  available  information  from  income  tax  returns,  wage  statistics, 
etc.,  to  reach  its  comprehensive  conclusions.  These  are  frankly  pre¬ 
sented  as  estimates  but  estimates  so  carefully  arrived  at  and  tested 
that  the  bureau  is  confident  that  they  vary  from  the  truth  by  less 
than  10  per  cent. 

The  total  income  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  from  1909- 
1918  is  found  to  have  been  in  billions  of  dollars:  1909,  28.7;  1910, 
31.6;  1911,31.4;  1912, 33.2;  1913, 34.7;  1914,35.5;  1915, 36.5; 

]  By  Henry  R.  Seager,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Polidcal  Economy  in  Columbia 
University.  From  the  Survey ,  Vol.  XLVII,  No.  8,  p.  270. 

2 Income  in  the  United  States ,  its  Amount  and  Distribution ,  igog-igig.  By 
the  staff  of  the  National  Bureau  of  Economic  Research,  Incorporated.  Harcourt, 
Brace  and  Company,  New  York,  1921. 


592 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


593 


1916,  46.2;  1917,  55.1;  1918,  62.0.  The  increase  in  income  from 
1913  to  1918  is  striking  but  most  of  the  80  per  cent  shown  was  due 
to  the  inflation  of  prices.  If  the  figures  be  reduced  to  terms  of  the 
prices  prevailing  in  1913  the  totals  become:  1909,  29.9;  1910,  32.4; 
1911,31.8;  1912,33.3;  1913,  34.6;  1914,33.2;  1915,35.6;  1916, 
41.4;  1917,  41.6;  1918,  39.2.  The  shrinkage  in  the  increase  from 
1913  to  1918  from  the  80  per  cent  of  the  preceding  table  to  the 
13  per  cent  shown  by  this  one  is  eloquent  proof  of  the  hollowness  of 
war  prosperity ! 

As  regards  the  distribution  of  income  in  1918,  the  year  for  which 
the  estimate  is  considered  most  nearly  accurate,  about  88  per  cent 
of  the  persons  gainfully  employed  had  incomes  of  less  than  $2000  per 
annum  and  only  about  12  per  cent  incomes  exceeding  that  sum.  In 
the  same  year  about  60  per  cent  of  the  national  income  was  divided 
among  the  88  per  cent  who  had  incomes  of  less  than  $2  000  per  annum 
and  about  40  per  cent  of  the  national  income  among  the  1 2  per  cent 
who  had  incomes  exceeding  $2000  per  annum.  The  corresponding 
figures  for  the  earlier  years  were  even  less  favorable  to  the  group  with 
the  smaller  incomes,  so  the  effect  of  the  war  was  to  diminish  somewhat 
the  inequality  in  the  distribution  of  incomes  between  these  two  classes. 
So  far  as  these  figures  throw  light  on  the  matter  the  poor  have  been 
growing  relatively  richer  and  the  rich  relatively  poorer. 

Coming  now  to  the  final  question — the  average  per  capita  income 
— the  results  of  the  investigation  were  as  follows: 

Average  per  Capita  Income 


Year 

Money  Income 

Money  Income  translated  into 
Terms  of  1913  Prices 

1909 

$317 

$331 

1910 

343 

351 

I9II 

335 

339 

1912 

348 

349 

1913 

356 

356 

1914 

338 

335 

1915 

364 

355 

1916 

454 

407 

1917 

534 

404 

1918 

595 

376 

594 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  average  income  for  1918,  $595,  seems  large,  especially  when  it 
is  remembered  that  no  allowance  is  made  in  these  figures  for  the 
important  contribution  of  housewives  to  the  well-being  of  their  fam¬ 
ilies,  but  it  becomes  less  impressive  when  translated  into  its  equivalent 
in  terms  of  1913  prices,  $376.  The  average  American  income  also 
seems  large  when  contrasted  with  the  average  income  for  any  other 
country.  Thus,  in  1914,  compared  with  the  average  for  the  United 
States  of  $338,  that  for  Australia  was  only  $263,  that  estimated  for 
the  United  ^Kingdom,  only  $243,  and  that  for  Germany,  only  $146. 
But  in  making  this  comparison  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  cost 
of  living  in  the  United  States  was  substantially  higher  than  in  these 
other  countries  so  the  extent  of  the  greater  material  well-being  of 
Americans  remains  debatable. 

The  final  conclusion  that  is  suggested  by  these  averages  is  that 
even  an  equal  distribution  of  income,  if  such  could  be  effected  without 
serious  impairment  of  the  machinery  of  production  on  which  all  in¬ 
comes  depend  (as  of  course  it  could  not),  would  provide  only  a  small 
margin  for  the  normal  family  above  the  amount  needed  to  maintain  a 
decent  standard  of  living.  The  moral  of  this  is  that  in  our  continued 
efforts  to  bring  about  greater  equality  in  the  distribution  of  income  we 
must  be  equally  alert  to  the  need  of  increasing  production.  For  if  we 
curtail  production  in  doing  away  with  some  of  the  present  inequalities 
through  taxation  or  other  means,  instead  of  making  the  poor  richer 
we  may  merely  cause  all  to  grow  poorer  together. 

81.  Needless  Waste  and  its  Elimination1 
Sources  and  Causes  of  Waste 

Four  aspects  of  waste  in  industry.  Waste  in  industry  is  attribu¬ 
table  to 

1.  Low  production  caused  by  faulty  management  of  materials, 
plant,  equipment,  and  men. 

2.  Interrupted  production,  caused  by  idle  men,  idle  materials,  idle 
plants,  idle  equipment. 

aBy  the  Committee  on  Elimination  of  Waste  in  Industry  of  the  Federated 
American  Engineering  Societies,  Herbert  Hoover,  Chairman.  Adapted  from 
Waste  in  Industry ,  pp.  8-33.  Copyright,  1921,  by  the  American  Engineering 
Council  of  the  Federated  American  Engineering  Societies.  Valuable  tables  and 
supporting  data  will  be  found  in  the  original  which  could  not  be  included  here. 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY  595 

3.  Restricted  production  intentionally  caused  by  owners,  manage¬ 
ment,  or  labor. 

4.  Lost  production  caused  by  ill  health,  physical  defects,  and  in¬ 
dustrial  accidents. 

Relative  responsibilities.  Management1  has  the  greatest  oppor¬ 
tunity  and  hence  responsibility-  for  eliminating  waste  in  industry. 
The  opportunity  and  responsibility  of  labor  is  no  less  real  though 
smaller  in  degree.  The  opportunity  and  responsibility  chargeable  to 
outside  contacts  can  not  be  so  clearly  differentiated  or  evaluated. 

Over  50  per  cent  of  the  responsibility  for  the  wastes  in  the  six  in¬ 
dustries  studied  can  be  placed  at  the  door  of  management  and  less 
than  2  5  per  cent  at  the  door  of  labor,  while  the  amount  chargeable  to 
outside  contacts  is  least  of  all.  It  must  be  recognized  that  if  man¬ 
agement  is  to  meet  this  responsibility  fully  it  must  have  the  co¬ 
operation  of  labor.  In  every  industry  studied  there  are  outstanding 
examples  of  good  management  but  the  bulk  of  the  industry  does  not 
approximate  this  standard.  In  the  clothing  industry,  for  instance, 
one  plant  was  rated  by  the  engineers  57  points  higher  than  the  worst 
one  studied  and  42  points  better  than  the  average. 

Low  Production 

Faulty  material  control.  In  certain  industries  the  waste  of  mate¬ 
rials  is  a  serious  drain  on  production — a  fact  which  is  revealed  by  a 
comparative  study  of  plants  in  the  same  field.  The  methods  of  control 
which  are  common  in  the  shoe  industry  account  for  the  greatest  loss 
in  shoe  production,  with  the  possible  exception  of  seasonal  demand 
and  production.  Firms  leave  it  to  the  cutters  to  economize  in  leather. 
Where  standards  are  in  use,  waste  frequently  occurs  through  careless- 

iThe  term  "management”  as  used  in  this  part  of  the  report  refers  to  the 
agency  (owners  or  managers)  which  exercises  the  management  function  in  in¬ 
dustry.  This  function  is  thus  defined  in  a  report  approved  by  the  management 
division  of  the  American  Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers : 

Management  is  the  art  and  science  of  preparing,  organizing,  and  directing  human  effort 
applied  to  control  the  forces  and  to  utilize  the  materials  of  nature  for  the  benefit  of  man. 

2 The  "responsibility”  of  a  given  agency  as  here  used  does  not  mean  moral 
responsibility  as  ordinarily  understood,  but  only  that  responsibility  which  arises 
from  the  undeniable  fact  that  a  given  cause  of  waste  can  be  removed  only  by  a 
particular  agency.  "We  measure  responsibility  not  by  the  thing  done  but  by  the 
opportunities  which  people  have  had  of  knowing  better  or  worse.” 


596 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


ness  and  lack  of  training  of  cutters.  The  loss  from  idleness  in  shoe¬ 
making  occasioned  by  waiting  for  work  and  material  amounts  to  some 
35  per  cent  of  the  time.  The  average  contractor  has  no  calendar  of 
operations  except  the  dates  of  starting  and  finishing  a  job.  He  largely 
regulates  deliveries  of  materials  by  visits  to  the  job,  or  through  state¬ 
ments  received  from  the  job  superintendent.  Haphazard  methods  of 
planning  result  in  delays  for  want  of  material,  or  in  burdening  the  job 
by  an  over-supply  of  material.  The  same  practice  results  in  frequent 
layoffs,  causing  dissatisfaction,  the  loss  of  good  mechanics,  and  a 
high  labor  turnover. 

Still  another  waste  from  inadequate  material  control  comes  from 
the  speculative  purchasing  of  raw  materials.  In  the  clothing  industry 
gambling  in  cloth  is  common.  Fortunes  are  made  or  lost  in  this  prac¬ 
tice,  with  a  consequent  train  of  evils  which  affects  most  of  the  processes 
of  production,  and  raises  the  cost  of  the  product. 

Faulty  design  control.  The  defective  control  of  design  results  in  a 
major  waste,  since  it  prevents  standardization  of  product.  In  the 
building  trades,  for  example,  while  the  standardization  of  dwellings 
and  other  types  of  buildings  is  not  generally  practicable,  yet  certain 
details  are  entirely  capable  of  standardization.  Standardization  of 
the  thickness  of  certain  walls  might  mean  a  saving  of  some  $600  in 
the  cost  of  the  average  house.  Standardized  mill  work,  such  as  win¬ 
dow  frames,  doors,  and  other  similar  items  would  reduce  the  cost. 

There  are  approximately  six  thousand  brands  of  paper ;  50  per  cent 
of  which  are  more  or  less  inactive.  The  duplication  of  brands  serves 
no  useful  purpose  and  ties  up  money  in  unnecessary  stock.  As  an 
example  of  the  disregard  of  standard  size,  the  Federal  Reserve  Bank 
check  will  not  cut  without  waste  from  any  of  the  regular  paper  sizes. 
A  draft  questionnaire  issued  during  the  war  was  of  such  non-standard 
size  as  to  require  special  filing  cabinets.  The  Technical  Publishers’ 
Association  on  measuring  927  catalogues  found  147  different  sizes. 
A  trim  of  one-quarter  inch  on  a  6  x  9  page  is  equal  to  7  per  cent  of 
the  total  cost  of  the  paper.  Among  current  magazines  there  are  18 
variations  in  width  and  76  in  length  of  page  or  column.  Among  trade 
paper  publications  there  are  33  variations  in  width  and  64  in  length. 
Among  newspapers  there  are  16  in  width  and  55  in  length.  These 
variations  cost  the  public  not  less  than  $100,000,000  each  year. 
The  standardization  of  newspaper  columns  to  one  size  would  make 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY  597 

possible  an  annual  saving  of  $3,000,000  to  $5,000,000  on  composition 
and  plates  alone. 

The  waste  of  time  and  money  through  duplication  of  estimates  and 
of  designs  in  the  building  trades  runs  into  the  millions  every  year. 
Frequently  the  architect  makes  a  general  design  and  for  lack  of  knowl¬ 
edge  of  how  to  keep  down  its  cost,  asks  all  the  bidders  to  design  the 
structural  details  in  order  to  get  their  quantities.  Thus  not  only  must 
the  bidder  include  the  cost  of  the  design  in  his  proposal,  but  he  must 
allow,  in  addition,  an  overhead  to  cover  the  cost  of  various  similar 
designs  he  made  for  unsuccessful  bids.  This  duplication  of  design  is 
waste  for  which  owners  must  eventually  pay. 

Faulty  production  control.  The  lack  of  adequate  methods  of  pro¬ 
duction  control  is  evident  in  every  industry  studied.  It  is  one  of  the 
outstanding  weaknesses.  Examples  of  avoidable  waste  such  as  the 
following  are  fairly  common : 

A  shoe  factory  having  a  capacity  of  2400  pairs  of  shoes  a  day  could 
turn  out  for  a  considerable  period  only  1900  pairs  because  of  shortage 
of  needed  racks.  Another  factory  had  50,000  pairs  of  shoes  tied  up 
in  the  fitting  room  instead  of  the  normal  15,000  because  of  congestion 
of  operations.  In  another  case  a  factory  producing  700  pairs  of  shoes 
a  day  had  36,000  pairs  in  its  fitting  room,  or  ten  times  the  normal 
supply.  An  entire  factory  was  held  up  for  several  days  waiting  for 
leather  heels. 

From  shop  records  it  is  found  that  the  average  loss  in  clothing  fac¬ 
tories  during  running  time,  not  including  shut  downs,  is  between  30 
and  35  per  cent.  If  we  call  80  per  cent  running  time  the  maximum 
readily  attainable,  this  means  a  possible  increase  of  nearly  20  per  cent 
in  productive  capacity,  and  a  similar  increase  in  plant  capacity.  It  is 
found  that  at  least  ten  hours  per  week  per  man  is  thrown  away  on 
energy-wasting  and  time-wasting  work  resulting  from  lack  of  shop 
methods,  while  an  additional  two  or  three  hours  per  man  per  week  are 
wasted  in  unnecessary  work.  Fixing  the  value  of  annual  output  in 
the  men’s  ready-made  clothing  industry  at  $600,000,000  it  should  be 
relatively  easy  to  save  three-quarters  of  a  million  dollars  a  day,  an 
increase  of  40  per  cent  in  effectiveness. 

Lack  oj  cost  control.  The  majority  of  the  industrial  plants  studied 
lack  a  knowledge  of  costs  and  have  no  cost  control.  Therefore  there 
is  no  adequate  method  of  judging  fairly  and  accurately  when  improve- 


598 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


ments  are  needed  and  when  waste  is  occurring.  Not  having  the  facts 
prevents  prompt  correction  of  defects.  The  above  conditions  are  dis¬ 
closed,  for  example,  in  the  report  on  the  metal  trades.  A  survey  of 
the  printing  plants  in  New  York  City  made  by  the  United  Typothetse 
showed  that: 

56  plants  use  standard  cost  system. 

187  plants  with  no  cost  system,  but  with  a  knowledge  of  all  general  costs. 

741  plants  with  no  cost  system  and  incomplete  knowledge  of  all  general 
costs. 

554  plants  with  no  cost  system  and  incomplete  knowledge  of  general  costs. 

The  first  two  groups  made  money,  the  last  two  lost  money  in  1919. 

Lack  of  research.  While  certain  industries  are  ahead  of  the  rest  in 
plant  research,  the  need  for  more  intensive  research  activity  is  appar¬ 
ent  in  every  industry.  One  industry  which  is  backward  in  this  respect 
is  clothing.  In  the  majority  of  men’s  clothing  plants  nothing  approxi¬ 
mating  research  is  practiced  to  improve  materials,  processes,  equip¬ 
ment,  or  product.  The  assertion  probably  will  not  be  challenged  that 
there  is  not  a  single  individual  throughout  the  entire  industry  who  is 
solely  engaged  in  research  and  is  thus  without  operating  duties.  In 
the  shoe  industry  there  is  lack  of  information  as  to  market  demands 
in  this  country  and  abroad.  In  all  the  leather  industries  there  is  need 
for  scientific  research  to  aid  in  predicting  the  kinds  and  quantities 
of  leather  required. 

Faulty  labor  control.  With  perhaps  two  or  three  exceptions,  shoe 
shops  have  no  departments  maintaining  modern  personnel  relations 
with  the  employees.  Thus  the  worker  has  no  unbiased  means  of  ap¬ 
proach  to  his  employer,  and  the  employer  lacks  the  means  for  treating 
with  his  own  employees.  Among  the  plants  studied,  only  a  few  have 
effective  employment  methods.  Fewer  keep  a  record  and  make  an 
analysis  of  the  reason  why  men  quit.  Men  are  usually  discharged  or 
quit  work  without  any  executive  knowing  the  reason  why.  No  steps 
are  taken  to  correct  the  conditions  that  bring  about  so  many  expensive 
separations  from  the  working  force. 

A  high  labor  turnover  is  a  rough  index  of  one  of  the  common  wastes 
resulting  from  inadequate  labor  management.  No  facts  are  available 
to  show  the  extent  of  labor  turnover  as  an  unavoidable  element  in 
industrial  waste.  The  accessible  data  are  not  comparable,  for  no 
common  method  of  computation  and  analysis  has  been  followed. 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


599 


However,  this  is  an  important  factor  of  labor  waste  because  of  its 
magnitude  and  because  of  the  expense  involved  in  training  new 
workers  to  take  the  place  of  those  who  leave.  In  the  shoe  industry 
the  cost  of  training  an  inexperienced  man  for  cutting  upper  leather  in 
a  well  managed  shop  is  $576  ;  for  a  semi-experienced  man,  $450 ;  and 
to  install  an  experienced  man  in  a  different  shop  costs  $50.  For  the 
average  shop  these  figures  are  unquestionably  low. 

The  average  labor  turnover  for  the  year  1920  in  the  metal  trades 
plants  covered  (wherever  records  were  kept,  which  was  the  case  in  less 
than  half  of  the  plants),  was  160  per  cent — figured  in  most  cases  as 
the  ratio  between  the  number  of  "  separations  ”  and  the  average  num¬ 
ber  of  employees  on  the  payroll.  The  highest  turnover  was  366  per  cent. 

The  building  trades  have  given  little  consideration  to  the  subject  of 
labor  turnover.  In  construction  work  it  is  particularly  difficult  to 
estimate  the  extent,  because  the  actual  percentage  of  turnover  con¬ 
stantly  varies  as  the  building  progresses  and  the  number  of  men  is 
increased  and  later  decreased.  Men  quit  for  such  reasons  as  the  type 
of  work  they  are  to  perform,  the  risk  involved  in  the  particular  work, 
and  unfair  treatment  by  foremen.  They  are  discharged  for  lack  of 
work,  incompetence,  laziness,  causing  trouble,  or  sometimes  because 
there  are  better  men  available.  The  labor  turnover  and  service  records 
of  typical  contractors  show  large  losses.  Employment  managers  are 
rarely  employed  even  upon  the  largest  jobs,  and  "hiring  and  firing” 
is  at  the  will  of  the  foreman  or  superintendent. 

Another  fault  in  labor  control  is  improper  or  inadequate  rate  set¬ 
ting.  In  negotiations  and  controversies  between  employer  and  opera¬ 
tor  in  the  shoe  industry,  what  stands  out  is  the  lack  of  knowledge  of 
facts  which  can  be  used  as  a  basis  for  setting  rates.  In  a  shoe  factory, 
for  example,  with  the  adoption  of  a  new  style  new  rates  have  to  be  set. 
The  operatives  through  their  agent  make  a  guess  at  the  time  demanded 
and  therefore  the  proper  rate  to  set.  The  manufacturer  makes  a 
similar  guess.  His  estimate  is  usually  lower  than  that  of  the  opera¬ 
tives.  A  compromise  is  made,  based  not  on  facts  but  on  the  argu¬ 
mentative  ability  of  the  two  parties.  If  the  rate  is  set  too  high,  it 
means  unequal  payments  to  the  workers  or  else  cutting  rates  later  on. 
This  policy  is  responsible  for  much  of  the  friction  in  the  shoe  industry. 

Ineffective  workmanship.  Still  another  loss  resulting  in  low  pro¬ 
duction  arises  from  inefficient  workmanship ;  for  much  of  this  man- 


6oo 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


agement  is  responsible  through  failure  to  provide  opportunities  for 
education  or  special  training.  Management,  however,  cannot  do  more 
than  provide  these  facilities,  and  experience  has  shown  that  it  is  dif¬ 
ficult  to  interest  workmen  in  training  courses  which  are  designed  to 
increase  effectiveness.  Further,  much  ineffective  workmanship  arises 
from  lack  of  interest  in  work  or  lack  of  pride  in  good  workmanship. 
The  field  reports  give  no  evaluation  of  spoilage,  which  is  one  of  the 
measures  of  this  form  of  waste. 

Faulty  sales  policies.  The  cancellation  of  orders  is  a  condition 
peculiar  to  certain  industries.  It  is  especially  acute  in  the  clothing 
industry.  Purchasers  buying  on  long-time  contracts  return  unsold 
goods  at  the  end  of  the  season,  and  claim  and  receive  credit.  In  nor¬ 
mal  seasons  cancellations  have  ranged  from  3  per  cent  to  14  per  cent, 
and  returns  from  5  per  cent  to  n  per  cent  in  the  average  shop.  In 
abnormal  years,  like  1920,  cancellations  have  reached  33  per  cent 
and  returns  18  per  cent. 

Interrupted  Production 

Idle  men.  1.  Minimum  unemployment.  The  amount  of  idleness  or 
unemployment  in  industry  can  only  be  evaluated  through  rough  esti¬ 
mates.  There  is  no  national  machinery  for  collecting  the  facts.  But 
in  the  best  years,  even  the  phenomenal  years  of  1917  and  1918  at  the 
climax  of  war-time  industrial  activities,  when  plants  were  working  to 
capacity  and  when  unemployment  reached  its  lowest  point  in  twenty 
years,  there  was  a  margin  of  unemployment  amounting  to  more  than 
a  million  men.  This  margin  is  fairly  permanent;  seemingly  one  or 
more  wage  earners  out  of  every  forty  are  always  out  of  work.  This 
unemployment  means  for  the  worker  a  loss  in  wages,  for  industry  in¬ 
creased  overhead  due  to  idle  equipment  and  idle  materials,  and  for  the 
public  a  lessened  purchasing  power,  with  all  its  attendant  evils. 

2.  Unemployment  caused  by  industrial  depressions.  During  periods 
of  industrial  and  business  depressions,  unemployment  reaches  its 
greatest  amount.  Such  depressions  appear  more  or  less  regularly  at 
seven-  or  ten-year  periods  and  each  brings  its  increase  in  unemploy¬ 
ment  and  wastage  of  the  productive  capacity  of  industry.  In  January, 
1921,  a  nation-wide  survey  of  employment  made  by  the  United  States 
Employment  Service  of  the  Department  of  Labor  showed  that  there 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


601 


were  6,070,648  workers  then  employed  in  industry  as  compared  with 
9,402,000  in  January  of  1920,  a  decrease  of  3,331,352  or  approxi¬ 
mately  35.5  per  cent.  This  survey  covered  thirty-five  states  and  one 
hundred  and  eighty-two  industrial  cities  and  centers  and  may  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  fairly  reflecting  conditions  at  that  time. 

3.  Intermittent  unemployment.  In  addition  to  minimum  and  cli¬ 
macteric  unemployment,  many  essential  industries  show  a  high  unem¬ 
ployment  or  idleness  once  a  year  or  oftener.  Practically  all  industries 
are  in  a  sense  seasonal.  To  present  a  few  examples:  The  clothing 
worker  is  idle  about  31  per  cent  of  the  year;  the  average  shoe¬ 
maker  spends  only  65  per  cent  of  his  time  at  work ;  the  building  trade 
workman  is  employed  only  about  one  hundred  and  ninety  days  in  the 
year  or  approximately  63  per  cent  of  his  time ;  the  textile  industry 
seemingly  has  regular  intervals  of  slack  time ;  during  the  past  thirty 
years  bituminous  coal  miners  were  idle  an  average  of  ninety-three 
possible  working  days  per  year.  During  the  exceptional  year  of  1919, 
in  the  paper  box  industry  4311  employees  in  77  establishments  aver¬ 
aged  90  per  cent  of  full  time;  in  the  women’s  clothing  industry  6772 
women  workers  employed  in  157  establishments  averaged  91  per  cent ; 
in  the  confectionery  industry  12,152  workers  in  101  establishments 
averaged  87  per  cent ;  and  in  the  overall  industry  6546  workers  in  129 
establishments  averaged  87  per  cent  of  full  time.  In  the  brick,  chemi¬ 
cal,  and  glass  industries  the  percentage  of  full  time  worked  was  85, 
84,  and  87,  respectively.  In  most  years  the  percentage  of  lost  days  is 
much  larger.  Not  only  does  intermittent  unemployment  reduce  the 
productive  capacity  of  the  industry  in  which  it  exists,  but  it  brings 
other  wastes.  One  consequence  is  a  concrete  but  fallacious  industrial 
philosophy,  the  "make  work”  or  "lump  of  work”  theory.  This  is  the 
belief  that  there  is  only  so  much  work  to  be  done  and  that  the 
sensible  course  of  action  is  to  retard  production  to  make  employment 
last  throughout  the  year,  or  to  uphold  prices. 

4.  Unemployment  due  to  labor  disturbances.  Another  form  of  un¬ 
employment  comes  from  open  conflict  between  management  and  labor. 
Here  it  should  be  said  that  in  the  past,  at  least,  the  amount  of  waste 
from  the  general  run  of  strikes  and  lockouts  through  loss  of  wages 
and  curtailment  of  production  has  been  less  than  is  popularly  sup¬ 
posed.  That  these  disturbances  do  produce  unemployment  is  true, 
but  in  the  industries  studied  they  do  not  of  themselves  appear  to 


602 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


constitute  a  major  source  of  reduced  production.  The  ramifications 
of  such  strikes  with  their  attendant  and  indirect  losses  the  Committee 
has  been  unable  to  trace. 

Such  labor  disturbances  are  either  strikes  or  lockouts.  As  it  is  dif¬ 
ficult  to  distinguish  between  them  and  the  industrial  effects  are  prac¬ 
tically  the  same,  it  has  seemed  best  in  this  summary  to  deal  only  with 
strikes.  More  than  one-half  of  all  the  strikes  that  occurred  between 
1 88 1  and  1905 1  and  more  than  one-half  of  the  employees  thrown  out 
of  work  were  in  highly  irregular  or  distinctly  seasonal  occupations. 
Since  most  strikes  occur  in  seasonal  employments,  it  can  be  deduced 
that  output  is  not  necessarily  penalized,  for  it  is  often  possible  to 
make  up  the  losses  incurred  by  strikes  through  increased  production 
at  other  times.  More  coal  was  mined  in  1910  than  in  19 11,  although 
the  former  year  witnessed  many  protracted  strikes  involving  large 
numbers  of  employees.  The  year  1912,  with  47  per  cent  of  the  entire 
labor  force  out  on  strike  and  with  an  average  loss  per  man  of  forty 
days,  showed  an  increased  output  of  coal  per  man  per  day  and  per 
year,  and  six  days  more  employment  than  in  1911,  which  was  rela¬ 
tively  strikeless.  The  total  production  was  also  more.  Low  produc¬ 
tion  in  1914  and  1915  was  due  to  general  business  depression  caused 
by  the  World  War  rather  than  to  strikes. 

In  New  York  State  in  1916  two  days  were  lost  per  capita  per  year 
by  those  classed  as  gainfully  employed,  because  of  strikes.  This  was 
a  loss  only  one-fifth  as  serious  as  average  time  lost  through  illness. 
In  the  same  state  in  1918  about  32  per  cent  of  the  time  lost  from 
strikes  and  lockouts  was  in  the  building  and  clothing  industries.  In 
addition  to  the  direct  loss  of  time,  however,  there  is  a  loss  incurred 
through  retarded  production  previous  to  and  immediately  following 
strikes.  Wages  and  hours  have  always  been  the  chief  cause  of  strikes. 
There  has  been  a  marked  falling  off  in  the  relative  number  of  strikes 
for  this  cause  in  recent  years  as  compared  with  1898-1905.  Jurisdic¬ 
tional  disputes,  that  is,  strikes  by  the  members  of  one  trade  against 
the  performance  of  work  which  they  regard  as  belonging  to  their  craft 
by  members  of  some  other  craft  or  trade,  are  relatively  unimportant. 
The  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  reports  there  were  19  such  strikes  in 
1916,  21  in  1917,  16  in  1918,  and  15  in  1919.  However,  there  are 

1  There  are  complete  statistics  for  these  years.  Since  1906  the  Department  of 
Labor  has  had  no  authority  'To  require  reports  relative  to  strikes  from  anyone.” 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


603 


disputes  constantly  arising  which,  while  they  do  not  lead  to  formal 
strikes,  work  demoralization  and  are  a  fertile  source  of  inefficient  use 
of  labor.  In  the  building  trades,  jurisdictional  quarrels  represent 
about  one-quarter  of  the  total  number  of  strikes. 

Idle  material.  The  waste  of  idle  material  through  deterioration, 
obsolescence,  and  carrying  charges  is  large,  particularly  where  there 
are  great  inventories  of  both  raw  material  and  finished  goods.  Un¬ 
balanced  production  is  another  notable  cause  of  the  idle  materials  and 
consequent  waste. 

Idle  plants  and  equipment.  Unsound  production  policies  result  in 
wasteful  over-equipment.  Clothing  factories  are  built  45  per  cent 
larger  than  is  necessary ;  printing  establishments  are  from  50  per  cent 
to  150  per  cent  over-equipped;  the  shoe  industry  has  a  capacity  of 
1,750,000  pairs  of  shoes  a  day,  and  produces  little  more  than  half  that 
number;  throughout  the  metal  trades,  standardization  of  products 
would  permit  of  large  reductions  in  plant  and  equipment.  Standard¬ 
ization  of  machine  sizes  would  make  possible  the  use  of  one  machine 
for  a  greater  variety  of  different  jobs.  The  printing  industry  illus¬ 
trates  this  point  also.  A  common  sight  in  any  large  printing  establish¬ 
ment  is  expensive  machines  covered  up  and  out  of  use,  or  inefficiently 
used  for  purposes  other  than  that  for  which  they  were  built.  A  printer 
secures  a  contract  and  buys  a  machine  to  do  the  work  economically. 
When  the  work  comes  up  for  contract  next  time,  if  some  other  printer 
secures  it,  it  invariably  means  another  special  machine.  One  concern 
paid  $17,000  for  a  special  press  for  printing  a  trade  stamp.  On  losing 
this  job,  the  press  was  scrapped,  and  later  sold  for  $2000.  The  con¬ 
tract  in  the  meantime  had  been  awarded  to  three  other  printers  in 
succession,  and  each  in  turn  had  purchased  a  new  press  which  he  had 
to  scrap  or  use  disadvantageous^  at  the  expiration  of  his  contract. 
Similar  practices  are  common  in  other  industries. 

Restricted  Production 

Production  restricted  by  owners  and  management.  Some  of  the 
evils  of  restricted  production  are  chargeable  to  owners  and  manage¬ 
ment.  In  the  building  trades,  contractors,  builders,  and  supply  dealers 
have  restricted  production  by  maintaining  high  prices,  collusion  in 
bidding,  and  unfair  practices.  At  times  there  has  been  collusion  be- 


604 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


tween  employers  and  labor,  tending  to  raise  prices  unduly.  The  waste 
from  these  causes  cannot  be  measured  in  this  study. 

By  labor.  Restrictions  of  individual  output  for  which  workers  are 
responsible  are  susceptible  of  measurement.  They  are  of  two  kinds. 
On  the  one  hand,  when  workers  are  scarce  the  less  conscientious 
workers  become  independent  and  slacken  speed,  whereas  when  workers 
are  plentiful,  they  work  with  greater  diligence  and  care  for  fear  of  un¬ 
employment.  On  the  other  hand,  the  dread  of  unemployment  is  so  pro¬ 
nounced  that  employees  engaged  in  seasonal  enterprises  frequently 
restrict  production  in  order  to  make  employment  last  longer ;  some 
workers,  moreover,  through  consideration  for  their  fellow  employees 
limit  production  to  provide  work  for  them,  a  practice  which  ultimately 
results  in  an  economic  loss. 

Important  restrictions  of  output  by  employees  can  only  result  from 
collective  action.  In  the  building  trades,  for  instance,  some  painters’ 
unions  do  not  permit  of  the  use  of  a  brush  wider  than  4V'  for  oil  paint, 
although  for  certain  classes  of  work  a  wider  brush  is  more  economical. 
Plumbers’  and  steamfitters’  unions  prohibit  the  use  of  bicycles  and 
vehicles  of  all  sorts  during  working  hours.  Members  of  those  unions 
in  some  sections  of  the  country  demand  that  all  pipe  up  to  2"  shall 
be  cut  and  threaded  on  the  job. 

The  restriction  of  the  number  of  apprentices  is  a  common  rule.  The 
engineer  in  the  building  trade  notes  that  restriction  of  apprentices  in 
many  cases  seems  extreme  and  unfair. 

Unions  are  charged  with  restricting  the  use  of  machinery.  Painters’ 
unions  refuse  to  allow  their  men  to  work  on  a  job  where  a  spraying 
machine  is  being  used,  making  claim  that  the  use  of  the  machine  is 
injurious  to  the  health  of  the  workman.  Some  labor  organizations  of 
minor  importance,  such  as  windowglass  and  stonecutters’  unions,  may 
also  be  mentioned  as  opposed  to  the  introduction  of  machinery. 

All  such  restrictions,  so  far  as  they  prohibit  the  use  of  the  best  and 
most  efficient  machines,  constitute  limitations  of  output.  The  actions 
of  most  unions,  however,  are  confined  to  the  restriction  of  the  use  of 
machinery  rather  than  its  prohibition. 

The  rule  requiring  that  members  of  one  craft  union  shall  not  en¬ 
croach  upon  the  work  of  another  results  in  large  waste  and  little 
benefits.  Unions  frequently  require  three  or  four  skilled  employees  to 
perform  various  operations  on  a  plain  job  which  a  single  worker  could 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


605 


satisfactorily  do  by  himself.  Union  carpenters  are  forbidden  to  lay 
bricks,  union  plumbers  are  forbidden  to  do  carpentering  work,  and 
the  like. 

The  following  instances  further  illustrate  restriction  of  output 
through  divisions  of  labor:  Carpenters’  helpers  are  prohibited  from 
using  carpenter  tools,  requiring  carpenters  to  do  such  work  as  stripping 
forms  from  concrete.  Experience  shows  that  helpers  can  do  this  more 
economically  and  as  well.  Brick  masons  insist  on  washing  down  and 
pointing  brick  work  when  laborers  could  do  it  more  economically. 
Structural  steel  workers  under  certain  rules  must  bring  the  steel  from 
the  unloading  point  to  the  building  site,  thus  doing  laborers’  work  at 
high  cost.  Structural  steel  men  place  reinforcing  steel  for  concrete, 
whereas  experience  has  proved  conclusively  that  properly  trained 
laborers  can  do  it  to  as  good  advantage,  and  at  greatly  lowered  cost. 
Hoisting  engineers  claim  the  right  to  run  all  types  of  engines,  includ¬ 
ing  small  gas-driven  pumps  which  require  no  skill.  On  one  job  a  con¬ 
tractor  had  to  hire  a  union  engineer  at  $8  per  day  simply  to  start  a 
pump  in  the  morning,  oil  it  occasionally,  and  stop  it  at  night. 

Lost  Production 

From  ill  health.  A  report  on  national  vitality  prepared  in  1909  for 
the  National  Conservation  Commission,  appointed  by  President  Roose¬ 
velt,  estimated  that  there  were  then  about  three  million  persons  seri¬ 
ously  ill  at  all  times  in  the  United  States.  This  meant  an  average 
annual  loss  per  person  of  thirteen  days  owing  to  illness.  It  was  esti¬ 
mated  that  42  per  cent  of  this  illness  was  preventable,  and  that  such 
prevention  would  extend  the  average  life  by  over  fifteen  years.  Since 
that  report  was  issued,  an  apparent  reduction  in  illness  has  been  ac¬ 
complished  ;  so  that  to-day  an  estimate  of  between  eight  and  nine  days 
working  time  lost  through  illness  is  probably  near  the  fact. 

In  discussing  public  health  conditions  there  is  no  clear  distinction 
between  the  standing  of  the  42,000,000  persons  classed  as  gainfully 
employed  in  the  United  States  and  those  specifically  engaged  in  indus¬ 
try.  The  42,000,000  men  and  women  gainfully  employed  probably 
lose  on  an  average  more  than  eight  days  each  annually  from  illness 
disabilities,  including  non-industrial  accidents — a  total  of  three  hun¬ 
dred  and  fifty  million  days.  Of  the  500,000  workers  who  die  each 


6o6 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


year,  it  is  probable  that  the  death  of  at  least  one-half  is  postponable, 
by  proper  medical  supervision,  periodic  medical  examination,  health 
education,  and  community  hygiene. 

Assuming  that  the  average  life  has,  aside  from  all  spiritual  and 
human  values,  an  economic  value  to  industry  of  not  less  than  $5000, 
and  assuming  that  the  special  diet,  care,  and  medical  attention  re¬ 
quired  by  a  man  chronically  ill  costs  $3  per  day,  it  has  been  esti¬ 
mated  that  the  economic  loss  from  preventable  disease  and  death  is 
$1,800,000,000  among  those  classed  as  gainfully  employed — or  over 
$700,000,000  among  industrial  workers  in  the  more  limited  meaning 
of  the  term.  The  preceding  figures  are  derived  from  studies  of  in¬ 
dividual  groups,  from  insurance  experience,  from  census  records,  from 
draft  records,  and  there  is  experiential  basis  for  the  statement  that 
this  loss  could  be  materially  reduced  and  leave  an  economic  balance 
in  the  working  population  alone  over  and  above  the  cost  of  prevention 
of  at  least  $1,000,000,000  a  year. 

Tuberculosis  is  the  most  important  disease  among  industrial  workers, 
two  or  three  deaths  per  1000  per  annum  occurring  at  the  working  ages. 
It  is  estimated  that  3  per  cent  of  the  wage  earners,  or  about  1,250,000 
lives  are  affected.  The  economic  loss  from  tuberculosis  death  rate  as 
affecting  the  working  population  is  $500,000,000  annually.  Pneumonia, 
influenza,  and  typhoid  fever  are  the  most  important  communicable 
diseases  among  adults.  Influenza  and  pneumonia,  in  non-epidemic 
years,  take  about  35,000  lives  in  the  working  ages,  and  account  for 
at  least  350,000  cases  of  illness.  Typhoid  fills  close  to  150,000  sick 
beds  annually  and  takes  15,000  lives,  mostly  in  the  working  ages. 

In  a  large  industrial  area  hookworm  infection  was  present  among 
at  least  5  per  cent  of  the  laboring  population.  Malaria  is  so  seldom  a 
direct  cause  of  death  that  it  is  difficult  to  estimate  its  extent  and 
influence.  It  is  responsible  for  much  sub-standard  health,  and  prob¬ 
ably  affects  1,500,000  people  annually,  covering  twenty-seven  million 
days  absence.  It  may  be  roughly  estimated  that  1,500,000  workers 
are  infected  with  venereal  disease.  Judging  by  the  draft  figures, 
5.6  per  cent  would  be  an  outside  estimate  for  ages  twenty-one  to 
thirty-one  in  the  general  mixed  population,  white  and  colored,  for  all 
venereal  infections.  It  has  been  estimated  that  about  60  per  cent  of 
the  infection  occurs  in  this  age  period.  Another  study,  it  should  be 
said,  found  less  than  1  per  cent  of  syphilis  in  industry  and  about  3  per 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


607 


cent  in  mixed  population.  The  Mayo  Clinic  found  4.6  per  cent  of 
syphilis  in  mixed  classes  and  10  per  cent  among  railway  men.  There 
are  more  than  six  million  workers  with  organic  diseases  resulting 
mostly  from  infection. 

Defective  vision  and  defective  teeth.  Special  attention  has  been 
given  in  recent  years  to  the  question  of  defective  vision  and  to  that 
of  defective  teeth.  It  is  estimated  that  twenty-five  million  workers 
have  defective  vision  requiring  correction.  It  is  the  experience  of 
a  number  of  plant  executives  that  the  correction  of  sub-standard  vision 
brings  increased  quality  and  quantity  of  production,  sufficient  to  pay 
for  the  cost.  A  very  large  proportion  of  workers  have  defective  teeth 
and  mouth  infection  and  other  serious  physical  defects,  which  reduces 
their  effectiveness.  Sub-standard  conditions  of  health  and  physical 
deficiencies  should  be  studied  as  a  cause  of  fatigue  in  industry. 

From  industrial  accidents.  In  1919  there  occurred  in  industry 
about  23,000  fatal  accidents,  about  575,000  aon-fatal  accidents  caus¬ 
ing  four  weeks  or  more  of  disability  and  3,000,000  accidents  causing 
at  least  one  day’s  disability.  The  figures  for  1918  were  about  13  per  . 
cent  higher.  The  time  lost  is  estimated  to  be  two  hundred  and  ninety- 
six  million  days.  Allowing  for  an  average  wage  of  $4  per  day  during 
the  time  actually  lost,  adding  an  estimate  for  impaired  earning  power 
because  of  disability  or  death,  but  subtracting  the  subsistence  of  those 
killed,  this  gives  an  economic  loss  to  the  country  of  about  $853,000,000 
for  the  year  1919. 

This  is  not  the  whole  loss  chargeable  to  accidents.  In  one  state 
(Wisconsin)  the  costs  to  employers  for  medical  and  surgical  aid  and 
hospitals’  bills,  and  the  overhead  expenses  of  insurance,  equaled  86  per 
cent  of  the  actual  compensation  paid  to  workmen.  The  compensation 
paid  the  workmen  was  about  22  per  cent  of  the  total  actual  and  pro¬ 
spective  wage  loss.  Records  from  other  states  indicate  that  this  is 
probably  typical.  On  this  basis  the  total  direct  cost  of  industrial 
accidents  in  the  United  States  in  1919,  including  medical  aid  and 
insurance  overhead,  was  not  less  than  $1,014,000,000.  Of  this 
$349,000,000  was  borne  by  employers  and  $665,000,000  by  employees 
and  their  dependents. 

These  approximate  figures  are  low  because  they  do  not  include 
medical  expenses  incurred  by  workmen  and  not  paid  by  the  employer 
or  insurance  company ;  overhead  cost  or  personal  accident  insurance 


6o8 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


carried  by  workmen;  cost  of  training  new  men  to  take  the  place 
of  those  injured;  employment  and  welfare  department  expense  in 
keeping  track  of  injured  workmen  and  their  families.  The  addi¬ 
tion  of  these  items  would  bring  the  total  well  over  a  billion  dollars 
per  year. 

In  this  calculation  no  account  has  been  taken  of  the  indirect  loss 
of  production  due  to  the  stoppage  or  slowing  up  of  work  when  an 
accident  occurs.  This  affects  not  only  the  operation  at  which  the 
man  is  injured,  but  associated  operations  as  well.  It  applies  also  to 
"near-accidents”  in  which  no  personal  •  injury  occurs.  Experience 
indicates,  and  authorities  agree,  that  75  per  cent  of  these  losses  could 
be  avoided,  with  a  saving  in  direct,  clearly  ascertained  losses  alone  of 
a  quarter  of  a  billion  dollars  per  year  to  employers,  and  half  a  billion 
to  employees. 

Approximately  $30,000,000  is  paid  to  insurance  companies  each 
year  by  builders  alone  for  compensation  and  liability  insurance.  This 
figure  by  no  means  represents  the  total  loss.  While  state  laws  vary,  in 
,  general  an  injured  workman  must  be  disabled  some  seven  days  to  two 
weeks  before  receiving  an  award,  and  then  receives  as  compensation 
only  a  part  of  his  average  daily  earnings.  The  loss  to  the  contractor 
is  less  tangible,  but  where  a  man  is  out,  a  new  one  must  be  broken 
into  a  job  with  loss  of  time  and  frequently  loss  of  material.  In  case  of 
serious  accident,  also,  there  is  stoppage  of  work  and  extensive  loss  of 
time  of  the  entire  force.  In  the  opinion  of  one  of  the  best  authorities 
in  the  country  the  actual  cost  of  insurance  represents  not  more  than 
25  per  cent  of  the  total  economic  loss,  which,  if  correct,  would  bring 
the  total  cost  due  to  accidents  in  the  building  industry  to  $120,000,000 
per  year. 

An  official  of  a  large  insurance  company  believes  that  by  proper 
safety  measures,  the  waste  due  to  accident  in  the  building  industry 
can  be  reduced  75  to  80  per  cent  in  two  to  five  years  of  earnest  effort, 
and  that  construction  labor  cost  can  be  cut  3  per  cent  by  these 
measures.  Another  official  estimates,  from  actual  accomplishments  in 
safety  measures,  that  a  total  of  more  than  twelve  million  days  a  year 
could  be  saved  the  industry  by  the  application  of  safety  methods.  In 
certain  industries,  on  the  other  hand,  such  as  boot  and  shoe  manu¬ 
facturing,  accidents  are  insignificant. 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY  609 

Recommendations  for  the  Elimination  of  Waste 

in  Industry 

Opportunities  and  responsibilities.  In  preparing  this  part  of  the 
summary,  the  Committee  has  endeavored  to  interpret  responsibility 
in  terms  of  what  might  be  done  to  eliminate  waste  in  industry.  The 
policies  and  methods  recommended  are  such  as  are  already  in  success¬ 
ful  use  in  the  industries  and  plants  investigated.  The  opportunities 
outlined  show  how  support  may  be  given  to  those  efforts  and  what 
are  the  agencies  especially  responsible  for  elimination  of  waste  in  its 
broader  aspects.  This  part  of  the  report  has  been  developed  under 
seven  major  groupings  of  responsibility  and  opportunity  as  follows: 
responsibility  of  management,  responsibility  of  labor,  responsibility 
of  owners,  responsibility  of  the  public,  opportunity  of  trade  associa¬ 
tions,  opportunity  for  governmental  assistance,  and  duty  of  engineers. 

I.  Responsibility  of  Management 

Improvement  of  organization  and  executive  control.  Planning  and 
control  should  be  adopted  as  fundamentals  of  good  management.  For 
the  most  part  they  have  not  as  yet  penetrated  the  mass  of  American 
industry.  Managerial  control,  when  properly  planned,  extends  its 
influence  into  every  activity  of  an  industrial  organization  and  plant, 
reaching  materials,  design,  equipment,  personnel,  production,  costs, 
and  sales  policies  and  coordinating  these  factors  to  a  common  objec¬ 
tive.  While  this  statement  applies  more  particularly  to  large  plants, 
still  the  smaller  units  can  utilize  the  same  principles  and  thus  secure 
the  advantage  of  modern  methods. 

Production  control.  Conscious  production  control  tends  to  reduce 
or  eliminate  waste  by  shortening  the  total  time  of  production.  It 
ensures  the  delivery  of  material  where  needed,  whether  it  be  material 
in  process  or  a  finished  product  ready  for  shipment.  Material  sched¬ 
ules  should  be  installed  and  used.  These  are  a  means  to  reduce  idle¬ 
ness  of  material,  of  the  workers  who  are  going  to  operate  upon  it,  and 
of  the  machines  and  tools  forming  the  equipment  for  the  processes 
which  it  is  to  enter.  Work  in  process  should  be  planned  in  advance 
by  methods  which  will  ensure  its  timely  delivery  to  the  machine  or 
operation  where  it  is  needed,  so  that  there  will  be  no  idleness  be¬ 
tween  jobs. 


6io 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Balancing  productive  capacity  and  demand.  Productive  capacity 
should  be  conservatively  based  upon  a  careful  study  of  normal  de¬ 
mand.  The  sound  relation  between  capacity  and  demand  is  shown 
only  as  a  wise  policy  is  adopted  in  regard  to  planning,  routing,  and 
scheduling  work  and  as  improved  shop  methods  are  put  into  effect. 
There  is  plenty  of  testimony  to  the  possibility  of  increasing  production 
from  a  given  amount  of  equipment  through  improved  management. 

Development  of  purchasing  schedules.  There  should  be  the  same 
careful  coordination  of  purchasing  function  and  control  of  material 
purchased  and  not  yet  received  as  is  given  to  material  already  in  the 
plant.  Where  this  is  done  the  interruption  of  work  due  to  lack  of 
material,  or  to  imperfect  material,  is  largely  done  away  with. 

Elimination  of  cancellations  and  curtailment  of  returns.  The  prac¬ 
tice  of  cancellation  of  orders  between  manufacturer  and  mill  and  be¬ 
tween  manufacturer  and  customer  should  be  eliminated  and  there 
should  be  a  curtailment  of  the  privilege  of  returning  goods  ordered 
and  received.  Such  cancellations  and  return  practices  are  vicious  and 
directly  hinder  stabilization. 

Correlation  of  production  schedules  with  sales  policies.  Production 
schedules  should  be  based  on  a  carefully  formulated  sales  policy 
determined  from  an  intensive  study  of  markets,  thus  stabilizing  pro¬ 
duction.  By  this  method,  which  differs  radically  from  the  usual  hap¬ 
hazard  practice,  the  pernicious  effect  of  seasonal  manufacturing  can 
be  partially  overcome.  In  a  few  plants  in  the  boot  and  shoe  industry 
this  beneficial  result  has  been  brought  about. 

Inspection.  Adequate  inspection  should  be  maintained.  In  many 
factories,  losses  of  labor  and  material  in  spoiled  and  defective  work  are 
unwarrantedly  high.  The  aggregate  annual  wastage  of  human  effort 
and  goods  from  this  cause  is  very  great.  The  indirect  losses,  which  are 
harder  to  detect  and  measure,  are  often  greater  than  the  direct  losses. 

Maintenance  of  plant  and  equipment.  Plant  and  equipment  must 
be  maintained  continually  in  working  condition.  The  methods  and 
means  for  anticipating  possible  breakdowns  and  the  like  have  been 
developed  and  are  well  known.  Upkeep  of  plant  is  conducive  to  maxi¬ 
mum  production  as  it  assures  that  equipment  and  machinery  will  be 
continually  in  a  condition  to  operate. 

Uniform  cost  accounting.  Generally  accepted  systems  for  finding 
costs  should  be  established  in  each  American  industry.  In  controlling 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


61 1 

production  and  in  judging  fairly  and  accurately  when  and  where  prog¬ 
ress  and  improvement  are  being  made,  the  lack  of  a  good  cost  control 
system  is  necessarily  a  source  of  much  waste. 

Methods  of  wage  payment.  Methods  of  wage  payment  should  be 
adopted,  equitable  and  just  in  their  basis,  ensuring  a  proper  relation¬ 
ship  between  effort  put  forth  and  results  achieved  by  all  who  partici¬ 
pate  in  the  enterprise.  Two  leading  facts  should  be  grasped:  special 
wage  methods  are  almost  wholly  futile  in  the  absence  of  standardiza¬ 
tion  and  system  in  the  work ;  production  standards  and  proper  control 
of  work  will,  without  any  special  wage  method,  accomplish  a  large 
part  of  the  desired  result.  A  danger  lies  in  assuming  that  clever  de¬ 
vices  can  take  the  place  of  good  management.  The  most  important 
function  of  a  wage  payment  method  from  the  production  standpoint 
is  to  oblige  management  to  do  its  duty. 

Standardization.  Products  should  be  standardized  consistent  with 
progressive  development  of  manufacturing.  Materials  should  be 
standardized  to  the  fewest  practicable  kinds,  sizes,  and  grades.  At 
least  the  details  of  equipment,  including  machines  and  tools,  should 
be  standardized  so  as  to  permit  of  the  widest  interchangeability  and 
maximum  usefulness  consistent  with  improvements  in  design  and  in¬ 
vention.  Performance  standards  should  be  developed  as  a  valuable 
aid  to  planning  and  production  control.  Under  the  week-work  system 
such  standards  are  the  basis  of  a  just  measurement  of  the  individual 
worker’s  performance  and  of  the  adjustment  of  his  wage  rate  to  his 
capacity.  Under  the  piece-rate  system  they  are  the  basis  of  just  rates. 
Without  standardization  of  appliances,  conditions,  work  content,  and 
method,  no  valid  performance  standard  can  be  maintained.  By  con¬ 
stantly  comparing  actual  performance  with  the  standards  and  promptly 
investigating  the  causes  of  departure  from  standard,  the  manufacturer 
can  quickly  detect  adverse  conditions  as  they  creep  in,  and  can  rectify 
them.  Performance  standards,  in  fact,  will  enable  him  to  plan  the 
size  of  his  plant  and  operating  force  for  a  given  volume  of  business  for 
continuous  operation. 

Management  and  workers.  Management  has  a  definite  responsi¬ 
bility  in  selecting,  up-grading,  and  maintaining  personnel.  Experience 
indicates  that  the  best  results  can  be  obtained  when  employment  and 
personnel  direction  develops  a  sense  of  mutual  interest  in  production 
on  the  part  of  management  and  workers.  To  accomplish  this,  manage- 


6l2 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


ment  should  stimulate  the  interest  of  workers,  individually  and  col-, 
lectively,  in  creation,  in  craftsmanship,  and  in  the  contribution  of  their 
experience  and  knowledge  to  the  productive  processes.  "  Industrial 
relations”  to  be  effective  should  be  closely  allied  to  production  and 
concern  themselves  with  educating  the  workman  in  the  science  of 
process,  recording  his  accomplishment,  and  enabling  him  to  become 
conscious  of  the  relationship  of  his  work  to  the  whole. 

During  the  past  few  years,  there  has  been  a  widespread  advance  and 
extension  of  employment  and  personnel  methods  in  industry  and  many 
of  the  accruing  advantages  are  now  generally  known.  Among  these 
is  a  means  whereby  the  worker  has  a  direct  avenue  of  approach  to  his 
employer,  and  the  employer  has  a  means  for  communicating  organiza¬ 
tion  policies  to  the  employees.  Such  industrial  education  and  training 
as  has  been  conducted  by  certain  leading  manufacturers  has  obtained 
beneficial  results,  and  it  is  believed  that  further  developments  along 
these  lines  are  desirable. 

Prevention  of  accidents.  Management  has  a  definite  responsibility 
to  prevent  industrial  accidents.  Systematic  preventative  measures  can 
and  should  be  inaugurated.  With  regard  to  methods  there  is  already 
an  abundance  of  information. 

Research.  Industrial  research  should  be  consistently  carried  on 
both  in  the  individual  plant  and  by  associations.  The  need  for  knowl¬ 
edge  obtained  by  such  research  is  manifest  in  every  industry  studied. 
Although  comparatively  new  in  this  country,  the  success  of  research 
laboratories  conducted  by  a  few  large  industrial  firms  and  trade  asso¬ 
ciations  is  well  known. 

II.  Responsibility  of  Labor 

For  increasing  production.  In  discharging  its  responsibility  for 
eliminating  waste  in  industry,  labor  should  cooperate  to  increase  pro¬ 
duction.  The  need  for  facts  instead  of  opinions  stands  out  everywhere 
in  the  assay  of  waste  from  intentional  restrictions  of  output.  All  con¬ 
cerned  need  to  remember  that  science  is  an  ally  and  not  an  enemy,  and 
that  no  policy  can  be  soundly  based  which  ignores  economic  principles. 
Ignorance  of  these  principles  lies  at  the  root  of  most  of  labor’s  restric¬ 
tion  of  output.  The  engineers  who  made  the  field  assays  unite  in 
pointing  out  that  this  attitude  is  beginning  to  change.  The  change 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY  *  613 

should  be  aggressively  led ;  not  allowed  to  drift.  Labor  organizations 
have  an  opportunity  to-day  which  may  not  soon  occur  again  to  draft 
for  themselves  a  new  bill  of  rights  and  responsibilities.  Unions  are 
now  great  organizations  with  such  funds  and  personnel  at  their  dis¬ 
posal  as  would  have  seemed  fantastic  even  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago. 
Their  influence  permeates  the  whole  of  American  industry,  unionized 
or  not.  No  service  which  they  can  render  can  be  socially  more  valu¬ 
able  than  that  of  studying  the  needs  of  the  industries  in  which  they 
earn  a  livelihood,  and  allying  themselves  with  the  technicians  who 
serve  with  them  to  increase  production  which  will  inure  to  the  ulti¬ 
mate  benefit  of  all. 

For  standardization  oj  work.  Labor  should  cooperate  to  prepare 
for  and  even  demand  the  determination  of  and  use  of  performance 
standards.  This  recommendation  made  by  the  engineer  reporting  on 
the  printing  industry  applies  to  labor  in  many  other  industries  as  well : 
The  unions  rightly  insist  on  reasonable  hours  and  the  best  pay  obtain¬ 
able,  but  to  discharge  a  responsibility  in  eliminating  waste  they  should 
lend  themselves  to  the  greatest  flexibility  in  the  utilization  and  econ¬ 
omy  of  the  services  of  their  members.  It  is  to  the  worker’s  interest 
rather  than  to  his  detriment  that  his  services  should  not  only  be 
efficient  but  definitely  recorded  and  evaluated. 

For  changing  rules  regarding  restrictions.  Labor  should  change  its 
rules  regarding  restriction  of  output,  unreasonable  jurisdictional 
classification,  and  wasteful  methods  of  work,  thereby  removing  sources 
of  waste.  Certain  restrictions  probably  have  seemed  necessary  to 
labor  as  a  basis  for  trading  with  employers.  This  report  is  concerned 
with  restrictions  only  in  their  relation  to  waste.  It  recommends  a  re¬ 
vision  in  the  light  of  the  strength  and  standing  of  organized  labor 
to-day.  The  trading  basis  is  not  sufficient  justification  for  union  rules. 

For  improving  health  and  reducing  accidents.  Labor  is  responsible 
no  less  than  management  for  improving  the  health  of  the  workers  and 
for  preventing  accidents  in  industry.  Unions  have  accomplished  much 
in  protecting  their  members  through  educational  work  in  health  and 
safety,  but  there  is  still  much  to  be  done,  in  cooperation  with  manage¬ 
ment  and  community  organizations.  Periodical  physical  examinations 
and  medical  advice  have  resulted  in  a  number  of  instances  in  sub¬ 
stantial  improvement  in  the  health  and  well-being  of  workmen.  In 
many  cases,  however,  there  exists  a  strong  prejudice  against  such 


614 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


examinations.  As  a  result  of  this  unfortunate  attitude  many  workers 
live  in  subnormal  health  when  their  condition  is  easily  remediable. 

For  improving  industrial  relations.  Inasmuch  as  the  organization  of 
personnel  relationships  in  industry  can  only  be  accomplished  through 
the  cooperation  of  both  employer  and  employee,  labor  should  assist  in 
such  work  of  organization  and  in  maintaining  and  utilizing  the  struc¬ 
ture  developed.  Among  the  most  important  causes  of  industrial  dis¬ 
contentment  are  those  connected  with  waste  in  industry :  intermittent 
employment,  fear  of  unemployment,  lack  of  scientific  and  accepted 
methods  of  determining  wages  and  hours,  inequalities  of  opportunity, 
ill  health  and  industrial  accidents,  as  well  as  those  caused  by  backward 
management  and  restrictions  of  output. 

III.  Responsibility  of  Owners 

The  owners  of  industry  through  the  banking  function  or  otherwise 
share  in  the  responsibility  for  eliminating  waste  in  industry.  They 
have  the  duty  particularly  of  assisting  in  stabilizing  production.  To 
carry  out  such  a  policy  is  peculiarly  the  banker’s  interest.  While  it  is 
true  that  balance  sheets  and  income  statements  are  gages  of  the  degree 
of  success  of  a  business,  it  is  evident  from  the  assay  of  waste  that 
these  statements  often  do  not  reveal  all  or  even  the  greater  part  of  the 
facts  regarding  production.  Certain  banks  have  an  industrial  staff 
to  give  service  to  their  customers  and  to  study  industrial  questions 
more  closely.  It  may  not  be  long  before  such  things  as  good  manage¬ 
ment  methods  are  universally  recognized  as  commercial  assets. 

IV.  Responsibility  of  the  Public 

Need  of  public  interest.  In  the  study  of  industrial  waste,  there  can 
be  no  setting  apart  of  the  public  as  a  separate  group.  The  public  com¬ 
prises  all  groups,  and  the  public’s  responsibility  for  eliminating  waste 
is  large.  A  campaign  to  increase  the  productivity  of  industry  cannot 
be  conducted  without  widespread  interest  and  support.  The  engi¬ 
neers  can  initiate  such  a  campaign,  but  they  cannot  press  it  to  a  solu¬ 
tion  unless  the  public  so  desires. 

Style  changes.  In  certain  industries  the  consuming  public  is  to  a 
degree  responsible  for  seasonal  fluctuations  because  of  the  eagerness 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


615 


with  which  it  accepts  or  adopts  changes  in  style.  Styles  should  be 
viewed  at  least  in  part  from  the  standpoint  of  usefulness  and  economy. 

Distribution  of  demand.  The  public  can  assist  in  stabilizing  indus¬ 
try  by  accepting  a  sensible  distribution  of  demand  throughout  the 
year.  This  applies  for  example  to  the  building  industry  in  which 
there  is  a  strong  tradition  to  the  contrary.  Instead  of  crowding  our 
main  construction  work  into  seven  or  eight  months,  not  only  must 
work  in  the  slack  months  be  developed,  but  all  that  can  be  deferred 
from  the  busy  to  the  more  idle  season  should  be  so  deferred. 

Community  cooperation  with  industry.  Public  and  semi-public 
agencies  can  assist  by  definitely  encouraging  and  supporting  the  efforts 
for  elimination  of  waste.  Bodies  such  as  local  Chambers  of  Commerce 
and  other  civic  and  community  associations  can  bring  influence  to 
bear  through  local  conferences  with  the  different  branches  of  industry. 
In  particular  such  effort  might  be  directed  toward  the  construction  of 
dwellings,  the  furtherance  of  public  health,  and  the  prevention  of 
non-industrial  accidents.  Collective  purchasing  agencies  may  assist  by 
educating  the  public  in  better  methods  of  buying,  thus  having  an  in¬ 
fluence  on  the  stabilization  of  industry  by  reducing  the  number  of 
items  of  goods  demanded  and  distributing  the  demand  over  a  longer 
period  of  time. 

V.  Opportunity  of  Trade  Associations 

Work  for  comprehensive  organizations.  Trade  associations  should 
be  formed  in  those  industries  lacking  comprehensive  organizations. 
The  clothing  industry  lacks  any  comprehensive  trade  body  through 
which  common  problems  can  be  studied  and  common  remedies  ap¬ 
plied.  The  organizations  supported  by  this  industry  as  a  whole  have 
to  do  principally  with  marketing  the  product,  such  as  displaying  goods 
and  meeting  buyers.  There  is  no  joint  agency  studying  the  obvious 
weaknesses  in  manufacturing.  As  another  example,  there  is  no  asso¬ 
ciation  for  the  printing  machinery  trade,  and  it  is  recommended  that 
one  be  formed.  In  many  industries  which  already  have  trade  organi¬ 
zations  a  greater  degree  of  cooperation  and  publicity  for  their  work 
and  policies  would  steadily  improve  and  increase  their  effectiveness. 
Trade  organizations  should  collect  and  make  public  trade  information, 
including  current  data  on  production,  stocks  on  hand,  consumption, 


6i6 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


the  general  price  levels  of  essential  commodities,  and  statistics  of 
active  and  idle  plant  capacity.  Such  information  would  make  for 
stability  and  elimination  of  waste. 

Industrial  standardization.  Trade  associations  should  promote  pro¬ 
grams  for  the  standardization  of  cost  accounting  methods,  the  intro¬ 
duction  of  standardized  material  specifications,  the  establishment  of 
production  standards,  the  standardization  of  equipment,  and  the 
standardization  of  finished  products. 

VI.  Opportunity  for  Governmental  Assistance 

National  industrial  information  service.  A  national  industrial  in¬ 
formation  service  should  be  established  to  furnish  timely,  regular,  and 
complete  information  on  current  production,  consumption,  and  avail¬ 
able  stocks  of  commodities,  supplementing  the  work  of  private  agen¬ 
cies.  One  of  the  outstanding  facts  in  connection  with  this  assay  is  the 
scarcity  of  authoritative  sources  of  satisfactory  information.  Various 
industries  have  tried  to  secure  data  informally.  But  it  is  essential  that 
such  information  be  collected  and  presented  to  the  entire  industrial 
community,  including  the  buyer,  the  seller,  and  the  banker.  The  great 
need  for  complete  information  with  regard  to  current  production  and 
consumption  and  stocks  of  every  important  commodity,  is  obvious  to 
all  serious  students  of  industry. 

A  national  statistical  service.  A  national  statistical  service  should 
be  established  and  maintained  covering  employment  requirements  and 
conditions  throughout  the  country.  The  fundamental  knowledge  re¬ 
quired  to  make  a  correct  analysis  of  unemployment  in  any  period  is 
not  at  present  obtainable.  The  meager  information  for  such  a  study 
has  to  be  collected  from  many  agencies.  These  are  under  no  central 
control,  they  are  often  not  in  contact  and  frequently  duplicate  effort. 

During  the  past  seven  years  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor 
Statistics  has  gathered  statistics  of  strikes  and  lockouts  from  various 
sources  and  has  published  them  in  the  Monthly  Labor  Review.  These 
figures  are  not  comparable  with  the  statistics  contained  in  the  earlier 
reports  either  in  completeness  or  in  accuracy.  The  Bureau  has  not 
undertaken  any  special  field  investigations,  and  it  has  no  authority 
"to  require  reports  relative  to  strikes  from  anyone.”  As  the  extent 
of  seasonal  employment  and  temporary  shutdowns  and  layoffs  has  not 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


617 


been  subjected  to  a  general  statistical  measurement,  the  resulting  in¬ 
dustrial  waste  cannot  be  determined  with  any  degree  of  accuracy. 
There  are  no  employment  figures  comparable,  for  instance,  with  those 
collected  in  England  by  the  Board  of  Trade. 

Principles  for  adjustment  and  settlement  of  labor  disputes.  A  body 
of  principles  for  the  adjustment  of  labor  disputes  should  be  accepted, 
which  can  be  developed  with  experience.  Thus  far  American  legisla¬ 
tion  for  the  settlement  of  these  problems  presents  almost  as  many 
varieties  as  there  are  states.  The  nomenclature  of  the  bodies  created 
to  deal  with  controversies  between  employer  and  employee  may  in 
many  cases  be  the  same,  but  their  duties  and  manner  of  appointment 
differ  widely.  Almost  the  only  consolation  to  be  drawn  from  this 
legislation  is  the  fact  that  it  recognizes  a  need.  In  no  state  has  the 
existing  machinery  shown  itself  capable  of  meeting  a  great  crisis. 

No  federal  legislation  has  resulted  from  the  recommendations  of 
the  Second  Industrial  Conference  (1919) — the  most  comprehensive 
attempt  yet  made  in  America  to  meet  this  pressing  problem.  In  view 
of  the  waste  resulting  directly  and  indirectly  from  labor  disputes, 
there  is  obvious  need  for  wisdom  to  create  and  operate  successfully 
agencies  endowed  with  sufficient  power  and  vision  to  adjust  or  stop 
the  destructive  and  needless  controversies  over  labor  questions. 

Public  health  policy.  A  national  policy  regarding  public  health 
should  be  accepted  and  put  into  effect.  The  reports  dealing  with 
health,  prepared  in  connection  with  this  study  by  a  group  of  physi¬ 
cians,  indicate  the  importance  of  maintaining  the  health  of  industrial 
workers  as  a  factor  in  production  and  as  a  means  of  eliminating  one 
form  of  waste.  These  reports  also  declare  for  an  aggressive,  continu¬ 
ous,  national  public  health  policy. 

National  program  for  industrial  rehabilitation.  The  national  pro¬ 
gram  for  industrial  rehabilitation  should  be  encouraged.  It  should 
offer  opportunities  for  the  education  and  placement  of  those  having 
physical  and  mental  defects  as  well  as  those  handicapped  by  industrial 
accidents  or  by  war.  Formerly  such  incapacitated  men  were  treated 
as  if  they  had  no  economic  value.  Many  striking  examples,  however, 
have  led  to  the  conviction  that  many  such  men  can  be  so  trained  as 
to  make  them  useful  workers.  Comprehensive  efforts  for  their  voca¬ 
tional  rehabilitation  are  being  made  through  the  cooperation  of  federal, 
state,  industrial,  and  commercial  agencies. 


6i8 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Nation-wide  program  of  industrial  standardization.  A  nation-wide 
program  of  industrial  standardization  should  be  encouraged  by  the 
government  in  cooperation  with  industry.  In  the  standardization  of 
design  of  product,  methods  of  procedure,  and  number  of  models,  there 
rests  a  large  opportunity  for  the  reduction  of  waste.  A  special  service 
which  the  government  can  render  in  this  connection  is  the  standard¬ 
ization  of  its  own  demands.  Several  government  departments  have 

their  own  paper  specifications,  for  example,  with  no  relation  to  each 

* 

other,  or  to  any  standard  brand.  These  departments  might  well  take 
the  first  step  by  standardizing  the  paper  they  use  on  the  basis  of  a 
selected  list  of  well-known  brands. 

It  is  not  sufficient,  however,  to  attempt  to  standardize  the  product 
of  a  given  industry,  for  almost  every  industry  is  so  dependent  upon 
others  that  they  too  must  cooperate.  The  federal  government  could 
call  together  the  representatives  of  the  trade  associations  of  inter¬ 
dependent  industries  and  in  cooperation  form  committees  for  this 
purpose.  The  opinions  or  decisions  of  such  committees  might  from 
time  to  time  be  promulgated  as  standards  of  practice. 

Revision  of  federal  laws.  Where  federal  laws  interfere  with  the 
stabilization  of  industry  they  should  be  revised  in  the  interests’ of  the 
whole  people.  The  largest  area  of  waste  lies  in  the  periods  of  slack 
production  and  unemployment,  due  to  the  ebb  and  flow  of  economic 
tides  between  booms  and  slumps.  Studies  of  industries  as  a  whole 
show  that  we  usually  expand  our  equipment  at  the  periods  of  maxi¬ 
mum  demand  for  products  instead  of  doing  our  plant  expansion  dur¬ 
ing  periods  of  slack  consumption.  While  it  cannot  be  expected  that 
all  industry  could  be  so  stabilized  as  to  do  its  capital  construction  in 
slack  periods,  there  are  some  industries  which  could  be  led  in  this 
direction  by  cooperation  with  the  government  and  cooperation  among 
themselves.  This  applies  particularly  to  railways,  telephones,  tele¬ 
graphs,  power  concerns,  and  other  public  utilities,  and  to  expenditure 
upon  our  municipal,  state,  and  national  public  works.  As  a  striking 
example,  in  a  seasonal  industry  such  as  coal  mining,  no  adequate  solu¬ 
tion  regarding  stabilization  can  be  found  except  through  organized 
cooperation  of  operators,  labor,  railroads,  and  large  consumers.  Under 
existing  laws  as  to  combinations,  such  cooperation  cannot  be  carried 
out.  Therefore,  we  believe  that  federal  legislation  is  necessary  per¬ 
mitting  such  cooperation  under  competent  government  authority. 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


619 


82.  Unemployment1 

Unemployment  in  its  larger  aspects  is  an  industrial,  not  a  personal, 
problem.  It  was  widespread  this  last  winter2  chiefly  because  of  the 
dislocation  of  our  industries  due  to  the  European  War.  This  should 
not  cause  us  to  forget  that  it  was  also  widespread  the  winter  before, 
when  there  was  no  war  or  rumor  of  war,  and  that,  not  only  in  this 
country  but  in  every  country,  it  is  recognized  by  economists  as  a  prob¬ 
lem  of  growing  seriousness.  Underlying  and  magnifying  unusual  causes 
of  unemployment  like  the  present  war,  or  the  change  in  the  tariff 
two  years  ago,  are  persistent  and  regularly  recurring  causes.  Of  these 
the  principal  are  changes  and  improvements  in  methods  of  production 
and  the  increasing  tendency  toward  seasonalty  in  industries.  Business 
in  the  United  States  is  in  a  highly  dynamic  condition.  Old  firms  are 
failing  and  new  firms  are  starting  up  almost  every  week  in  almost 
every  branch  of  industry.  Methods  of  production  are  changing,  labor- 
saving  machinery  being  introduced  to  displace  labor  and  new  combi¬ 
nations  of  labor  and  machinery  being  devised  to  afford  employment 
to  new  types  of  workers  at  the  expense  of  old  types  who  find  them¬ 
selves  no  longer  required.  This  constant  shifting  gives  rise  to  a  large 
amount  of  at  least  temporary  unemployment  while  adjustments  are 
being  made  to  the  new  conditions. 

Added  to  this  shifting  of  employments  is  the  irregularity  due  to  the 
seasonalty  of  so  many  important  industries.  Farming  is  still  our  most 
important  single  interest.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  persons  are  em¬ 
ployed  on  American  farms  in  the  summer  who  are  not  needed  in  the 
winter.  Other  hundreds  of  thousands  find  summer  employment  in 
excavation  work,  road  building,  in  connection  with  transportation  on 
the  Great  Lakes,  in  the  canning  industries,  etc.,  who  cannot  be  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  winter.  To  these  industries  which  are  seasonal  because 
the  nature  of  the  work  requires  its  suspension  in  the  winter,  are  added 
others,  quite  as  important  in  the  aggregate,  which  are  seasonal  because 
the  demand  for  their  products  varies  with  the  seasons.  Preeminent  in 
this  class  are  the  different  branches  of  the  clothing  industry.  Nearly 

1By  Henry  R.  Seager,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  Columbia 
University,  New  York  City.  Adapted  from  "Unemployment,”  Proceedings  of 
the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections,  1915,  pp.  494^502. 

21914-1915. 


620 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


all  of  them  have  two  busy  and  two  dull  seasons,  related  to  the  demands 
for  winter  and  summer  garments  respectively.  It  is  the  universal 
testimony  of  those  in  these  trades  that  the  busy  seasons  are  becoming 
more  concentrated  and  the  dull  seasons  more  prolonged  in  consequence 
of  the  growing  insistence  on  the  part  of  all  consumers  that  their  gar¬ 
ments  be  in  style.  To  be  up-to-the-minute  in  the  garments  that  they 
turn  out  manufacturers  are  constrained  to  hold  back  their  making 
orders  until  the  mysterious  influences  that  control  styles  have  regis¬ 
tered  their  verdict.  Then  there  is  a  feverish  rush  to  turn  out  the  gar¬ 
ments  likely  to  be  required  in  the  shortest  possible  time.  Contractors 
and  sub-contractors  are  called  in,  home-work  is  resorted  to  on  a  great 
scale,  all  the  devices  of  ruthless  competition  are  used  to  speed  up 
industry  to  the  greatest  possible  extent.  The  more  active  and  con¬ 
centrated  the  busy  season,  the  greater  the  reaction  when  the  dull  sea¬ 
son  sets  in.  This  is  necessarily  a  period  of  widespread  unemployment. 
The  impairment  in  the  savings  of  the  garment  workers  that  results 
from  it  makes  them  the  eager  victims  of  the  second  rush  season.  Glad 
to  get  work  at  all,  they  are  easily  persuaded  to  over-work  and  the 
same  vicious  circle  is  repeated. 

Since  unemployment  is  primarily  an  industrial  problem,  the  reme¬ 
dies  must  be  sought  in  such  a  reorganization  of  our  industries  as  will 
confine  it  to  the  narrowest  possible  limits,  and  such  provision  for  those 
who  must  still  be  unemployed  for  part  of  the  year  as  will  protect 
them  from  the  suffering  and  demoralization  to  which  they  are  now 
exposed.  The  measures  that  must  be  utilized  to  reduce  unemployment 
to  the  narrowest  possible  limits  are  the  regularization  of  industry,  the 
dove-tailing  together  of  industries  whose  busy  seasons  alternate,  the 
creation  of  an  efficient  system  of  free  public  employment  bureaus,  and 
the  farsighted  planning  of  public  work  so  that  it  may  be  prosecuted 
most  actively  when  private  industry  is  dullest.  Provision  for  those 
who  will  still  experience  unemployment  even  after  these  measures  have 
been  taken,  must  be  sought  in  unemployment  insurance.  These  are 
the  five  remedies  that  I  wish  to  urge  on  your  attention. 

The  regularization  of  industry  is  called  for  by  the  best  interests  of 
employers,  employees,  and  consumers.  Each  class  may  contribute 
something  toward  bringing  it  about.  Employers  direct  our  industries 
and  are  chiefly  responsible  for  the  way  in  which  they  are  carried  on. 
Many  of  them  are  fully  alive  to  their  responsibilities  and  give  much 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


62 1 

thought  to  the  interests  of  their  employees.  Many,  however,  seem  to 
feel  no  responsibility  beyond  paying  the  wages  from  day  to  day  that 
they  have  agreed  to  pay.  When  business  slackens  they  discharge  em¬ 
ployees  wholesale,  knowing  from  experience  that  these  employees  will 
be  only  too  glad  to  come  back  when  the  busy  season  comes  again. 
Methods  of  " hiring  and  firing”  are  sometimes  so  inconsiderate  of  the 
interests  of  employees  that  ten  persons  are  taken  on  and  discharged 
in  the  course  of  a  year  to  keep  one  continuously  employed.  In  con¬ 
trast  with  this  there  are  other  cases  where  a  business  whose  trade  is 
largely  confined  to  one  short  season — the  manufacture  of  Christmas 
and  New  Year’s  cards,  for  example — has  by  careful  planning  spread 
the  work  out  continuously  through  the  year.  It  is  sometimes  said  that 
the  individual  employer  can  do  nothing  to  regularize  employment, 
that  he  must  follow  the  policies  of  his  least  scrupulous  competitors ; 
but  this  is  an  exaggeration.  By  giving  thought  to  the  matter,  by  book¬ 
ing  orders  earlier,  by  combining  standard  lines  with  those  influenced 
by  changing  fashions,  by  making  up  stock  in  the  dull  season,  some 
employers  have  shown  that  even  seasonal  industries  may  be  made  less 
irregular  to  the  advantage  of  the  employer  and  the  still  greater  ad¬ 
vantage  of  employees.  Moreover,  employers  might  and  ought  to  work 
together  through  their  associations  to  lessen  seasonal  fluctuations.  It 
is  sometimes  charged  that  employers  deliberately  change  the  styles 
from  season  to  season,  so  as  to  be  able  to  sell  more  goods.  I  do  not 
know  much  about  it,  but  my  impression  is  that  they  are  as  much  the 
victims  of  changing  fashions  as  are  consumers.  At  any  rate,  I  know 
that  in  one  branch  of  the  boot  and  shoe  industry  New  England  manu¬ 
facturers  have  combined  in  creating  a  Styles  Committee,  whose  task 
it  is  to  try  to  standardize  products  and  lessen  the  losses  due  to  the 
depreciation  of  stock  that  is  not  of  the  very  latest  design. 

Employees  are  even  more  concerned  than  employers  to  regularize 
employment.  I  think  their  efforts  to  reduce  the  amount  of  home-work 
and  over-time  in  seasonal  industries  should  be  in  every  way  encour¬ 
aged.  Much  also  might  be  accomplished  by  consumers.  The  "Shop 
Early”  campaign  of  the  Consumers’  League  has  already  had  an  ap¬ 
preciable  influence  in  lessening  the  rush  and  strain  of  the  holiday 
trade.  A  "Shop  Regularly”  campaign  is  equally  needed. 

The  most  familiar  illustration  of  dove-tailing  of  industries  whose 
busy  seasons  alternate  is  the  familiar  combination  of  the  coal  and  ice 


622 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


business.  A  combination  of  much  greater  significance  is  that  of  farm 
work  in  the  summer  and  home-work  in  city  tenement  houses  in  the 
winter,  on  which  so  many  Italian  families  depend  for  their  year’s 
livelihood.  But  for  such  combinations,  effected  in  a  haphazard  way 
by  the  workers  themselves  with  little  aid  in  the  form  of  vocational 
guidance  or  wisely  directed  employment  bureaus,  unemployment 
would  be  even  a  more  serious  problem  in  the  United  States  than  we 
ordinarily  experience. 

The  regularization  of  industry  has  obvious  limits  beyond  which  it 
cannot  be  carried.  Farming  must  remain  predominantly  a  summer 
occupation ;  removing  snow  from  city  streets  exclusively  a  winter’s 
task.  At  best,  in  a  country  like  the  United  States  there  must  be  a 
large  amount  of  shifting  of  workers  from  industry  to  industry  and 
from  section  to  section.  This  makes  an  efficient  system  of  free  public 
employment  bureaus,  able  to  connect  the  manless  job  and  the  jobless 
man  promptly  and  with  a  minimum  of  trouble  both  to  employer  and 
employee,  the  most  important  measure  in  any  program  for  relieving 
unemployment. 

The  fourth  remedy  for  unemployment,  which  in  a  winter  such  as 
that  we  have  just  passed  through  must  be  called  in  to  the  largest  pos¬ 
sible  extent,  is  the  prosecuting  of  public  works  like  subway  construc¬ 
tion,  road  building,  manufacturing  uniforms  for  the  military  and  civil 
government  employees,  etc.,  which  will  give  employment  to  those  not 
needed  in  private  industry.  All  possible  pressure  should  be  brought 
to  bear  on  the  city,  state,  and  national  governments  to  work  out  plans 
for  public  improvements  extending  over  the  next  ten  years  or  so,  with 
a  view  to  being  ready  to  push  such  work  with  vigor  when  the  next 
serious  period  of  unemployment  overtakes  us.  The  principal  cause  of 
the  unemployment  we  have  just  passed  through  was  the  war.  The 
principal  cause  of  the  industrial  revival  we  are  now  experiencing  is 
war  orders  that  have  come  to  some  of  our  manufacturers  in  huge 
volume.  Business  prophets  are  now  looking  forward  to  a  year  of  great 
industrial  activity,  but  before  next  winter  comes  the  war  may  be  over, 
war  orders  that  have  not  been  executed  may  be  cancelled,  and  our 
industries  may  be  again  dislocated  in  the  process  of  adjustment  to 
peace  conditions.  Is  it  too  much  to  ask  that  those  who  direct  public 
policies,  instead  of  congratulating  themselves  on  the  fact  that  the 
worst  is  over,  make  plans  and  set  aside  money  now  to  be  used  when 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


623 


the  next  emergency  arises  ?  Any  prudent  business  man  would  so  apply 
the  lesson  of  last  winter.  Cannot  we  expect  our  public  officials  to  show 
an  equal  degree  of  forethought  ? 

Even  if  all  the  measures  that  I  have  described  were  taken  and  every 
effort  were  made  to  regularize  industry,  to  train  workers,  and  to  con¬ 
nect  those  out  of  work  with  available  opportunities  for  work,  there 
would  still  remain  a  considerable  number  of  unemployed  in  the  dull 
seasons.  A  large  number  of  manual  workers  are  sure  to  be  out  of 
work  in  the  winter  in  a  country  like  the  United  States,  when  farming 
industry  is  largely  suspended,  when  northern  lakes  and  rivers  are 
frozen  over,  and  when  construction  work  must  be  largely  discontinued. 
In  the  same  way  the  clothing  industry,  so  long  as  people  dress  differ¬ 
ently  in  summer  than  in  winter,  and  try  to  dress  stylishly  at  all  sea¬ 
sons,  will  have  its  busy  and  its  dull  seasons.  The  last  measure  in  a 
complete  program  for  dealing  with  unemployment  is  unemployment 
insurance. 

For  wage-earners  a  moderate  amount  of  unemployment  each  year 
is  not,  or  should  not  be,  a  disadvantage.  The  only  way  the  wage- 
earner  can  get  a  continuous  vacation,  ordinarily,  is  by  being  unem¬ 
ployed.  Everyone  ought  to  have  a  vacation.  Two  weeks  off  every 
year  is  a  modest  enough  standard.  If  by  some  plan  wage-earners  could 
be  divided  up  into  twenty-six  equal  groups,  and  each  group  given  two 
weeks’  holiday  in  rotation  the  proportion  unemployed  would  be  4  per 
cent.  This  proportion  would  be  doubled  to  8  per  cent  if  four  weeks’ 
holiday,  two  weeks  in  every  six  months,  were  provided  for. 

Unemployment  insurance  aims,  on  the  one  hand,  to  provide  wage- 
earners  with  assured,  though  modest,  incomes  during  the  periods  when 
they  are  unemployed;  and,  on  the  other,  to  encourage  the  passing 
around  of  unemployment,  so  that,  instead  of  falling  with  crushing 
weight  on  a  minority  of  wage-earning  families,  it  will  be  shared  in  by 
a  larger  number  and  become  for  them  the  means  to  periodic  vacations. 

That  the  curse  of  unemployment  can  thus  be  transformed  into  the 
blessing  of  a  needed  holiday  may  seem  to  many  of  you  too  good  to  be 
true.  But  this  claim  is  not  based  on  mere  speculation.  In  well  or¬ 
ganized  trades,  where  seasonal  unemployment  recurs  regularly  year 
after  year,  as  in  the  building  trades,  something  like  this  is  actually 
achieved  by  the  out-of-work  benefits  of  trade  unions  long  common  in 
the  United  Kingdom  and  beginning  to  be  introduced  into  the  United 


624 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


States.  It  was,  in  fact,  in  the  form  of  the  out-of-work  benefits  of  trade 
unions  that  unemployment  insurance  first  made  its  appearance.  These 
benefits  were  so  popular  that  in  the  United  Kingdom,  before  the 
national  insurance  act  of  1911  was  passed,  eighty-one  of  the  one  hun¬ 
dred  principal  unions  had  them  and  expended  on  them  about  one-third 
of  their  total  incomes. 

In  these  well-organized  trades,  the  trade  union  secretary  acts  as  an 
employment  agent.  In  the  interest  of  fairness  he  tries  to  prevent  any 
member  from  drawing  his  out-of-work  pay  for  an  unreasonable  length 
of  time.  Consequently,  in  supplying  to  employers  the  names  of  men 
who  desire  work,  he  picks  out  those  who  have  received  unemployment 
benefits  longest.  By  this  means,  if  the  proportion  of  unemployed  is 
not  too  great  or  too  long-continued,  the  normal  period  of  unemploy¬ 
ment  for  any  individual  wage-earner  is  prevented  from  exceeding  a 
reasonable  holiday.  The  average  number  unemployed  from  1894  to 
1908  never  exceeded  8  per  cent  in  the  organized  trades  in  the  United 
Kingdom  from  which  returns  were  regularly  obtained.  Eight  per  cent 
of  unemployment  passed  around  among  all  the  wage-earners  in  an 
industry  means,  as  already  explained,  four  weeks  lost  time  in  a  year 
— a  month’s  vacation. 

With  its  national  system  of  free  public  employment  exchanges, 
established  in  1909,  in  successful  operation,  the  United  Kingdom  in¬ 
troduced  in  19 1 1  its  system  of  compulsory  unemployment  insurance 
for  employees  in  building  and  construction  work.  By  this  step  it  be¬ 
came  the  first  country  in  the  world  to  attack  unemployment  as  a 
national  problem.  Employers  in  these  trades  are  required  to  see  to  it 
that  their  employees  secure  from  the  government  insurance  offices,  of 
which  1000  odd  were  opened  in  addition  to  those  equipped  in  the 
430  employment  bureaus,  unemployment  insurance  cards.  On  these 
they  are  required  to  paste  each  week  five  pennies’  worth  of  insurance 
stamps,  which  they  buy  like  ordinary  postage  stamps  from  the  post 
offices.  They  are  required  to  pay  one-half  the  price  of  these  stamps, 
or  five  cents  a  week,  for  each  employee,  themselves,  and  permitted  to 
deduct  the  other  half  from  wages. 

To  the  sums  secured  by  the  sale  of  the  stamps  the  government  adds 
out  of  the  public  treasury  one-third  more,  or  three  and  a  third  cents  a 
week  for  each  insured  employee.  Though  so  small  in  amount  these 
payments  aggregated  in  1913  about  £2,300,000  or  $11,500,000,  out 


PREVENTION  OE  POVERTY 


625 


of  which  benefits  could  be  provided.  The  benefit  paid  is  not  large, 
only  seven  shillings  a  week,  but  enough  under  English  conditions  to 
preserve  a  family  from  outright  destitution.  This  may  be  increased 
by  trade  unions  in  organized  trades  on  condition  that  the  union  pays 
at  least  one-fourth  of  the  total,  so  the  usual  benefit  in  such  trades  is 
twelve  shillings  a  week.  Moreover,  to  encourage  trade  unions  to  pro¬ 
vide  out-of-work  benefits  for  their  members,  the  government  grants  a 
subsidy  of  two  shillings  per  unemployed  member  to  every  union  which 
pays  a  benefit  of  twelve  shillings  a  week,  provided  that  in  administer¬ 
ing  the  system  the  union  conforms  to  regulations  applying  to  the 
compulsorily  insured.  In  1913,  in  addition  to  the  2,400,000  compul¬ 
sorily  insured,  600,000  were  voluntarily  insured  through  their  unions. 
The  chief  limitations  on  the  benefits  are  that  they  begin  only  with  the 
second  week  of  unemployment  and  continue  for  not  more  than  fifteen 
weeks  in  any  one  year. 

There  is  every  evidence  that  this  plan  was  working  quite  success¬ 
fully  up  to  the  time  of  the  war.  Also  it  seems  to  have  met  the  severe 
test  of  war  conditions  without  drawing  very  heavily  on  the  reserve 
fund  that  had  been  accumulated  and  now  seems  to  be  operating  as 
well  as  in  the  preceding  period  of  peace.  In  the  first  year  the  income 
exceeded  the  expenditure  by  about  £1,600,000,  or  $8, 000, 000,  and, 
though  a  considerable  reserve  is  needed,  it  looks  as  though  the  govern¬ 
ment  had  been  unduly  cautious  in  its  estimates  and  could  afford  to 
pay  a  higher  benefit  than  the  seven  shillings  a  week  it  now  provides. 
This  success  has  been  due  to  the  care  with  which  its  operation  was 
safeguarded  so  as  to  prevent  fraud,  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  induce 
employers  to  exert  themselves  to  lessen  the  amount  of  unemployment, 
on  the  other. 

There  is  no  kind  of  insurance  that  presents  the  same  temptation  to 
fraud  as  unemployment  insurance.  Anyone  can  imitate  a  man  out  of 
work  and  anxious  to  get  work.  It  is  the  most  familiar  kind  of  im¬ 
posture  in  modern  communities.  Moreover,  there  are  always  wage- 
earners  who  find  work  so  distasteful  that  they  will  eagerly  seize  any 
opportunity  to  get  out  of  it.  They  are  the  small  minority,  but  numer¬ 
ous  enough  to  wreck  any  plan  of  unemployment  insurance  if  not  held 
in  check.  The  only  sure  way  of  testing  the  good  faith  of  a  man  who 
says  he  wants  work  is  to  offer  it  to  him.  It  is  right  here  that  the 
British  public  employment  bureaus  render  an  indispensable  service. 


626 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Of  the  four  hundred  thousand  insured  persons  who  were  unemployed 
during  the  first  six  months  that  the  British  law  was  in  full  operation, 
30  per  cent  were  found  jobs  before  the  end  of  the  first  week.  Sixty- 
two  per  cent  were  found  jobs  before  the  expiration  of  the  fifteen  weeks 
during  which  unemployment  benefits  were  paid  to  them,  7  per  cent 
were  for  some  reason  disqualified  from  receiving  benefits,  and  only  1  per 
cent  remained  unemployed  after  the  period  when  their  benefits  ceased. 

In  practise  the  system  thus  served  in  large  measure  its  purpose  of 
passing  unemployment  around — one-third  Of  the  total  number  insured 
being  unemployed  at  some  time  in  the  year — and  of  giving  some  in¬ 
come  to  the  unemployed  during  their  involuntary  holiday.  As  confi¬ 
dence  is  established  in  the  ability  of  the  employment  bureaus  to  find 
jobs  for  their  clients,  the  anxiety  which  has  been  associated  with 
unemployment  will  disappear,  and  men  who  are  temporarily  out  of 
work  will  be  able  to  extract  some  pleasure  from  the  experience. 

Employers  are  given  a  strong  motive  for  trying  to  regularize  em¬ 
ployment  by  two  circumstances :  First,  they  have  to  pay  one-half  of 
the  premium.  If  they  can  reduce  unemployment  so  that  the  income 
of  the  fund  will  prove  more  than  is  needed  they  have  a  good  case  for 
demanding  that  the  premiums  be  made  smaller.  Second,  if  they  pay 
premiums  for  the  same  employee  for  fifty  weeks  in  the  year  they  are 
entitled  under  the  plan  to  a  refund  of  one-third  of  their  contribution. 
This  gives  them  a  motive  for  trying  to  employ  continuously  as  many 
of  their  employees  as  possible. 

Another  ingenious  feature  of  the  system  has  made  it  acceptable  to 
steady-going  workers  who  are  so  valuable  to  their  employers  that  they 
run  little  risk  of  being  discharged.  Any  wage-earner  who  has  been 
insured  against  unemployment  for  ten  years  and  has  made  five  hun¬ 
dred  contributions  to  the  fund,  may,  on  reaching  the  age  of  sixty, 
claim  a  refund  of  all  that  he  has  put  in  less  all  that  he  has  received  in 
benefits  compounded  at  2^  per  cent  interest.  For  him  the  system 
combines  the  advantages  of  government-guaranteed  savings  for  old 
age  with  those  of  unemployment  insurance. 

Up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  British  plan  of  unemployment 
insurance  was  proving  successful.  There  is  nothing  in  our  American 
conditions  that  should  prevent  us  from  introducing  a  similar  plan  here. 
Several  of  our  trade  unions,  like  the  Cigar  Makers  and  the  Printers, 
have  out-of-work  benefits  in  successful  operation.  These  and  our 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


627 


municipal  and  state  public  employment  bureaus  can  be  made  the 
starting  points  for  systems  of  obligatory,  state-directed  unemployment 
insurance. 

In  the  five  measures  that  have  been  urged,  the  regularization  of  in¬ 
dustry,  the  dove-tailing  together  of  employments  whose  busy  and  dull 
seasons  alternate,  the  organization  and  efficient  operation  of  connected 
public  employment  bureaus,  the  planning  of  public  work  so  as  to  make 
provision  for  the  unemployed  when  private  industry  is  depressed, 
and  unemployment  insurance,  I  believe  we  have  the  essentials  of  a 
solution  of  this  problem. 

83.  Standard  Recommendations  for  the  Relief  and 
Prevention  of  Unemployment1 

1.  Organization.  Organize  the  community  as  long  as  possible  before 
unemployment  becomes  acute,  including  any  necessary  reorganization 
or  coordination  of  existing  agencies.  The  appointment  of  an  unem¬ 
ployment  committee  by  the  governor  or  by  the  mayor,  if  improper 
political  influence  is  guarded  against,  insures  semi-official  standing 
and  greater  prestige.  Include  in  the  membership  all  classes  concerned, 
such  as  employers,  workingmen,  public  officials,  social  workers,  civic 
leaders,  and  representatives  of  churches,  lodges,  and  women’s  clubs. 
To  carry  out  preventive  measures,  permanent  organization,  not  tem¬ 
porary  activity  during  a  crisis,  is  essential. 

2.  Education.  Upon  the  basis  of  careful  information  gathered  from 
employment  offices,  relief  agencies,  and  all  other  available  sources, 
bring  the  facts  of  the  unemployment  situation  home  to  every  citizen. 
Emphasize  civic  and  industrial  responsibility.  Avoid  "the  ostrich 
policy  of  refusing  to  face  the  facts  on  the  one  hand  and  hysterical 
exaggeration  of  facts  on  the  other.” 

3.  Emergency  relief.  Avoid  duplicating  the  work  of  existing  organ¬ 
izations.  Do  not  advertise  the  existence  of  large  relief  funds  or  other 
provisions  for  relief  without  work,  or  give  indiscriminate  relief  to  able- 
bodied  men.  Except  as  a  last  resort,  discourage  the  starting  of  bread 
lines,  bundle  days,  soup  kitchens,  and  similar  measures.  As  far  as 
possible  supply  aid  by  means  of  employment,  at  standard  rates,  but 
on  part  time,  to  encourage  early  return  to  regular  occupation.  Open 


3  By  the  American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation. 


628 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


workshops  and  secure  odd  jobs  from  householders.  Do  not  provide 
work  for  housewives  who  are  not  ordinarily  wage-earners,  instead  of 
for  their  jobless  husbands.  For  the  homeless,  provide  a  municipal 
lodging  house,  with  a  work  test,  or  a  cooperative  lodging  house  under 
intelligent  supervision  and  leadership.  Abolish  the  "passing  on” 
system,  but  do  not  make  provision  for  non-residents  at  the  expense 
of  resident  unemployed  family  men. 

4.  Separation  of  unemployable  and  unemployed.  Differentiate  the 
treatment  of  the  unemployable  from  that  of  the  unemployed.  Develop 
appropriate  specialized  treatment  based  on  the  continuous  work  of 
trained  social  investigators  for  the  inmates  of  the  municipal  lodging 
house.  Provide  adequate  facilities  for  the  care  and  treatment  of  the 
sick,  the  mentally  defective,  and  the  aged.  Develop  penal  farm  colo¬ 
nies  for  shirks  and  vagrants,  training  colonies  and  classes  for  the 
inefficient,  and  special  workshops  for  handicapped  and  sub-standard 
workers. 

5.  Industrial  training.  Provide  industrial  training  classes  with 
scholarships  for  unemployed  workers. 

6.  Employment  exchanges.  If  one  is  not  already  in  existence,  open 
an  employment  exchange  to  centralize  the  community’s  labor  market, 
using  private  contributions  if  necessary  in  the  initial  stages.  Beware 
of  poor  location  and  insufficient  appropriations,  of  political  appoint¬ 
ees,  and  general  inactivity.  Do  not  start  temporary  philanthropic  ex¬ 
changes  in  times  of  depression  if  there  is  a  public  bureau  which  can 
be  made  efficient.  Stimulate  the  cooperation  of  citizens  to  improve 
the  existing  public  exchange  and  to  coordinate  the  work  of  non¬ 
commercial  private  bureaus.  Secure  adequate  legislation  establishing 
permanent  state  or  municipal  bureaus,  extending  joint  city-state- 
federal  control  in  their  administration,  and  regulating  private  agencies. 
Work  for  federal  legislation  and  appropriations  to  develop  a  national 
system  of  employment  exchanges. 

7.  Public  work.  Start  or  push  forward  special  public  work,  using 
private  contributions  in  time  of  urgent  need  if  public  funds  cannot 
be  obtained.  This  should  not  be  "made”  or  unnecessary  work,  but 
needed  public  improvements  in  as  great  variety  as  possible,  so  as  to 
furnish  employment  to  other  sorts  of  persons  besides  unskilled  laborers. 
Give  preference  to  resident  heads  of  families  if  there  is  not  work 
enough  for  all  applicants.  Employ  for  the  usual  hours  and  wages,  but 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


629 


rotate  employment  by  periods  of  not  less  than  three  days.  Supervise 
the  work  carefully  and  insist  upon  reasonable  standards  of  efficiency. 
To  avoid  the  difficulties  of  emergency  action  make  systematic  plans 
for  the  regular  concentration  of  public  work  in  dull  years  and  seasons 
by  special  provisions  in  the  tax  levy  or  by  other  appropriate  method. 
Urge  the  repeal  of  laws  restricting  cities  to  contract  work.  Secure  the 
aid  of  state  and  national  officials  in  stimulating  local  action.  Steady 
the  employment  of  the  regular  force,  retaining  employees  on  part  time 
in  preference  to  reducing  their  numbers. 

8.  Regularization.  In  times  of  depression  urge  the  use  of  regular 
employees  in  making  repairs  and  improving  the  plant,  and  the  policy 
of  part  time  employment  rather  than  reduction  in  numbers.  Do  not 
rely  upon  general  appeals  to  "Do  it  now,”  "Hire  a  man,”  and  the  like, 
addressed  to  the  public-at-large  without  definite  suggestions  as  to 
method.  Rouse  employers  to  the  importance  of  the  problem  and  the 
advantages  of  regularization.  Stimulate  careful  planning  for  this 
purpose  by  experts  as  part  of  the  regular  routine  of  business  manage¬ 
ment.  Encourage  the  formation  of  employment  managers’  associations. 

9.  Unemployment  compensation.  Work  for  the  establishment  by 
legislation  of  a  system  of  unemployment  compensation,  supported  by 
contributions  from  employers  as  the  most  just  and  economical  method 
for  the  proper  maintenance  of  the  necessary  labor  reserves  and  as 
supplying  the  financial  pressure  needed  to  secure  the  widespread  regu¬ 
larization  of  industry. 

84.  Redistribution  of  Human  Talent  and  of  Labor1 

It  is  a  common  error  to  suppose  that  justice  would  eliminate  pov¬ 
erty.  If  by  justice  is  meant  merely  that  each  individual  should  get 
exactly  what  he  produces,  or  what  he  is  worth,  it  is  certain  that  poverty 
would  not  be  eliminated,  and  might  not  even  be  materially  diminished. 
If  each  one  gets  only  what  he  produces,  or  what  he  is  worth,  and  if 
he  does  not  produce  enough  to  live  upon,  or  if  he  is  not  worth  enough 
as  a  worker  to  earn  a  wage  which  will  support  him,  he  will  still  be  poor. 
Before  we  can  eliminate  poverty,  therefore,  we  must  not  only  secure 

1  By  T.  N.  Carver,  Essays  in  Social  Justice ,  pp.  359-375-  Adapted  from  a 
paper  on  "The  Redistribution  of  Human  Talent,”  read  by  the  author  before  the 
Vocational  Guidance  Association,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  1911. 


630 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


justice  for  each  individual,  but  we  must  also  see  to  it  that  each  one  is 
made  worth  enough,  or  productive  enough  to  enable  him  to  live  com¬ 
fortably  upon  his  earnings. 

Nor  would  this  result  come  about  automatically  under  a  regime  of 
strict  justice.  The  bad  distribution  of  human  talent  would  still  exist 
unless  measures  were  taken  to  redistribute  it  according  to  needs.  By 
the  bad  distribution  of  human  talent  is  meant  something  quite  similar 
to  what  would  exist  if  material  commodities  were  badly  distributed  in 
proportion  to  the  need  for  them.  If  there  is  more  of  one  commodity 
in  a  certain  place  than  is  needed,  and  less  of  another,  the  one  will 
have  no  price  and  no  purchaser,  while  the  other  will  have  a  high  price 
and  many  purchasers  for  each  unit.  Or,  if  there  is  almost  as  much  of 
the  one  as  is  needed,  and  much  less  of  the  other,  the  one  will  have  a 
low  price,  and  it  will  be  difficult  to  find  buyers  enough,  whereas  the 
other  will  have  a  high  price  and  buyers  will  have  difficulty  in  getting 
enough  of  it. 

This  law  is  particularly  effective  when  we  consider  factors  which 
have  to  be  combined  in  the  production  of  a  given  article.  In  a  dry 
country  where  there  is  an  abundance  of  nitrogen,  phosphorus,  and 
potash  in  the  soil,  but  no  water,  there  may  be  a  great  demand  for 
agricultural  products,  but  these  elements  of  fertility  will  be  of  little 
value.  The  man  who  tried  to  sell  commercial  fertilizer  in  such  a 
community  would  starve.  But  water,  being  the  scarce  factor,  or  the 
limiting  factor,  and  everything  depending  upon  it,  will  command  a 
good  price.  The  man  who  can  supply  such  a  community  with  water 
will  have  no  difficulty  in  selling  it.  Moreover,  this  would  be  just. 
Fertilizer,  in  that  situation,  is  unproductive  in  the  only  sense  in  which 
the  word  productive  has  any  real  place  in  economics.  Ask  the  ques¬ 
tion,  how  much  more  grain  could  be  grown  on  that  land  if  there  were 
more  fertilizer,  and  you  will  get  some  idea  of  the  value  to  such  a  com¬ 
munity  of  the  services  of  the  fertilizer  man.  He  might  be  getting  all 
he  was  worth,  and  yet  be  poor;  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  might  be  a 
thoroughly  good  man  and  his  fertilizer  first  class.  But  ask  yourself 
the  same  question  respecting  water  and  you  get  an  idea  of  the  pro¬ 
ductivity  of  the  water  company.  More  water  more  crop.  The  men 
who  bring  water  to  this  land  may  be  no  better  than  the  men  who  bring 
fertilizer,  and  the  water  may  be  no  better  as  water  than  the  fertilizer 
is  as  fertilizer,  yet  if  the  water  men  get  what  their  service  is  actually 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


631 

worth,  they  will  get  a  large  share  of  the  product  of  the  land,  whereas 
the  fertilizer  men  would,  on  the  same  terms,  get  a  small  share.  This 
inequality  in  the  distribution  of  the  products  of  agriculture  would  not 
be  due  to  social  injustice,  but  to  the  bad  distribution  of  the  factors  of 
production.  This  is  the  fundamental  difficulty,  of  which  the  bad  dis¬ 
tribution  of  products  is  but  the  symptom.  One  who  thought  he  could 
cure  this  bad  distribution  of  products  by  merely  changing  the  social 
system  of  distribution  would  only  be  covering  up  symptoms.  In  a 
rain-soaked  country  where  fertilizers  are  scarce,  the  conditions  and 
the  results  of  the  illustration  would  be  exactly  reversed. 

Take  any  illustration  you  choose  where  several  ingredients  have 
to  be  mixed  to  get  a  given  commodity,  or  several  factors  combined  to 
get  a  given  product,  and  you  will  invariably  find  that  if  the  factors  do 
not  exist  in  the  proportions  called  for,  some  being  scarce  and  others 
abundant  relatively  to  the  need,  those  which  are  abundant  will  have 
little  real  productivity  per  unit  according  to  any  rational  economic 
test,  and  those  which  are  scarce  will  have  a  high  productivity  per  unit. 
One  unit  more  or  less  of  the  abundant  factor  will  make  little  difference 
with  the  product.  Very  little  product  depends,  therefore,  upon  any 
given  unit.  A  new  unit  of  this  abundant  factor  will  not  be  much 
needed,  will  not  be  worth  much.  But  the  factor  which  is  scarce,  which 
does  not  exist  in  sufficient  abundance  to  combine  with  all  the  other  fac¬ 
tors,  is  really  the  limiting  factor.  One  unit  more  or  less  makes  a  large 
difference  in  the  product.  Much  product,  therefore,  depends,  under 
these  circumstances,  upon  each  and  every  unit  of  the  scarce  factor. 
This  is  what  is  meant  by  saying  that,  economically  speaking,  the 
productivity  per  unit  of  the  scarce  factor  is  greater  than  that  of  the 
abundant  factor.  It  would  be  a  greater  gain  to  production  to  have  a 
new  unit  of  the  scarce  factor  than  to  have  a  new  unit  of  the  abundant 
factor.  It  would  be  a  greater  loss  to  production  to  lose  a  unit  of  the 
scarce  than  to  lose  a  unit  of  the  abundant  factor. 

This  relation  between  conditions  and  results  may  be  termed  an 
economic  law.  It  is  a  law  which  lies  deeper  than  forms  of  social 
organization.  It  is  grounded  in  the  laws  of  physics.  No  scheme  of 
social  reform  which  would  try  to  get  at  this  inequality  of  prices  by 
merely  changing  the  social  machinery  would  be  worth  a  moment’s 
consideration.  It  would  not  have  advanced  beyond  the  policy  of 
treating  symptoms  rather  than  causes. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


632 

It  happens,  under  the  modern  system  of  production,  with  its  elabo¬ 
rate  division  of  labor,  that  many  different,  non-interchangeable  kinds 
of  labor  have  to  be  combined  in  the  production  of  a  given  article. 
These  different  kinds  of  labor  are  to  be  treated  as  different  factors, 
and  bear  precisely  the  same  relation  to  one  another  as  fertility  and 
moisture  in  the  soil.  All  that  was  said  of  moisture  and  fertilizer  in 
the  growing  of  crops,  or  of  charcoal  and  saltpetre  in  the  making  of 
gunpowder,  may  be  repeated  of  two  different  kinds  of  labor  power,  or 
talent,  in  the  manufacture  of  any  commodity.  Where  two  or  more 
non-interchangeable  kinds  of  labor  power,  or  human  talent,  have  to  be 
combined  in  production,  and  one  is  found  in  greater  abundance  than 
will  combine  satisfactorily  with  the  limited  supply  of  another,  you 
have  precisely  the  same  condition  in  the  labor  market  that  you  have  in 
the  fertilizer  market  where  there  is  more  fertilizer  than  will  combine 
with  the  limited  supply  of  soil  moisture,  or  in  the  charcoal  market  if 
there  is  more  than  will  combine  with  the  limited  supply  of  saltpetre. 
In  other  words,  wherever  you  have  a  bad  distribution  of  human  talent, 
more  of  one  kind  than  will  combine  satisfactorily  with  the  existing 
supply  of  another  kind  which  has  to  be  combined  with  it  in  production, 
there  you  will  have  a  bad  distribution  of  the  products  of  industry. 
Moreover,  this  bad  distribution  of  products  cannot  be  attributed  to 
social  injustice  if  by  social  justice  is  meant  merely  that  each  one  shall 
get  exactly  what  he  produces.  For,  if  one  kind  of  labor  power  exists 
in  greater  abundance  than  will  combine  satisfactorily  with  the  existing 
supply  of  some  other  factor,  you  have  a  situation  in  which  any  unit 
of  that  kind  of  labor  can  be  eliminated  with  very  little  loss  to  produc¬ 
tion,  and  the  addition  of  a  new  unit  would  bring  very  little  gain  to 
production ;  all  of  which  means  that,  unit  by  unit,  this  kind  of  labor 
would  have  a  very  low  productivity.  Yet  it  might  be  very  good  labor, 
and  under  other  conditions  it  might  have  a  very  high  degree  of  pro¬ 
ductivity.  That  is  to  say,  bring  to  this  labor  a  larger  supply  of  those 
factors  which  have  to  be  combined  with  it,  but  which  we  have  assumed 
to  be  scarce,  and  every  unit  of  this  kind  of  labor  will  then  be  needed 
to  combine  with  those  new  factors.  Then  the  loss  of  a  unit  of  this 
kind  of  labor  would  mean  a  larger  loss  to  production,  and  the  addition 
of  a  new  unit  would  mean  a  larger  gain  to  production,  all  of  which 
means  that,  unit  by  unit,  this  kind  of  labor  has  literally  become  more 
productive,  not  through  any  change  in  itself,  but  through  the  increase 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


633 


of  the  other  factors  which  have  to  be  combined  with  it.  This  proposi¬ 
tion  is  likely  to  be  an  occasion  of  stumbling  to  some,  but  it  need  not 
be  to  any  one  who  can  see  that,  in  one  of  the  foregoing  illustrations, 
the  chemical  elements  of  fertility  in  the  soil  in  a  dry  country  may  be 
made  literally  more  productive  by  increasing  the  supply  of  another 
factor,  viz.,  moisture. 

It  is  a  sad  commentary  upon  the  intelligence  of  our  social  reformers 
that  so  many  of  them  fail  to  see  the  significance  of  this  elementary 
economic  principle,  and  continue  to  apply  their  remedies  to  symptoms 
rather  than  to  attack  the  causes  of  the  bad  distribution  of  wealth. 
Because  vocational  guidance  and  vocational  education  go  at  the  under¬ 
lying  cause,  instead  of  attacking  symptoms,  they  must  appeal  to  every 
real  progressive.  By  training  the  rising  generation  out  of  those  occu¬ 
pations  where  labor  power  is  over-abundant  and  into  those  where  it 
is  under-abundant,  you  not  only  increase  the  productivity  of  every 
individual  so  trained,  and  therefore  of  society  at  large,  which  is  very 
important ;  but  you  accomplish  the  still  more  important  result  of 
tending  to  equalize  incomes  in  different  occupations.  If  the  talent 
commonly  understood  to  be  possessed  by  the  employing  classes,  so- 
called,  can  be  made  as  abundant  relatively  to  the  demand  for  it  as 
that  of  the  so-called  laboring  classes,  there  will  be  no  great  difference 
in  the  incomes  of  the  two  classes. 

There  is  danger,  however,  that  this  program  may  fail  if  it  is  carried 
out  in  a  half-hearted  and  incomplete  manner.  If  it  aims  merely  at 
redistributing  the  supply  of  human  talent  among  the  laboring  classes, 
that  is,  at  making  a  more  efficient  body  of  employees,  -increasing  the 
supply  of  skilled  labor,  it  will  result  only  in  reducing  the  wages  of 
skilled  labor  and  enabling  the  employing  classes  to  get  skilled  help  at 
a  lower  cost  than  now,  and  thus  increase  their  profits.  What  is  par¬ 
ticularly  needed  is  a  more  numerous  and  more  skilled  class  of  em¬ 
ployers.  Of  all  classes  of  human  talent,  the  scarcest,  relatively  to  the 
need  for  it,  is  genuine  entrepreneur  ability.  So  scarce  is  this  ability 
that  it  is  like  water  in  a  thirsty  land,  where  fertility  and  every  other 
factor  of  production  are  abundant,  only  needing  moisture  to  make 
them  productive.  We  have  enormous  quantities  of  unskilled  labor, 
but  few  men  who  know  how  to  use  them.  This  knowledge — the 
■'knowing  how” — is  the  scarce  factor.  If  we  can  increase  the  supply 
of  this  rare  kind  of  knowledge,  then  these  vast  stores  of  unskilled 


634 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


labor,  now  with  a  low  degree  of  productivity,  will  be  made  more  pro¬ 
ductive.  More  men  who  know  how, — know  what  to  do, — will  fructify 
this  mass.  Ability  to  discern  genuine  opportunities  for  new  enterprise, 
which  is  investing  ability,  and  probably  the  rarest  of  all ;  ability  to 
coordinate  and  organize  the  factors  of  production,  which  is  managing 
ability  in  the  higher  sense,  and  which  is,  next  to  investing  ability,  the 
scarcest  of  them  all ;  and  ability  to  direct  men  in  the  actual  work  of 
production,  which  is  administrative  ability,  and  is  also  somewhat 
scarce,  need  especially  to  be  increased.  The  scarcity  of  these  kinds 
of  talent  reduces  the  effective  demand  for  the  lower  grades  of  labor, 
just  as  the  scarcity  of  water  reduces  the  demand  for  fertilizer  in  the 
foregoing  illustration.  Conversely,  the  enormous  supplies  of  labor, 
needing  to  be  directed,  create  an  enormous  demand  for  these  scarce 
forms  of  talent,  just  as  the  supply  of  fertility  in  the  soil  needing  to  be 
irrigated,  creates  a  demand  for  water,  in  the  foregoing  illustration. 
An  abundance  of  entrepreneur  talent  and  a  scarcity  of  labor  will  bring 
down  the  price  of  the  one  and  bring  up  the  price  of  the  other  as 
surely  as  an  abundant  supply  of  water  on  a  western  plain^  and  a 
scarcity  of  fertilizer  would  bring  down  the  price  of  the  one  and  bring 
up  the  price  of  the  other.  In  this  direction,  and  in  this  direction 
alone,  must  we  look  for  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  bad  distribu¬ 
tion  of  wealth. 

From  the  standpoint  of  a  country  which  receives  considerable  num¬ 
bers  of  laborers  by  immigration,  the  problem  of  the  distribution  of 
wealth  is  materially  affected  thereby.  Migrations  of  laborers  are 
brought  about  by  a  bad  territorial  distribution  of  the  labor  supply. 
When  there  is  an  excess  in  one  region  and  a  dearth,  or  a  milder  excess, 
in  another  region,  the  obvious  remedy  is  a  territorial  redistribution. 
This  tends  toward  equality  as  between  different  regions.  But  there 
may  also  be  a  bad  occupational  distribution,  with  an  excess  in  one 
occupation,  and  a  dearth,  or  milder  excess,  in  another.  The  remedy 
is  equally  obvious.  Instead  of  a  migration  from  one  region  to  another, 
there  needs  to  be  a  "migration”  from  one  occupation  to  another. 
This,  however,  can  usually  take  place  only  as  a  result  of  vocational 
training,  which  should  have  one  and  only  one  purpose,  to  train  men 
for  those  occupations  where  men  are  scarcest  and  most  highly  paid. 

I  his  will,  at  the  same  time,  relieve  those  where  men  are  abundant  and 
poorly  paid. 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


635 


One  of  those  half  truths  which  are  more  dangerous  than  falsehoods 
is  the  statement,  which  so  frequently  emanates  from  the  sapient  minds 
of  editors  and  magazine  scientists,  that  since  laborers  are  themselves 
consumers  as  well  as  producers,  there  must  of  necessity  always  be 
work  enough.  It  is  scarcely  conceivable  that  one  of  those  who  repeat 
this  statement  would  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  there  must  necessarily 
be  work  enough  for  each  laborer  at  the  exact  spot  where  he  happens 
to  stand.  If  one  once  admits  that  it  may  be  necessary  for  the  laborer 
to  move  from  the  spot  where  he  happens  to  be  standing,  the  way  is 
then  open  for  a  rational  solution  of  the  problem.  Why  should  it  be 
necessary  for  him  to  move  ?  If  he  is  an  agricultural  laborer,  and  he  is 
standing  on  a  crowded  street  corner,  he  must  at  least  go  where  there 
is  land  to  cultivate.  This  is  an  admission  that  something  else  besides 
labor  is  necessary.  There  must  be  land.  But  if  he  is  in  the  country 
where  there  is  land,  but  every  farm  is  equipped  with  as  many  laborers 
as  can  be  satisfactorily  employed,  he  may  have  to  go  farther,  until  he 
finds  a  place  where  land  is  more  abundant,  or  labor  scarcer,  which 
means  the  same  thing.  That  is  why  agricultural  laborers  migrate. 

But  he  might  be  at  a  spot  where  there  is  an  abundance  of  land,  but 
no  tools  with  which  to  work.  Unless  he  is  prepared  to  make  his  own 
tools  he  may  have  to  migrate  again,  until  he  finds  a  place  where  there 
is  such  a  combination  of  land  and  tools  as  will  furnish  him  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  he  is  seeking.  Or  again,  there  may  be  no  farmer  with  sufficient 
business  ability  to  see  how  to  use  any  more  men  to  advantage ;  again 
he  will  have  to  migrate  until  he  finds  one  who  can,  unless  he  can  be¬ 
come  his  own  manager.  It  is  also  conceivable  that  there  might  be  so 
many  farm  laborers  in  his  community,  and  so  few  factory  laborers, 
miners,  etc.,  to  produce  things  to  exchange  for  farm  products,  or  so 
few  carriers  to  transport  them,  as  to  destroy  the  opportunity  for 
enlarged  farm  production.  In  that  case  our  farm  laborer,  or  others 
like  himself,  may  find  it  necessary  to  change  their  occupation.  In 
short,  to  say  that  there  must  be  work  for  everybody  means  nothing 
unless  you  qualify  it  by  saying  that  there  is  opportunity  for  any  con¬ 
ceivable  number  of  men  provided  they  can  be  properly  distributed, 
both  territorially  and  occupationally.  If  they  are  not  so  distributed, 
it  is  quite  possible  that  there  might  be  more  on  a  certain  spot  than  can 
possibly  be  employed  on  that  spot,  and  more  in  a  given  occupation 
than  can  possibly  be  employed  in  that  occupation. 


636 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


This  part  of  our  discussion  may  be  summarized  as  follows: 

i.1  One  large  factor  in  the  bad  distribution  of  wealth  is  the  bad 
distribution  of  men  among  the  different  occupations,  too  many  crowd¬ 
ing  into  the  unskilled  and  too  few  going  into  the  skilled  and  the 
learned  occupations. 

2 .  Children  born  of  parents  who  have  not  been  able  to  rise  out  of 
the  poorly  paid  occupations  are  themselves  more  likely,  on  the  aver¬ 
age,  to  remain  in  these  occupations  than  are  the  children  of  parents 
who  have  risen  into  the  more  highly  skilled  and  better  paid  occupations 
to  sink  back  into  the  poorly  paid  occupations. 

3.  Therefore,  it  would  help  matters  if  the  birth  rate  could  be  re¬ 
duced  among  those  who  remain  in  the  overcrowded,  underpaid,  and 
unskilled  occupations,  and  increased  among  those  who  succeed  in  ris¬ 
ing  into  the  more  highly  paid  occupations. 

So  long  as  immigrants  enter  a  country  in  considerable  numbers, 
and  enter  the  ranks,  particularly  the  lower  ranks,  of  labor2  in  larger 
proportions,  and  the  ranks  of  the  business  and  professional  classes  in 
smaller  proportions  than  the  native  born,  continuous  immigration  will 
produce  the  following  results: 

1.  As  to  Distribution.  It  will  keep  competition  more  intense  among 
laborers,  particularly  in  the  lower  ranks,  and  less  intense  among  busi¬ 
ness  and  professional  men,  than  it  would  otherwise  be.  This  will  tend 
to  increase  the  income  of  the  employing  classes,  and  to  depress  wages, 
particularly  the  wages  of  the  lower  grades  of  labor. 

2.  As  to  Production.  It  will  give  a  relatively  low  marginal  pro¬ 
ductivity  to  a  typical  immigrant,  particularly  in  the  lower  grades  of 
labor,  and  make  him  a  relatively  unimportant  factor  in  the  production 
of  wealth, — a  few  more  or  less  will  make  relatively  little  difference  in 
the  total  production  of  national  wealth.3 

1From  a  paper  on  "The  Occupational  Distribution  of  the  Labor  Supply,”  read 
by  the  author  before  the  American  Economic  Association,  in  Washington,  D.  C., 
1910. 

2  Compare  Commons,  Races  and  Immigrants  in  America.  Table  between  pages 
108  and  109. 

3  A  disproportionately  large  supply  of  one  grade  of  labor  as  compared  with  the 
supply  of  other  grades  of  labor  with  which  it  has  to  be  combined  in  production, 
tends  to  make  each  laborer  in  that  grade  an  unimportant  factor  in  production,  so 
that  one  laborer  more  in  that  grade  adds  very  little  to,  and  one  laborer  less  sub¬ 
tracts  very  little  from  the  total  quantity  which  can  be  produced.  By  way  of  illus¬ 
tration,  the  reader  is  again  referred  to  the  gunpowder  illustration. 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


637 


3.  As  to  Organization  of  Industry.  Because  of  their  low  individual 
productivity,  they  can  only  be  economically  employed  at  low  wages 
and  in  large  gangs.1 

4.  As  to  Agriculture.  If  immigrants  go  in  large  numbers  into  agri¬ 
culture,  it  will  lead  to  one  or  the  other  of  the  following  results,  in  all 
probability  the  latter : 

a.  The  continuous  morcellement  or  subdivision  of  farms,  resulting 
in  an  inefficient  and  wasteful  application  of  labor,  and  smaller  crops 
per  man,  though  probably  larger  crops  per  acre ;  or 

b .  The  development  of  a  class  of  landed  proprietors  on  the  one 
hand,  and  a  landless  agricultural  proletariat  on  the  other. 

If  there  are  large  numbers  of  immigrants  belonging  to  races  or 
nationalities  which  do  not  fuse  with  the  rest  of  the  population  by  free 
intermarriage,  or  with  which  the  rest  of  the  population  will  not  inter¬ 
marry  freely,  there  will  result  one  of  the  three  following  conditions : 

1.  Geographical  separation  of  races;  or 

2.  Social  separation  of  races,  i.e.,  in  the  formation  of  classes  or 
castes,  one  race  or  the  other  becoming  subordinate ;  or 

3.  Continual  race  antagonism,  frequently  breaking  out  into  race  war. 

Of  equal  importance  with  the  increase  in  the  demand  for  the  labor 

which  is  now  poorly  paid  is  the  decrease  in  the  supply.  For  a  country 
such  as  the  United  States  of  America,  which  receives  such  large  sup¬ 
plies  of  unskilled  labor  by  immigration,  the  first  and  most  obvious 
remedy  is  a  restriction  of  immigration.  This  is  in  no  way  to  be  asso¬ 
ciated  with  race  prejudice.  It  is  wholly  a  question  of  the  occupational 
redistribution  of  our  labor  supply. 

Wherever  any  particular  class  of  labor  is,  for  a  considerable  period, 
scarce  and  hard  to  find,  there  the  conditions  of  labor  are  good  for  that 
class  and  it  needs  no  social  legislation  for  its  protection ;  but  wherever 
any  particular  class  of  labor  is  abundant  and  easy  to  find,  there  the 
conditions  of  that  class  of  labor  are  bad  except  where  mitigated  by  the 

1Just  as  scarce  labor  and  abundant  land  lead  inevitably  to  extensive  farming 
where  a  small  quantity  of  the  scarce  factor,  labor,  is  combined  with  a  large  quan¬ 
tity  of  the  abundant  factor,  land,  so  a  relatively  small  supply  of  managing  ability 
and  a  relatively  large  supply  of  the  kind  of  labor  which  must  be  superintended, 
leads  inevitably  to  a  combination  of  a  small  quantity  of  the  scarce  form  with  a 
large  quantity  of  the  abundant  form,  i.e.,  one  superintendent,  foreman,  or  boss, 
over  a  large  gang.  Again,  just  as  in  the  former  case  there  will  be  high  wages  and 
low  rent,  so  in  the  latter  case  there  will  be  high  salaries  and  low  wages. 


638 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


kindliness  of  individual  employers,  or  by  various  kinds  of  social  legis¬ 
lation,  most  of  which  are  ineffective. 

When  any  employer  can  hang  out  a  shingle  saying  "men  wanted” 
and  have  ten  men  apply  for  every  job,  so  that  he  can  merely  take  his 
pick  and  send  the  rest  away,  conditions  are  very  easy  for  employers, 
but  correspondingly  hard  for  laborers.  When  any  laborer  can  hang 
out  a  sign  reading  "job  wanted”  and  have  ten  employers  apply  for  his 
help,  so  that  he  can  take  his  pick  and  send  the  rest  away  conditions 
will  be  as  easy  for  laborers  as  they  were  under  the  first  named  condi¬ 
tions  for  employers,  and  as  hard  for  employers  as  they  were  for  un¬ 
skilled  laborers.  So  long  as  the  former  conditions  prevail,  the  term 
-  "wage  slavery,”  while  inaccurate,  will  continue  to  convey  a  real  mean¬ 
ing  to  the  laboring  man.  Where  the  latter  conditions  prevail  no  one 
can  use  that  term  with  a  straight  face.  So  long  as  the  former  condi¬ 
tions  prevail,  there  will  be  a  widespread  feeling,  and  this  feeling  will 
be  justified,  that  the  laborer  is  in  a  helpless  situation,  so  far  as  eco¬ 
nomic  laws  are  concerned,  and  that  his  only  hope  is  in  numbers  and 
brute  strength.  When  this  feeling  is  widespread,  laboring  men  will  be 
excused,  if  not  justified,  in  the  use  of  violence.  There  will  be  no 
effective  public  opinion  to  support  the  state  in  its  efforts  to  preserve 
law  and  order.  When  there  is  some  approach  to  the  latter  conditions 
there  will  be  an  easy  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  laborers  are  not 
in  a  helpless  condition,  that  they  do  not  need  to  rely  on  numbers  and 
brute  strength,  and  public  opinion  will  then  support  the  state  effec¬ 
tively  and  promptly  in  its  maintenance  of  law  and  order. 

While  it  may  not  be  possible  or  desirable  to  reach  such  extreme 
scarcity  of  laborers  and  abundance  of  employers  as  described  under 
the  last  named  conditions,  it  is  both  possible  and  desirable  to  make 
some  progress  toward  that  condition  and  away  from  the  first  named 
condition.  We  can  train  a  few  more  men  to  become  employers, 
creators  of  new  business  enterprises,  and  thus  increase  somewhat  the 
number  of  jobs  for  laboring  men.  This  will  do  our  present  laboring 
population  little  good  if  the  new  jobs  are  promptly  filled  by  immi¬ 
grants.  There  must  also  be  a  restriction  of  immigration. 

If  immigrants  entered  the  class  of  employers  in  the  same  proportion 
as  do  the  native  born,  they  would  not  materially  disturb  the  balance. 
But  they  enter  the  laboring  class  almost  exclusively,  and  the  class  of 
unskilled  laborers  predominantly.  If  they  were  excluded  (which  is 


PREVENTION  OF  POVERTY 


639 


not  here  proposed)  our  free  education  and  liberal  institutions  would 
encourage  them  to  rise  rapidly  out  of  the  class  of  unskilled  laborers, 
into  the  scarcer  and  better  paid  occupations.  This  would  soon  make 
unskilled  labor,  and  ultimately  all  poorly  paid  labor,  so  scarce  and 
hard  to  find  as  to  put  laborers  in  a  strong  position  economically  and 
make  it  unnecessary  for  them  to  resort  to  numbers  and  brute  strength. 
Moreover,  employers  would  have  to  offer  satisfactory  inducements  to 
persuade  laborers  to  work  for  them,  and  very  little  social  legislation 
for  the  alleged  protection  of  the  laborers  would  then  be  necessary. 

Better  than  exclusion  would  be  a  plan  of  restriction  which  would 
select  those  who  were  capable  of  entering  the  well  paid  occupations 
and  exclude  those  who  would  crowd  into  occupations  where  wages  are 
already  too  low.  The  best  way  to  do  this  would  be  to  reverse  our 
present  contract  labor  law,  and  admit  only  such  immigrants  as  could 
present  contracts,  signed  by  responsible  employers,  guaranteeing  em¬ 
ployment  at  two  dollars  a  day  for  at  least  a  year.  (It  is  not  necessary 
that  the  wage  should  be  exactly  two  dollars.  That  is  about  the  mini¬ 
mum  on  which  a  family  can  be  supported  in  comfort  and  decency  in 
any  large  city  in  this  country.)  This  would  admit  all  the  laborers 
who  were  really  needed.  No  employer  can  say,  with  a  straight  face, 
that  he  needs  a  man  so  very  badly  unless  he  is  willing  to  pay  him  as 
much  as  two  dollars  a  day.  At  the  same  time  it  would  prevent  the 
coming  of  hordes  of  cheap  laborers  whose  influence  is  to  depress  the 
wages  of  unskilled  labor.  It  would  make  the  lower  grades  of  labor 
so  scarce  as  to  eventually  make  two  dollars  a  day  the  actual  minimum 
wage  without  the  difficulty  of  enforcing  a  minimum  wage  law. 

If  this  reversal  of  the  contract  labor  law  is  considered  politically 
impossible,  the  literacy  test  comes  as  near'an  ideal  as  anything  that 
has  been  proposed.  This  is  said  with  a  full  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  literacy  is  not  an  invariable  test  of  character.  Neither  is  it  an 
invariable  test  of  fitness  for  the  civil  service,  or  for  entrance  to  college. 
It  is  believed,  however,  that  if  all  literate  immigrants  are  arranged  in 
one  group,  and  all  illiterates  in  another,  the  average  of  the  literates 
would  be  better  than  that  of  the  illiterates.  Excluding  illiterates  would 
therefore  improve  the  average  quality  of  our  immigrants. 

Again,  the  illiterates  go  predominantly  into  the  unskilled  trades 
where  wages  are  low.  The  exclusion  of  illiterates  would  therefore  tend 
to  make  unskilled  labor  scarce,  while  the  admission  of  literates  would 


640 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


permit  us  to  get  all  the  skilled  labor  we  need,  that  is,  to  increase  our 
supply  of  any  kind  of  labor  which  can  in  any  sense  be  said  to  be  scarce. 

It  will  be  observed  that  nothing  has  been  said  in  the  above  state¬ 
ment,  about  race,  religion,  eugenics,  or  anything  of  the  kind.  The 
reasons  for  favoring  the  restriction  of  immigration  are  purely  eco¬ 
nomic.  They  relate  wholly  to  the  problem  of  improving  the  conditions 
of  labor.  The  time  is  probably  coming  when  any  one’s  protestations 
of  interest  in  the  cause  of  labor  in  America,  or  of  social  welfare,  will 
be  laughed  out  of  court  unless  he  is  willing  to  do  the  one  thing  which 
will  really  help  labor,  that  is,  make  it  scarce  and  hard  to  find,  or  jobs 
abundant  and  easy  to  find,  which  means  the  same  thing. 

The  increase  in  the  prosperity  of  the  small  farmer,  who  does  most 
of  his  own  work  on  his  own  farm,  is  quite  as  important  as  that  of  the 
laborer.  His  salvation  depends  upon  his  ability  to  compete  with  the 
large  farmer  or  the  farming  corporation.  Two  things  threaten  to  place* 
him  under  a  handicap  and  to  give  the  large  farmer  an  advantage  over 
him  in  competition.  If  these  two  things  are  allowed  to  operate,  the 
big  farmer  will  beat  him  in  competition  and  force  him  down  to  a  lower 
standard  of  living  and  possibly  to  extinction. 

One  thing  which  would  tend  in  that  direction  is  a  large  supply  of 
cheap  labor.  The  small  farmer  now  has  an  advantage  in  America  be¬ 
cause  of  the  difficulty  which  the  big  farmer  has  in  getting  help.  So 
great  is  this  difficulty  that  many  of  the  bonanza  farmers  are  giving  up 
the  fight  and  selling  out  to  small  farmers.  That  is,  the  big  farms,  the 
farms  that  can  only  be  cultivated  by  gangs  of  hired  laborers,  are 
being  divided  up.  Give  the  owners  of  these  farms  an  abundant  supply 
of  cheap  labor, — make  it  easy  for  them  to  solve  the  problem  of  efficient 
help, — and  they  will  begin  again  to  compete  successfully  with  the 
small  farmer  who,  because  he  does  his  own  work,  has  no  labor  prob¬ 
lem.  If  we  can  keep  conditions  such  that  the  capitalistic  farmer  has 
great  difficulty  in  getting  help,  the  small  farmer  will  continue  to  beat 
him  in  competition,  and  the  bonanza  farm  will  continue  to  give  way  to 
the  one-family  farm. 

By  pursuing  a  consistent  policy  of  reducing  the  supply  of  unskilled 
labor,  of  increasing  the  supply  of  the  scarcer  kinds  of  employing  talent, 
as  well  as  the  supplies  of  land  and  capital,  we  can,  by  progressive 
stages,  approach  as  near  to  equality  of  incomes  as*  between  occupa¬ 
tions  as  we  care  to. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


PRINCIPLES  OF  PUBLIC  RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN 

ENGLAND 

85.  Sketch  of  the  Evolution  of  the  Poor  Law1 

The  Poor  Law  .  .  .  takes  its  rise  from  the  Act  of  Queen  Eliza¬ 
beth’s  reign  whereby  parishes  were  to  make  assessments  for  the  sup¬ 
port  of  the  poor  with  the  general  idea  that  the  poor  should  be  put  to 
a  useful  and  remunerative  work.  The  causes  which  produced  this 
Act  were  the  fact  that  at  the  Reformation  the  old  mediaeval  system 
whereby  the  Church,  and  particularly  the  monastic  orders,  were  in  the 
main  responsible  for  the  poor,  was  swept  away,  and  also  the  changes 
produced  at  the  same  time  by  the  first  enclosures  and  the  introduction 
of  sheep-farming,  which  caused  widespread  distress  and  necessitated 
some  new  form  of  social  machinery  to  cope  with  them.  During  the 
eighteenth  century  the  habit  of  giving  pecuniary  relief  to  the  poor  had 
the  effect  of  wholesale  pauperisation  of  the  population,  particularly 
in  the  rural  areas  where  Poor  Law  relief  grew  into  a  regular  supple¬ 
ment  to  wages,  with  the  result  that  not  only  were  wages  reduced  to  a 
very  low  level,  but  practically  none  but  those  in  receipt  of  allowances 
from  the  parish  could  get  work.  It  is  unnecessary  here  to  describe 
the  state  of  affairs  due  to  indiscriminate  out-door  relief,  or  to  the 
effect  of  the  law  of  settlement  on  the  economics  of  the  country  side.  It 
was  ended  by  the  Poor  Law  Commission  of  1834,  and  future  legislation 
and  administration  were  based  on  the  principles  laid  down  therein. 

In  brief  outline  these  principles  were,  that  relief  was  for  the  desti¬ 
tute,  not  for  the  poor ;  that  the  condition  of  the  pauper  must  not  be 
made  more  eligible  than  that  of  the  outside  worker,  and  that  the 
Poor  Law  must  be  deterrent,  that  is  to  say,  that  the  aim  of  its  admin¬ 
istration  must  be  to  prevent  people  obtaining  assistance.  The  prin¬ 
cipal  method  whereby  this  was  to  be  effected  was  by  the  abolition  as 

1From  The  Social  Worker  (pp.  82-87),  by  C.  R.  Attlee,  M.A.  G.  Bell  and 
Sons,  Limited,  London,  1920. 


641 


642 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


far  as  possible  of  all  relief  given  to  people  in  their  own  homes,  and  the 
offer  instead  to  take  them  into  the  workhouse,  which  was  to  be  a  place 
that  would  not  be  willingly  entered  by  anyone.  The  various  cate¬ 
gories  of  persons  under  the  Poor  Law  were  to  be  segregated  into  sep¬ 
arate  Institutions,  and  the  Poor  Law  was  to  be  administered  by  elected 
persons,  while  the  Administrative  Unit  was  extended  from  the  parish 
to  the  Union  of  parishes.  The  immediate  effect  was  a  great  reduction 
in  the  number  of  paupers,  accompanied  by  an  intense  unpopularity  of 
the  new  Poor  Law  among  the  labouring  classes,  which  has  lasted  to 
the  present  time.  It  is  important  to  remember  that  these  principles 
were  adopted  to  deal  with  a  very  definite  state  of  affairs,  that  of  the 
wholesale  pauperisation  of  the  working  classes  and  were  based  on  the 
assumption  that  the  old  Poor  Law  was  the  cause  of  much,  if  not  of 
all,  of  the  prevailing  poverty,  and  that  once  the  system  of  doles  had 
been  abolished  the  normal  man  would  be  able  to  gain  adequate  sub¬ 
sistence  for  himself  and  his  family  through  his  own  exertions;  the 
Poor  Law  was  to  be  only  for  the  destitute,  and  there  was  no  intention 
of  using  the  power  of  the  State  to  help  the  poor  or  to  raise  the 
standard  of  life. 

It  was  also  intended  to  deal,  in  the  main,  with  the  pauperisation 
of  the  able-bodied,  and  Poor  Law  institutions  were  to  be  divided  into 
sections  for  the  able-bodied,  the  aged,  the  sick,  etc.  The  failure  of 
the  Poor  Law  was  due  to  a  number  of  factors,  the  chief  of  which  was 
the  failure  to  realise  that  poverty  and  destitution  were  normal  inci¬ 
dents  of  the  modern  industrial  system,  and  that  in  the  absence  of  any 
possible  way  of  finding  out  whether  a  man  was,  for  instance,  unem¬ 
ployed  through  his  own  fault,  or  through  circumstances  out  of  his  con¬ 
trol,  it  was  impossible  to  enforce  the  workhouse  test.  Further,  despite 
the  proposed  classification  of  paupers,  in  practice  the  general  mixed 
workhouse  continued,  and  it  was  impossible  to  enforce  strict  adminis¬ 
tration  on  the  different  categories  of  persons  thrown  together  under  a 
common  roof.  And  despite  the  principles  of  1834,  outdoor  relief  per¬ 
sisted.  Above  all,  the  Poor  Law  did  nothing  to  prevent  destitution 
arising,  but  only  dealt  with  it  after  it  had  arisen.  It  dealt  only  with 
results  and  not  with  causes;  thus  whether  the  administration  was 
strict  or  lax  there  remained  year  in  and  year  out  a  great  body  of 
persons  who  were  suffering  from  poverty,  although  not  assisted  by  the 
Poor  Law.  It  is  unnecessary  to  labour  this  point  of  the  failure  of  the 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


643 


Poor  Law,  for  it  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  other  agencies  have  had 
to  step  in  and  do  the  work  which  from  its  very  nature  a  destitution 
authority  was  unfitted  to  perform.  Wherever  it  was  attempted  to 
enforce  strict  administration  and  to  deter  applicants  from  coming  to 
the  Poor  Law,  missions,  soup  kitchens,  night  shelters,  and  other  char¬ 
itable  institutions  sprang  up.  Charity,  whether  organised  or  unor¬ 
ganised,  whether  working  in  conjunction  with  the  Poor  Law  or  against 
it,  failed  entirely  to  solve  the  poverty  problem. 

In  course  of  time  there  arose  a  series  of  new  authorities  based  on 
prevention  rather  than  cure,  which  attacked  the  problem  from  a 
different  angle.  Thus  the  medical  side  of  the  Poor  Law  could  not 
extend,  as  its  services  were  confined  to  the  destitute,  but  the  public 
health  authorities  in  town  and  country  originally  formed  for  sanitary 
purposes  have  gradually  extended  into  all  sorts  of  activities  dealing 
with  the  prevention  of  the  origin  and  the  dissemination  of  disease. 
Another  invasion  of  the  medical  side  of  the  Poor  Law  was  brought 
about  by  the  National  Health  Insurance  Act,  and  at  the  present  time 
we  are  well  on  the  road  to  a  unified  public  health  service. 

In  the  same  way  the  education  authorities  have  had  to  extend  their 
functions  from  dealing  with  the  minds  to  dealing  with  the  bodies  of 
their  children,  supplying  school  meals  and  medical  treatment,  and  in 
some  cases  residential  schools.  The  care  of  persons  of  unsound  mind 
was  gradually  transferred,  as  to  the  greater  number  of  such  persons, 
to  the  Asylum  Committees  of  the  County  and  County  Borough 
Authorities,  while  a  realisation  that  the  workhouse  was  no  fit  place  in 
which  the  worn-out  slaves  of  industry  should  finish  their  lives  led  to 
the  passing  of  the  Old  Age  Pensions  Act.  Finally,  the  able-bodied 
man,  who  was  particularly  the  subject  of  the  Poor  Law*  is  now  looked 
after  to  a  great  extent  by  the  Central  Government.  Unemployment  is 
recognised  as  a  disease  of  industrialism ;  the  Unemployed  Workmen’s 
Act  was  entrusted  to  the  local  authorities  other  than  the  destitution 
authorities,  and  later  attempts  at  prevention  of  unemployment  by  the 
establishment  of  employment  exchanges  and  unemployed  insurance 
were  further  examples  of  a  passing  by  of  the  Poor  Law  authorities, 
and  the  creation  of  new  machinery  to  deal  with  the  able-bodied.  Thus, 
throughout  the  country  there  were  rival  authorities  dealing  with  the 
same  groups  of  people,  the  one  in  so  far  as  they  were  destitute,  the 
other  in  accordance  with  their  various  needs.  At  the  present  time,  as 


644 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


is  indicated  in  the  Ministry  of  Health  Act,  it  is  proposed  to  abolish 
the  Poor  Law  as  an  unspecialised  service  dealing  with  the  destitute, 
and  split  up  its  functions  among  the  other  authorities,  thus  adopting 
in  the  main  the  lines  of  reform  laid  down  by  the  minority  of  the  Poor 
Law  Commissioners  of  1909.  Owing  to  its  nature  and  the  principles 
upon  which  it  was  based  it  was  impossible  for  the  Poor  Law  Authority 
to  form  a  nucleus  round  which  might  gather  the  charitable  efforts  of  a 
neighbourhood,  nor  owing  to  its  principles  and  the  fact  that  its  areas 
cut  across  the  other  lines  of  local  administration,  could  it  be  linked  up 
with  new  authorities.  It  could  only  be  the  last  resort  of  the  destitute, 
and  its  fundamental  principle  of  deterrence  prevented  it  from  becom¬ 
ing  part  of  any  movement  for  the  extension  of  the  activities  of  the 
organised  community  to  the  communal  provision  of  services  necessary 
to  its  welfare.  On  the  other  hand  the  growth  in  the  activities  of  local 
bodies  and  the  constant  extension  of  the  work  of  their  various  com¬ 
mittees  into  spheres  of  work  that  were  formerly  considered  the  par¬ 
ticular  preserve  of  charitable  and  voluntary  associations  make  it 
admirably  fitted  to  be  a  centre  for  all  kinds  of  social  work.  This  does 
not  mean  that  there  is  not  room  for  groupings  of  voluntary  workers  in 
such  organisations  as  the  Guilds  of  Help,  but  that  these  associations 
will  more  and  more  take  up  the  attitude  of  assisting  by  personal  serv¬ 
ice  the  operation  of  the  organised  community.  Instead  of  being,  as 
in  the  Charity  Organisation  Society  conception,  an  alternative  service 
to  that  of  the  State  or  Municipality,  worked  on  different  principles, 
and  considered  to  be  more  favourable  to  the  individual,  the  Guild  of 
Help  will  seek  rather  to  assume  partnership  in  the  undertakings  of 
the  local  authority,  supplementing  the  paid  official  with  the  personal 
service  of  the  yolunteer. 

86.  Contrast  of  the  Principles  of  1834  and  of  19071 
The  Departures  from  the  Principles  oj  1834 

The  principles  of  the  1834  ‘Report,  to  which  different  people  will 
assign  different  degrees  of  scope  or  importance,  are  three  in  num¬ 
ber  .  .  .  the  Principle  of  National  Uniformity,  the  Principle  of  Less 
Eligibility,  and  the  "Workhouse  System.” 

1By  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb.  Adapted  from  English  Poor  Law  Policy , 
pp.  257-271.  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  London,  1913. 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


645 


The  principle  oj  national  uniformity.  The  Principle  of  National 
Uniformity — that  is,  of  identity  of  treatment  of  each  class  of  destitute 
persons  from  one  end  of  the  kingdom  to  the  other — for  the  purpose 
of  reducing  the  "perpetual  shifting”  from  parish  to  parish,  of  pre¬ 
venting  discontent,  and  of  bringing  the  parochial  management  effec¬ 
tually  under  central  control,  is,  in  1907,  with  one  notable  exception, 
in  practice  abandoned.  Uniform  national  treatment  is  to-day  obliga¬ 
tory  with  regard  to  one  class  only  of  destitute  persons,  the  wayfarers 
or  vagrants. 

With  regard  to  the  non-able-bodied  classes — the  children,  the  sick, 
and  the  aged — who  now  comprise  four-fifths  of  the  whole  pauperism, 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  precisely  opposite  principle  has 
been  adopted,  that  of  permitting  experimental  variations  by  the  646 
boards  of  guardians.  The  maintenance  of  children  in  a  general  work- 
house,  in  "barrack  schools,”  in  cottage  homes,  in  scattered  homes,  in 
certified  schools  or  institutions,  in  families  within  the  union,  in  families 
outside  the  union,  w7ith  their  relatives  on  a  boarding-out  allowance  or 
with  their  own  parents  on  outdoor  relief — at  a  cost  to  the  rates  vary¬ 
ing  from  is.  up  to  more  than  20s.  per  head  per  week — are  all  policies 
actually  in  operation  in  one  union  or  another,  to  the  knowledge  and 
with  the  permission  of  the  Central  Authority.  The  aged  are  less  open 
to  experimental  variations,  but  even  here  we  find  the  "workhouse 
test,”  the  comfortable  aged  ward,  the  special  "almshouses”  for  the 
well-conducted,  and  the  grant  of  adequate  outdoor  relief  to  every 
"deserving”  person,  all  recommended  to  different  boards  of  guardians, 
simultaneously  or  alternately,  by  order,  letter,  or  inspector’s  advice. 
Only  with  regard  to  the  wayfarer  does  the  Central  Authority  still 
adhere  to  the  policy  of  an  undiscriminating  uniform  refusal  of  outdoor 
relief  to  all  applicants  irrespective  of  merit. 

The  principle  of  less  eligibility.  The  Principle  of  "Less  Eligibility” 
— that  is,  that  the  condition  of  the  pauper  should  be  "less  eligible” 
than  that  of  the  lowest  grade  of  independent  labourer — (though,  as 
we  have  shown,  asserted  explicitly  in  the  1834  Report  only  of  the 
able-bodied)  is  often  regarded  as  the  root  principle  of  the  reforms  of 
1834.  The  Central  Authority  in  1907  applies  this  principle  unre¬ 
servedly  to  one  class  only,  the  wayfarers  or  vagrants.  In  1907  the 
Central  Authority  orders  the  wayfarer,  without  discrimination  of 
character  or  conduct,  to  be  relieved  only  in  a  casual  ward,  under  a 


646 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


regimen  not  only  inferior  to  that  of  the  able-bodied  ward  of  the  work- 
house,  but  also,  in  food  and  amenity  of  accommodation,  distinctly  less 
eligible  than  the  condition  of  the  poorest  independent  labourer.  More¬ 
over,  even  this  "less  eligible”  relief  is  accompanied  by  compulsory 
detention  and  a  task  of  hard  labour  of  monotonous  and  disagreeable 
character. 

With  regard  to  all  other  classes  except  the  able-bodied  men  and 
their  dependents,  the  Central  Authority  has,  de  facto,  abandoned  the 
Principle  of  Less  Eligibility.  It  prescribes  merely  a  policy  of  "ade¬ 
quacy  ”  of  maintenance  according  to  the  actual  requirements  of  each 
case,  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  modern  physiology,  irrespective 
of  whether  the  maintenance  is  at  home  or  in  an  institution.  This,  it 
is  clear,  is  much  above  the  standard  attained  by  the  lowest  grade  of 
independent  labourer.  When  this  maintenance  is  given  at  home  (as 
it  is  with  the  explicit  permission  of  the  Central  Authority  in  the 
majority  of  cases)  it  is  not  accompanied  by  any  other  drawback  than 
the  "stigma  of  pauperism.”  In  respect  of  the  extensive  classes  of  the 
sick  and  the  children,  the  Central  Authority  may  even  be  said  to  have 
avowedly  adopted  a  diametrically  opposite  policy  to  that  of  "less 
eligibility,”  namely,  the  principle  of  substituting  for  relief  the  best 
possible  "treatment,”  with  the  intention  of  making  these  paupers 
actually  more  fit  than  the  lowest  grade  of  independent  labourer.  And, 
short  of  entire  removal  out  of  the  Poor  Law  (as  has  actually  been 
done  with  the  able-bodied  who  are  "unemployed,”  the  children  in 
industrial  schools,  and  the  patients  of  the  Public  Health  Department), 
everything  possible  has  been  done  to  remove  the  "stigma  of  pauper¬ 
ism”  from  the  children  in  Poor  Law  institutions  and  from  the  recipi¬ 
ents  of  medical  relief. 

The  workhouse  system.  The  principle  commonly  known  as  "the 
Workhouse  System” — the  complete  substitution  of  "indoor”  for 
"outdoor”  relief — was,  as  we  have  shown,  no  part  of  the  recommenda¬ 
tions  of  the  1834  Report  for  any  but  the  able-bodied.  It  was,  how¬ 
ever,  adopted  by  the  strictest  of  the  reformers  of  1834-1847,  and 
again  by  those  of  1871-1885,  as  the  only  effective  method  of  applying 
the  Principle  of  Less  Eligibility  and  of  reducing  pauperism.  The  work- 
house,  on  this  principle,  was  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  place  of  long- 
continued  residence,  still  less  as  an  institution  for  beneficial  treatment, 
but  primarily  (if  not  exclusively)  as  a  "test  of  destitution,”  that  is,  as 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


647 


a  means  of  affording  the  actual  necessities  of  existence  under  condi¬ 
tions  so  deterrent  that  the  pauper  would  rather  prefer  to  maintain 
himself  independently  than  accept  the  relief  so  offered.  This  is  still 
the  policy  of  the  Central  Authority,  but  only  for  one  class  of  paupers, 
the  wayfarers  or  vagrants.  As  we  have  seen,  there  are,  in  1907,  alter¬ 
native  methods  of  relief  for  the  other  classes,  preferred  by  the  Central 
Authority.  In  the  case  of  the  aged,  the  Central  Authority  explicitly 
lays  it  down  that  the  "deserving”  applicants  ought  not  even  to  be 
urged  to  enter  the  workhouse,  and  ought  to  be  given  outdoor  relief 
adequate  for  their  maintenance  in  their  own  homes.  In  the  case  of 
the  able-bodied,  the  "respectable”  applicant  is  to  be  referred  to  the 
distress  committee,  outside  the  Poor  Law  altogether  ;  whilst  in  periods 
of  unemployment  the  Central  Authority  permits  the  outdoor  relief  of 
the  less  respectable  destitute  men  against  a  labour  test.  With  regard 
to  the  sick  and  children,  the  very  idea  of  a  deterrent  workhouse  has 
disappeared,  and  the  policy  is  to  afford  them  "treatment”  (including 
maintenance  wherever  required),  either  in  their  own  homes,  or  in 
other  people’s  homes,  or  in  institutions,  in  the  manner,  and  to  the 
degree,  calculated  to  promote  their  utmost  efficiency. 

New  Principles  Unknown  in  1834 

In  the  policy  of  the  Central  Authority,  as  we  find  it  in  1907  in  the 
statutes,  orders,  and  circulars  in  force,  there  are  discoverable  three 
separate  principles,  which  were  neither  advocated  nor  condemned  in 
the  1834  Report,  because  they  were  either  unknown,  or  not  con¬ 
sidered  relevant  to  the  relief  of  the  destitute.  These  are  the  Principle 
of  Curative  Treatment,  the  Principle  of  Universal  Provision,  and  the 
Principle  of  Compulsion. 

The  principle  oj  curative  treatment.  The  Principle  of  Curative 
Treatment — that  is,  of  bringing  about  in  the  applicant  actual  physical 
or  mental  improvement,  so  as  to  render  him  positively  more  fit  than 
if  he  had  abstained  from  applying  for  relief — may  be  considered  the 
direct  opposite  of  the  Principle  of  Less  Eligibility.  It  might,  indeed, 
be  termed  the  Principle  of  Greater  Eligibility.  This  principle  has  been 
gradually  evolved  by  the  Central  Authority  in  the  course  of  the  last 
fifty  or  sixty  years ;  but  it  has  characterised  in  particular  the  adminis¬ 
tration  of  the  Local  Government  Board  ever  since  its  establishment 


648 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


in  1871.  We  see  it  most  thoroughly  applied  to  the  sick  and  the  chil¬ 
dren  ;  though  not  yet  to  all  sections  even  of  these  classes. 

In  all  the  development  from  the  earliest  " district  school”  to  the 
most  up-to-date  "  cottage  home,”  the  whole  policy  of  the  Central 
Authority  has  been  to  provide  the  most  efficient  education  for  the 
child,  so  that  it  shall  be  positively  more  able  to  cope  with  the  battle  of 
life  and  less  likely  to  fall  again  into  the  ranks  of  pauperism  than  the 
child  of  the  lowest  grade  of  independent  labourer.  In  the  Poor  Law 
institutions  for  children  sanctioned  in  recent  years,  the  Principle  of 
Greater  Eligibility  has  been  carried  so  far  as  to  result  in  the  provision, 
for  the  pauper  child,  of  physical  training,  mental  education,  and  pro¬ 
longed  supervisory  care,  extending  over  more  years  of  life,  and  costing 
more  per  head  per  annum,  than  the  corresponding  provision  usually 
made  for  children  even  of  the  lower  middle  class.  But  though  the 
Principle  of  Curative  Treatment  has  been  carried  to  a  high  pitch  in 
respect  of  some  sections  of  the  child  pauper  population,  it  has  been 
scarcely  at  all  applied  to  other  sections.  It  is,  indeed,  not  too  much 
to  say  that,  with  regard  to  the  children  on  outdoor  relief,  the  contrary 
Principle  of  Less  Eligibility  is  still  the  governing  policy.  An  investi¬ 
gation  into  their  condition  might  show  that  a  large  proportion  of  them, 
upon  the  relief  afforded,  are  more  likely  to  fall  into  disease,  vice,  or 
pauperism  than  the  average  child  of  the  lowest  grade  of  independent 
labourer.  For  these  children  the  policy  of  the  Central  Authority  does 
not  include  either  supervision  or  systematic  medical  inspection,  either 
the  protection  of  the  child’s  leisure  from  industrial  work  or  even  any 
minimum  provision  for  its  maintenance,  let  alone  any  selection  of  a 
suitable  skilled  occupation  for  it  or  any  subsidised  apprenticeship. 
All  that  the  Central  Authority  does  for  these  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  pauper  children  is  to  ask  that  they  should  be  vaccinated  and 
should  be  in  regular  attendance  at  a  public  elementary  school — 
advantages  which  they  share  with  the  non-pauper  children. 

We  do  not  find  that  the  Principle  of  Curative  Treatment  has  been 
deliberately  applied  to  the  other  classes  of  paupers.  To  the  aged, 
curative  treatment  is,  indeed,  scarcely  applicable,  but  it  is  interesting 
to  trace,  in  the  policy  of  expressly  directing  the  grant  of  adequate 
outdoor  relief  to  the  deserving  aged,  combined  with  the  statutory 
requirement  that  a  friendly  society  allowance  is  not  to  be  taken  into 
account  in  such  grant,  a  sort  of  Principle  of  Greater  Eligibility.  With 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


649 


regard  to  the  able-bodied,  there  is  a  certain  premonition  of  the  Prin¬ 
ciple  of  Curative  Treatment  in  the  farm  colony.  Indeed,  there  is  only 
one  class  of  paupers  to  which  the  Central  Authority  has  rigidly  refused 
to  apply  this  new  principle.  From  the  casual  ward  every  trace  of 
curative  treatment  has  been  eliminated. 

The  principle  of  universal  provision.  But  what  is  most  strikingly 
new  since  1834  in  the  policy  of  the  Central  Authority  is  the  Principle 
of  Universal  Provision,  that  is,  the  provision  by  the  State  of  particular 
services  for  all  who  will  accept  them,  irrespective  of  " destitution”  or 
inability  to  provide  the  services  independently.  We  see  this  principle 
in  most  municipal  action,  but  it  impinges  on  the  work  of  the  Poor  Law 
authorities  most  directly  in  such  services  as  vaccination,  sanitation, 
and  education.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  Poor  Law  critic,  this 
principle  avoids  the  characteristic  Poor  Law  dilemma,  and  escapes 
alike  the  horn  of  making  the  condition  of  the  patient  so  bad  as  to  be 
injurious  to  him,  and  that  of  making  it  better  than  the  lot  of  the  lowest 
grade  of  independent  labourer.  In  providing  vaccination,  sanitation, 
and  education — to  say  nothing  of  parks,  museums,  and  libraries — 
indiscriminately  for  every  one  who  is  ready  to  accept  them,  the  State 
does  nothing  to  diminish  the  inequality  of  condition  between  the 
thrifty  and  the  unthrifty. 

The  principle  of  compulsion.  The  Principle  of  Compulsion — in  the 
sense  of  treating  an  individual  in  the  way  that  the  community 
deems  best,  whether  he  likes  it  or  not — is,  of  course,  as  old  as  the 
lazarhouse,  "  Bedlam,”  and  the  gaol.  Such  compulsory  treatment  may 
have  for  its  object  deterrent  punishment,  reformation,  and  cure,  or 
mere  isolation  from  the  world.  In  all  three  aspects  this  principle  now 
forms  an  integral  part  of  the  policy  of  the  Central  Authority  for  one 
or  other  classes  of  destitute  persons.  The  able-bodied  man  or  woman 
in  the  workhouse  is,  under  certain  circumstances,  to  be  compulsorily 
detained,  for  a  day,  or  even  a  week,  in  order  to  deter  him  or  her  from 
passing  too  frequently  "in  and  out.”  Quite  different  are  the  objects, 
isolation  from  the  public  and  their  own  cure,  with  which  the  infectious 
sick  are  now  compulsorily  detained  in  the  workhouse  infirmary  or 
isolation  hospital.  We  may  note,  too,  that  the  power  to  detain  luna¬ 
tics,  for  isolation,  if  not  for  cure,  has,  since  1834,  been  stretched  so  as 
to  include  many  harmless  persons  of  defective  mind,  who  are  now 
regularly  certified  for  detention. 


650 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  Contrast  between  1834  and  igoy 

It  is  not  without  interest  to  contrast  the  three  "principles  of  1834” 
with  the  three  "principles  of  1907.”  In  both  cases  the  three  prin¬ 
ciples  hang  together,  and  form,  in  fact,  only  aspects  of  a  single 
philosophy  of  life. 

The  "principles  of  1834”  plainly  embody  the  doctrine  of  laisser 
faire.  They  assume  the  non-responsibility  of  the  community  for  any¬ 
thing  beyond  keeping  the  destitute  applicant  alive.  They  rely,  for 
inducing  the  individual  to  support  himself  independently,  on  the  pres¬ 
sure  that  results  from  his  being,  in  the  competitive  struggle,  simply 
"let  alone.”  As  the  only  alternative  to  self-support,  there  is  to  be  pre¬ 
sented  to  him,  uniformly  throughout  the  country,  the  undeviating 
regimen  of  the  workhouse,  with  conditions  "less  eligible”  than  those 
of  the  lowest  grade  of  independent  labourer. 

The  "principles  of  1907”  embody  the  doctrine  of  a  mutual  obliga¬ 
tion  between  the  individual  and  the  community.  The  universal  main¬ 
tenance  of  a  definite  minimum  of  civilised  life — seen  to  be  in  the 
interest  of  the  community  no  less  than  in  that  of  the  individual — 
becomes  the  joint  responsibility  of  an  indissoluble  partnership.  The 
community  recognises  a  duty  in  the  curative  treatment  of  all  who  are 
in  need  of  it ;  a  duty  most  clearly  seen  in  the  medical  treatment  of  the 
sick  and  the  education  of  the  children.  Once  this  corporate  respon¬ 
sibility  is  accepted,  it  becomes  a  question  whether  the  universal  pro¬ 
vision  of  any  necessary  common  service  is  not  the  most  advantageous 
method  of  fulfilling  such  responsibility — a  method  which  has,  at  any 
rate,  the  advantage  of  leaving  unimpaired  the  salutary  inequality  be¬ 
tween  the  thrifty  and  the  unthrifty.  It  is,  moreover,  an  inevitable 
complement  of  this  corporate  responsibility  and  of  the  recognition  of 
the  indissoluble  partnership,  that  new  and  enlarged  obligations,  un¬ 
known  in  a  state  of  laisser  faire,  are  placed  upon  the  individual — 
such  as  the  obligation  of  the  parent  to  keep  his  children  in  health,  and 
to  send  them  to  school  at  the  time  and  in  the  condition  insisted  upon ; 
the  obligation  of  the  young  person  to  be  well-conducted  and  to  learn ; 
the  obligation  of  the  adult  not  to  infect  his  environment  and  to  submit 
when  required  to  hospital  treatment.  To  enforce  these  obligations — 
all  new  since  1834 — upon  the  individual  citizen,  experience  shows  that 
some  other  pressure  on  his  volition  is  required  than  that  which  results 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND  651 

from  merely  leaving  him  alone.  Hence  the  community,  by  the  com¬ 
bination  of  the  principles  of  Curative  Treatment,  Universal  Provision, 
and  Compulsion,  deliberately  "weights”  the  alternatives,  in  the  guise 
of  a  series  of  experiments  upon  volition.  The  individual  retains  as 
much  freedom  of  choice  as — if  not  more  than — he  ever  enjoyed  before. 
But  the  father  finds  it  made  more  easy  for  him  to  get  his  children 
educated,  and  made  more  disagreeable  for  him  to  neglect  them.  It  is 
made  more  easy  for  the  mother  to  keep  her  infants  in  health,  and  more 
disagreeable  for  her  to  let  them  die.  The  man  suffering  from  disease 
finds  it  made  more  easy  for  him  to  get  cured  without  infecting  his 
neighbours,  and  made  more  disagreeable  for  him  not  to  take  all  the 
necessary  precautions.  The  labour  exchanges  and  the  farm  colonies 
aim  at  making  it  more  easy  for  the  wage-earner  to  get  a  situation ; 
perhaps  the  reformatory  establishment,  with  powers  of  detention,  is 
needed  to  make  it  more  disagreeable  for  him  not  to  accept  and  retain 
that  situation. 

87.  Report  of  the  Poor  Law  Commission  and  the 
Recommendations  of  the  Minority1 

We  may  now  attempt  to  sum  up  the  position  as  it  presents  itself, 
after  the  deliverance  of  the  Royal  Commission,  to  the  statesman  and 
to  the  public  opinion  of  1910. 

There  is  first  the  chaos  of  authorities,  the  overlapping  of  functions, 
and  the  duplication  of  services,  resulting  in  the  expenditure,  out  of 
rates  and  taxes  in  the  United  Kingdom,  on  the  maintenance,  schooling, 
and  medical  attendance  of  the  poorer  classes  of  nearly  seventy  millions 
sterling  annually.  During  the  past  five  years,  even  whilst  the  Royal 
Commission  was  sitting,  this  multiplication  of  overlapping  authorities 
has  proceeded  at  a  great  pace.  In  1905  the  Unemployed  Workmen 
Act  created  a  rival  authority  for  relieving  the  able-bodied  man.  In 
1906  the  Education  (Provision  of  Meals)  Act,  in  1907  the  Education 
(Administrative  Provisions)  Act,  and  in  1908  the  Education  (Scot¬ 
land)  Act  and  the  Children  Act,  set  up  the  Local  Education  Authority 
as  a  rival  to  the  Poor  Law  Authority  in  regard  to  providing  food, 
medical  attendance,  and  all  other  necessaries  for  children  found  desti- 

1From  English  Poor  Law  Policy  (pp.  3 12-3 19),  by  Sidney  and  Beatrice 

Webb. 


652 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


tute  at  school.  In  1908,  too,  the  Old  Age  Pensions  Act  established  a 
rival  authority  for  the  maintenance  of  the  destitute  aged.  Meanwhile, 
the  Local  Health  Authorities  have  been  told  to  take  over  the  destitute 
man  who  has  phthisis,  and  to  extend  in  many  directions  the  range  of 
their  work ;  the  Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy  has  declared 
that  a  new  authority  must  be  found  for  the  vagrants,  and  the  Royal 
Commission  on  the  Care  and  Control  of  the  Feeble-minded  has  come 
to  the  very  authoritative  conclusion  that  all  grades  and  kinds  of  men¬ 
tally  defective  persons  must  be  taken  out  of  the  Poor  Law  altogether. 
The  result  is  that,  already  in  1910,  the  number  of  persons  being 
actually  fed  at  the  public  expense  by  the  Local  Education  Authorities, 
the  Local  Health  Authorities,  the  Local  Lunacy  Authorities,  the  Local 
Unemployment  Authorities,  and  the  Local  Pension  Authorities,  ex¬ 
ceeds,  in  the  aggregate,  the  number  of  persons  being  fed  by  the  Poor 
Law  Authorities.  For  every  separate  section  of  the  pauper  host  there 
are  now  at  least  two  Public  Authorities  at  work — sometimes  three  or 
four  Public  Authorities — with  duplicated  machinery,  overlapping 
services,  officers  competing  with  each  other  on  rival  principles  of 
action,  in  not  a  few  cases  simultaneously  providing  for  the  same 
persons  without  knowing  of  each  other’s  work. 

The  Poor  Law  Authorities  themselves,  and  the  bulk  of  their  work, 
the  Royal  Commission  found  extremely  unsatisfactory,  and  are  unani¬ 
mous  in  condemning,  not  so  much  from  any  personal  shortcomings  of 
the  twenty-four  thousand  guardians  as  from  the  nature  of  the  task  to 
which  they  had  been  set.  The  assistance  that  they  dispense,  by  its 
very  nature,  comes  too  late  to  be  preventive  of  the  occurrence  of  des¬ 
titution,  and,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  too  late  to  be  curative.  What¬ 
ever  may  be  decided  as  to  its  successor,  it  is  clear  that  the  existing 
Poor  Law  System  and  the  existing  Poor  Law  Authority,  must,  to  use 
the  expressive  words  of  Mr.  Balfour’s  election  address,  be  "scrapped.” 

The  Majority  Commissioners  hold,  on  the  assumption  that  every 
case  of  pauperism  implies  a  moral  defect,  that  there  should  be,  in  each 
locality,  one  Authority  and  only  one  Authority  to  deal  with  persons 
requiring  maintenance  from  public  funds.  They  therefore  recommend 
the  establishment  of  a  new  "Destitution  Authority”  to  deal  only  with 
persons  who  are  destitute,  and  only  when  they  are  destitute ;  and  for 
such  persons  to  provide,  from  birth  to  burial,  in  distinctively  Poor 
Law  Institutions,  or  under  distinctively  Poor  Law  officials,  all  that  is 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


65  3 


Required.  It  is  admitted  that  this  involves  the  repeal  of  the  Unem¬ 
ployed  Workmen  Act  and  the  Education  (Provision  of  Meals)  Act. 
We  must  leave  politicians  to  judge  whether  it  is  practicable  to  thrust 
the  unemployed  workman,  and  the  child  found  hungry  at  school,  back 
into  the  Poor  Law,  even  if  the  Poor  Law  is  called  by  another  name. 
But  even  if  this  were  done,  the  Majority  Report  would  still  leave  the 
overlap  as  regards  the  destitute  aged  which  is  involved  in  the  Old  Age 
Pensions  Act;  the  overlap  as  regards  the  destitute  sick  which  is 
involved  in  the  evergrowing  activities  of  the  seven  hundred  rate- 
maintained  municipal  hospitals  of  the  Local  Health  Authorities ;  the 
overlap  with  regard  to  destitute  children  which  is  involved  by  the 
activities  of  the  Local  Education  Authorities  and  the  Home  Office 
under  the  Industrial  Schools  Acts,  and  now  under  the  Children  Act. 
And  the  Majority  Commissioners  cannot,  it  appears,  make  up  their 
minds  whether  or  not  they  wish  the  recommendations  of  the  Royal 
Commission  on  the  Feeble-minded  to  be  carried  into  law,  and  thus  end 
the  overlap  between  the  Poor  Law  Authority  and  the  Lunacy  Authority. 

The  Majority  Report  purports  to  give  the  new  "Public  Assistance 
Authority”  some  guidance  as  to  policy.  It  is  to  relieve  none  but  those 
at  present  entitled  to  relief,  and  therefore,  in  all  cases,  to  wait  until 
destitution  has  set  in.  Thus  the  aid  will,  as  now,  come  too  late  to 
prevent  or  to  cure.  On  the  other  hand,  the  "deterrent”  attitude  of 
1834  is  to  be  given  up;  the  workhouse  is  to  be  abolished;  and 
"curative  and  restorative  treatment,”  at  home  or  in  an  appropriate 
institution,  is  to  be  afforded  to  every  case.  Yet  in  order  to  afford  to 
certain  classes  of  applicants  methods  of  relief  and  treatment  more 
suitable  than  any  Public  Assistance  Authority  is  to  be  allowed  to 
afford,  a  complete  system  of  Voluntary  Aid  Committees  is  to  be  set  up, 
and  to  such  Committees  these  particular  applicants  are  to  be  required 
to  apply,  whether  or  not  they  prefer  charity  to  public  aid. 

Against  these  proposals  of  the  Majority  Report  the  Minority  Com¬ 
missioners  protest  that  they  will  not  put  a  stop  to  the  calamitous  and 
extravagant  overlapping  of  services  and  duplication  of  work  which 
now  exists  or  to  the  demoralising  chaos  that  prevails  as  to  recovery  of 
cost.  Moreover,  the  Minority  Commissioners  hold  that  if  the  com¬ 
munity  restricts  itself  to  relieving  persons  at  the  crisis  of  their  destitu¬ 
tion,  and  this  is  a  necessary  condition  of  any  Poor  Law,  or  of  the 
action  of  any  Destitution  Authority,  whatever  its  name,  the  com- 


654 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


munity  cannot,  without  grave  financial  danger,  and  still  graver  danger* 
to  character,  depart  from  the  principles  of  1834.  However  unpopular 
may  be  the  doctrine,  it  is  still  true  that  if  destitute  persons  are  to  be 
given  "curative  and  restorative  treatment”  without  deterrent  condi¬ 
tions  and  without  the  stigma  of  pauperism,  a  constantly  increasing 
number  of  persons  will,  unless  they  are  in  some  way  prevented  from 
sinking  into  destitution,  come  in  and  out  of  the  Poor  Law  as  it  suits 
their  convenience,  to  their  own  grave  demoralisation  and  at  a  ruinous 
cost  to  the  nation.  But  the  heart  and  conscience  of  the  community 
will  not  tolerate  the  subjection  of  all  the  million  paupers  indiscrimi¬ 
nately  to  deterrent  conditions,  especially  as  these  have  now  been  proved 
to  be  seriously  detrimental  in  their  effects.  The  whole  phraseology 
of  the  Majority  Report,  and  its  proposals  themselves,  afford  convinc¬ 
ing  testimony  to  the  necessity  of  giving  up  the  idea  of  a  "deterrent” 
Poor  Law.  And  the  Majority  Report  gives  us  no  substitute  for  this 
deterrence — unless,  indeed,  it  can  really  be  imagined  that  the  opera¬ 
tion  of  the  Voluntary  Aid  Committees  is  somehow  to  protect  us. 

The  only  effective  substitute  for  deterrence  is,  the  Minority  Com¬ 
missioners  suggest,  the  Principle  of  Prevention — prevention,  that  is, 
not  merely  of  pauperism,  but  of  the  very  occurrence  of  destitution. 
This  negatives  the  very  idea  of  a  Destitution  Authority,  whatsoever  its 
designation  or  its  policy.  It  is  in  vain  to  hope  that  any  Poor  Law, 
or  any  Destitution  Authority,  however  improved,  can  ever  prevent  or 
even  diminish  destitution ;  because,  confined  as  it  is  to  dealing  with  a 
destitution  which  has  occurred,  it  is  inherently  precluded  by  its  very 
nature  from  attacking  any  of  the  causes  which  produce  the  destitution 
that  is  perpetually  coming  on  its  hands.  Thus,  the  twenty  millions 
sterling  now  spent  annually  in  the  United  Kingdom  on  the  mere  relief 
of  destitution  do  practically  nothing  to  prevent  the  creation,  year  by 
year,  of  new  masses  of  destitution.  Even  the  educational  work  which 
the  Poor  Law  Authorities  do  for  the  Poor  Law  children  is  largely 
vitiated  by  their  inherent  disability  to  exercise  any  supervision  over 
the  life  of  the  child  before  and  after  the  crisis  of  destitution.  The 
greater  part  of  the  expenditure  on  the  Poor  Law  Medical  Service  is, 
so  far  as  any  gain  to  the  health  of  the  nation  is  concerned,  wasted  be¬ 
cause  no  sick  person  can  legally  be  treated  in  the  incipient  stage  of 
his  disease  when  it  may  still  be  curable ;  the  Poor  Law  doctor  must 
always  wait  until  destitution  has  set  in  !  This — so  the  Minority  Com- 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


655 


missioners  claim — must  necessarily  be  the  same  in  the  case  of  the 
" Public  Assistance  Authority”  proposed  in  the  Majority  Report,  or, 
indeed,  in  the  case  of  anybody  set  to  administer  a  Poor  Law.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  fact  that  universal  provision  of  some  services  to  all 
persons,  whether  destitute  or  not,  has  been  adopted  by  Parliament,  has 
led  to  a  duplication  and  confusions  of  functions  between  the  old  Poor 
Law  Authority  and  the  new  Preventive  Authorities.  This  daily- 
increasing  overlap  and  duplication  can  only  be  ended  by  either  strip¬ 
ping  the  new  Preventive  Authorities  of  functions  entrusted  to  them 
within  the  last  few  years  by  Parliament — which  is  plainly  impossible 
— or  by  abolishing  the  Poor  Law.  Hence  the  only  safe,  as  well  as  the 
only  advantageous  way  out  of  this  confusion  is  to  go  forward  on 
the  Principle  of  Prevention.  This  Principle  of  Prevention  may  take 
the  form,  on  the  one  hand,  of  altering  the  environment,  on  the  other, 
of  treating  the  individual.  But  if  the  cost  of  curative  treatment,  or 
even  of  altering  the  environment,  is  to  be  borne  by  the  community,  it  is 
essential,  on  grounds  of  economy,  that  there  should  be  a  searching  out 
of  all  incipient  cases  and  such  a  disciplinary  supervision  as  will  prevent 
persons  from  becoming  destitute  through  neglected  infancy,  neglected 
childhood,  preventable  illness,  and  voluntary  unemployment. 

In  this  disciplinary  supervision  over  those  who  repeatedly  fall  into 
the  morass  of  destitution,  or  who,  by  failing  to  fulfil  their  social  obliga¬ 
tions,  show  signs  of  entering  upon  the  descent  into  that  morass,  we 
see  a  more  humane,  as  well  as  a  more  effective  form  of  "deterrence” 
than  that' of  the  1834  Poor  Law.  The  newer  preventive  authorities 
deter  from  falling  into  destitution,  not  by  fear  of  what  will  happen 
when  the  fall  has  taken  place,  but  by  timely  insistence  on  the  per¬ 
formance  of  the  social  duties  that  will  prevent  the  fall.  The  parents 
who,  under  the  pressure  of  the  Local  Education  Authority,  are  induced 
and  compelled  to  send  their  children  to  school  from  five  to  fourteen 
years  of  age  are  not  only  effectually  "deterred”  from  living  on  their 
children’s  earnings,  but  are  also  prevented  from  so  far  neglecting  their 
offspring  as  to  fail  to  get  them  to  school  regularly  and  punctually,  or 
to  fail  to  maintain  them  in  a  state  fit  for  admission  to  school,  according 
to  a  standard  that  is  constantly  rising.  In  some  districts  the  Local 
Education  Authority  has  even  gone  far,  by  means  of  inspection,  in¬ 
struction,  exhortation,  and,  in  the  last  resort,  prosecution,  towards 
effectually  "deterring”  parents  from  letting  their  children  become 


656 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


verminous.  Deterrent  action  of  this  kind  by.  the  Local  Education 
Authority  has  been  accompanied  by  corresponding  action  by  the  Local 
Health  Authority,  which  has — again  by  inspection,  instruction,  ex¬ 
hortation,  and,  in  the  last  resort,  prosecution — induced  many  occupiers 
of  tenement  dwellings  to  prevent  these  from  remaining  verminous  or 
otherwise  grossly  below  the  current  standard  of  sanitation.  This  form 
of  deterrence  it  is  that  lies  at  the  base  of  all  our  Public  Health  and 
Factory  Legislation ;  a  deterrence  that  leads  the  owners  and  occupiers 
to  bestir  themselves  to  keep  their  dwellings  up  to  the  current  local 
standard  of  healthiness,  the  occupiers  of  factories  to  maintain  these 
in  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  the  law,  and  the  operatives  in 
unhealthy  trades  to  observe  the  precautions  prescribed  against  disease. 
The  same  idea  of  a  preventive  deterrence  will  inspire  the  Local  Lunacy 
Authorities,  once  they  are  made  responsible  for  the  feeble-minded,  to 
insist  on  proper  care  and  control  for  those  helpless  girl  mothers  whom 
the  Poor  Law  must  perforce  leave  free  to  propagate  a  feeble-minded 
race.  In  the  same  way  the  Minority  Commissioners  believe  that  the 
new  National  Authority  for  Unemployment,  of  which  we  may  detect 
the  beginnings  in  the  National  Labour  Exchange,  will  be  able  to 
"deter”  men  from  becoming  unemployed,  not  only  by  actually  pre¬ 
venting  many  unnecessary  breaches  of  continuity  in  employment  (by 
equalising,  year  by  year,  the  aggregate  demand  for  labour,  regularising 
employment  in  the  seasonal  trades,  and  "decasualising”  the  casual 
labourer  in  the  ways  elaborately  described  in  the  Report),  but  also  by 
putting  the  necessary  pressure  on  the  will  of  those  who  &re  "born 
tired”  or  who  have  become  "unemployable,”  either  to  accept  and 
retain  the  situations  that  will  be  definitely  offered  to  them,  or  else  to 
submit  themselves  to  disciplinary  training,  with  the  reformatory  De¬ 
tention  Colony  in  the  background. 

We  venture  to  end  this  exposition  of  the  philosophy  of  the  Minority 
Report  of  1909  by  a  repetition  of  the  words  that  we  used,  perhaps 
prematurely,  to  describe  those  "Principles  of  1907,”  to  which,  as  we 
have  demonstrated,  three-quarters  of  a  century  of  experience  has 
empirically  brought  the  Local  Government  Board  itself.  These  prin¬ 
ciples,  we  pointed  out — in  contrast  to  the  laisser  faire  of  1834 — 
"embody  the  doctrine  of  a  mutual  obligation  between  the  individual 
and  the  community.  The  universal  maintenance  of  a  definite  mini¬ 
mum  of  civilised  life — seen  to  be  in  the  interest  of  the  community 


RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  ENGLAND 


657 


no  less  than  in  that  of  the  individual — becomes  the  joint  responsibility 
of  an  indissoluble  partnership.  The  community  recognises  a  duty  in 
the  curative  treatment  of  all  who  are  in  need  of  it — a  duty  most  clearly 
seen  in  the  medical  treatment  of  the  sick  and  the  education  of  the 
children.  Once  this  corporate  responsibility  is  accepted,  it  becomes 
a  question  whether  the  universal  provision  of  any  necessary  common 
service  is  not  the  most  advantageous  method  of  fulfilling  such  respon¬ 
sibility — a  method  which  has,  at  any  rate,  the  advantage  of  leaving 
unimpaired  the  salutary  inequality  between  the  thrifty  and  the  un¬ 
thrifty.  It  is,  moreover,  an  inevitable  complement  of  this  corporate 
responsibility,  and  of  the  recognition  of  the  indissoluble  partnership, 
that  new  and  enlarged  obligations,  unknown  in  a  state  of  laisser  faire, 
are  placed  upon  the  individual — such  as  the  obligation  of  the  parent 
to  keep  his  children  in  health,  and  to  send  them  to  school  at  the  time 
and  in  the  condition  insisted  upon ;  the  obligation  of  the  young  person 
to  be  well  conducted  and  to  learn ;  the  obligation  of  the  adult  not  to 
infect  his  environment,  and  to  submit  when  required  to  hospital  treat¬ 
ment.  To  enforce  these  obligations — all  new  since  1834 — upon  the 
individual  citizen,  experience  shows  that  some  other  pressure  on  his 
volition  is  required  than  merely  leaving  him  alone.  Hence  the  com¬ 
munity,  by  the  combination  of  the  principles  of  Curative  Treatment, 
Universal  Provision,  and  Compulsion,  deliberately  'weights  the  alter¬ 
natives/  in  the  guise  of  a  series  of  experiments  upon  volition.  The 
individual  retains  as  much  freedom  of  choice  as — if  not  more  than — 
he  ever  enjoyed  before.  It  is  made  more  easy  for  the  mother  to  keep 
her  infants  in  health,  and  more  disagreeable  for  her  to  let  them  die. 
The  man  suffering  from  disease  finds  it  made  more  easy  for  him  to  get 
cured  without  infecting  his  neighbours,  and  more  disagreeable  for  him 
not  to  take  all  the  necessary  precautions.  The  labour  exchanges  and 
the  farm  colonies  aim  at  making  it  more  easy  for  the  wage-earner  to 
get  a  situation ;  perhaps  the  reformatory  establishment,  with  powers 
of  detention,  is  needed  to  make  it  more  disagreeable  for  him  not  to 
accept  and  retain  that  situation.”  It  is,  in  short,  this  doctrine  of  a 
mutual  obligation — this  fundamental  principle  that  social  health  is 
not  a  matter  for  the  individual  alone,  nor  for  the  Government  alone, 
but  depends  essentially  on  the  joint  responsibility  of  the  individual 
and  the  community  for  the  maintenance  of  a  definite  minimum  of 
civilised  life — that  inspires  every  detail  of  the  Minority  Report. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 


PUBLIC  RELIEF  OF  THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

88.  The  Aftermath  of  Public  Outdoor  Relief  in 

Brooklyn1 

Public  outdoor  relief  was  abolished  in  Brooklyn  by  the  Board  of 
Supervisors,  January  31,  1878,  on  the  opinion  of  their  legal  adviser 
that  such  relief  was  illegal.  The  opinion  held  that  the  class  entitled 
to  support  included  only  those  unable  to  earn  their  own  living  and 
the  law  provided  that  they  should  be  maintained  in  poorhouses  pro¬ 
vided  by  the  county,  where  the  relief  could  be  supervised  by  those 
authorized  to  do  so.  The  only  exception  to  this  was  that  temporary 
relief  might  be  given  to  the  sick,  lame,  or  otherwise  disabled,  until  and 
only  until  it  became  practicable  to  remove  the  person  to  the  almshouse. 

The  counsel  advised  the  supervisors  therefore  that  all  money  granted 
in  aid  of  the  poor  contrary  to  these  plain  provisions  was  illegal,  and 
that  the  overseers  were  liable  to  indictment.  Whereupon  public  out¬ 
door  relief  in  Brooklyn  was  terminated  in  the  middle  of  the  winter  of 
1878,  a  winter  of  more  than  ordinary  severity. 

The  main  facts  about  the  abolition  of  such  relief  in  Brooklyn  may 
be  briefly  summarized  as  follows: 

1.  Prior  to  its  abolition  the  number  of  persons  receiving  public  relief 
in  their  homes  increased  faster  than  the  population,  and  in  1877  amounted 
to  46,330  persons.  In  1878  this  aid  was  stopped.  Notwithstanding  this 
there  followed  a  decrease  rather  than  an  increase  in  the  number  of  persons 
cared  for  in  the  public  institutions  as  compared  with  the  population  of 
Brooklyn. 

2.  During  the  ten  years  next  preceding  1878,  Kings  County,  that  is 
Brooklyn,  spent  an  average  of  almost  $129,000  a  year  for  the  relief  of  per¬ 
sons  in  their  own  homes,  while  the  Brooklyn  Association  for  Improving  the 
Condition  of  the  Poor,  the  chief  private  relief  society  in  Brooklyn  at  that 

2By  Thomas  J.  Riley,  Ph.D.,  General  Secretary  of  the  Brooklyn  Bureau  of 
Charities.  Adapted  from  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Correction,  1916,  pp.  337-344. 


658 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


659 


time,  spent  on  the  average  $22,252  a  year  for  material  relief.  Although 
public  outdoor  relief  was  entirely  cut  off,  this  society  gave  an  average  of 
$18,981  a  year  for  the  six  years  following  1878.  In  other  words,  the  aboli¬ 
tion  of  public  relief  was  followed  by  a  decrease  in  the  relief  disbursements 
from  private  sources  also. 

3.  The  abolition  of  public  outdoor  relief  did  not  cause  any  increase  of 
distress  among  the  poor  or  any  increase  of  the  number  of  children  in  private 
institutions  at  the  expense  of  the  county  under  the  provisions  of  the  Chil¬ 
dren’s  Law  of  1875  which  made  it  illegal  throughout  the  state  to  keep 
children  over  three  years  of  age  in  the  almshouse. 

In  a  word,  the  stoppage  of  public  outdoor  relief  in  Brooklyn  caused 
some  forty-six  thousand  persons  to  depend  upon  themselves  instead 
of  upon  charity,  whether  public  or  private,  and  there  was  no  increase 
in  distress  among  the  poor. 

Does  the  experience  of  Brooklyn  condemn  the  giving  of  charitable 
aid  from  public  funds  to  persons  in  their  own  homes  as  such,  or  does 
it  condemn  only  its  administration  as  it  was  practiced  there?  Such 
considerations  as  the  following  have  led  me  to  believe  that  it  was  the 
administration  and  not  the  relief  itself  that  failed  in  Brooklyn. 

Probably  no  one  today  would  advocate  the  method  by  which  public 
outdoor  relief  was  given  in  Brooklyn.  One  set  of  men,  the  Board  of 
Supervisors,  ordered  the  supplies  and  another  set  of  men,  the  Commis¬ 
sioners  of  Charities,  distributed  them,  and  there  was  almost  constant 
friction  between  them.  Applicants  for  relief  came  with  their  baskets 
to  the  offices  of  the  commissioners  and  carried  away  such  relief  in  kind 
as  they  might  receive. 

No  one  has  more  ably  or  correctly  described  the  situation  than 
Mr.  Alfred  T.  White,  as  secretary  of  a  group  of  about  three  hundred 
men  and  women  who,  inspired  by  the  Elberfeld  system,  volunteered  to 
visit  the  families  who  should  apply  for  aid  in  the  winter  of  1877-1878. 
He  says: 

There  were  five  distributing  offices,  to  some  one  of  which  each  ward  of 
the  city  was  assigned,  each  having  its  particular  day  for  distribution.  On 
these  days  many  hundreds  of  women  would  often  sit  in  a  crowd  for  hours 
with  their  baskets  waiting  for  their  weekly  dole.  Paid  visitors  to  the 
homes  of  the  applicant  had  been  tried  and  found  worse  than  useless.  One 
winter  every  applicant  had  been  compelled  to  swear  to  her  poverty ;  and 
still  the  number  grew.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  a  more  demoralizing 
method  of  administering  a  system  which  is  pernicious  even  when  best 


66o 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


handled  than  Brooklyn  labored  under  until  1876.  ...  As  the  visitors 
called  on  the  applicants  for  aid,  it  was  found  of  course  that  in  the  ma¬ 
jority  of  cases  there  were  able-bodied  men,  able  to  work  and  often  at  work. 
It  was  found  the  rule  in  tenement  houses  for  every  family  to  apply  for  re¬ 
lief,  each  woman  feeling  entitled  to  aid  because  her  neighbor  had  aid.  In 
some  cases  self-respecting  women  were  compelled  by  their  neighbors  to 
take  their  baskets  and  demand  public  aid  with  the  rest,  because,  presumably, 
no  superiority  in  such  matters  would  be  tolerated.  It  appeared  especially 
in  the  older  wards  that  a  large  population  calculated  upon  this  public 
relief  as  a  part  of  their  annual  income  and  were  shiftless  during  the  sum¬ 
mer  because  sure  of  aid  in  the  winter. 

Many  who  said  they  would  not  take  private  aid  regarded  the  public  dole 
as  an  obligation  due  them  by  the  county  and  demanded  it  accordingly ; 
while  on  every  hand  it  was  seen  that  the  system  put  a  premium  on  mis¬ 
representation  and  falsehood.  In  general  it  reached  the  class  whom  it 
did  not  benefit  and  failed  to  reach  those  who  really  needed  aid  but  were 
supplied  by  private  charity.  No  one  could  see  his  neighbor  supported,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  at  the  public  expense  without  being  tempted  to  draw 
rations  from  the  same  generous  treasury,  and  industrious  men  and  women 
were  rapidly  demoralized  by  this  open  reward  to  laziness  and  lying. — Lend 
a  Hand ,  June,  1886,  p.  335. 

Such  criticisms  have  generally  been  interpreted  as  reasons  for  the 
abolition  of  public  outdoor  relief,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  were 
used  by  the  Volunteer  Visitors  Association  in  an  effort  to  reform  the 
administration  of  such  aid.  Indeed  the  reforms  had  been  all  but  ac¬ 
complished  when,  to  use  the  language  of  the  New  York  Times,  there 
came  "into  office  a  new  Board  of  Supervisors  anxious  for  political 
influence  and  greedy  for  patronage  ”  and  reversed  the  action  of  the  old 
board  and  ordered  a  free  disposition  of  groceries  to  be  made  as  before. 
Then,  and  not  until  then,  did  the  visitors  give  up  hope  and  cease  their 
efforts  to  reform  the  administration  of  the  relief. 

On  January  24,  1878,  only  one  week  before  the  relief  was  abol¬ 
ished  the  visitors  met  and  passed  the  following  resolutions,  which 
only  hint  in  a  single  place  at  the  abolition  of  relief : 

RESOLVED,  that  we  denounce  as  dangerous  and  demoralizing  and  alto¬ 
gether  bad  the  efforts  of  the  Commissioners  of  Charities  and  of  members 
of  the  present  Board  of  Supervisors  to  reinstate  a  system  which  puts  a 
premium  on  fraud  and  misrepresentation ;  which  disgusts  the  respectable 
poor  and  attracts  the  worst  classes  ;  which  tempts  paupers  to  immigrate 
here  from  surrounding  counties ;  which  offers  a  reward  to  idleness  and 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


661 


shiftlessness  and  discourages  industry  and  thrift  and  which  violates  law  and 
disgraces  our  civilization. 

RESOLVED,  that  in  the  judgment  of  the  visitors  here  present  ...  it 
is  better,  under  the  circumstances,  to  retire  from  the  work  when  distribu¬ 
tion  of  groceries  begins  and  until  the  Board  of  Supervisors  or  the  Com¬ 
missioners  are  willing  to  heed  our  recommendations,  lest  our  countenance 
to  a  bad  cause  may  serve  to  blind  the  community  to  an  evil  which  it  un¬ 
fortunately  appears  cannot  be  alleviated  but  must  be  exterminated. 

Public  outdoor  relief  was  abolished  only  after  attempts  to  reform 
its  administration  had  failed.  St.  Louis,  Baltimore,  Washington,  and 
other  cities  also  abolished  it.  Philadelphia  abolished  it  except  as  to 
medical  aid.  In  other  places  the  relief  was  not  abolished  but  was  re¬ 
formed.  Boston  continued  it  and  through  careful  administration  has 
kept  the  number  of  beneficiaries  and  the  amount  of  money  spent  well 
under  control.  Buffalo,  by  a  reform  in  her  methods  of  administration, 
and  especially  by  a  co-operation  with  the  private  charities,  has  kept 
its  disbursements  well  within  bounds. 

The  state  of  Indiana,  through  reform  laws  and  good  administration, 
has  accomplished  economies  similar  to  those  brought  about  elsewhere 
through  the  abolition  of  public  outdoor  relief. 

If  we  may  judge  from  the  reports  that  come  from  Denver  it  seems 
clear  that  county  outdoor  relief  can  be  administered  in  a  way  not 
only  to  prevent  pauperizing  families  but  to  rehabilitate  them  following 
charity  organization  methods  and  to  enlist  the  aid  of  volunteers.  The 
advocates  and  administrators  of  the  mothers’  aid  laws  in  the  various 
states  claim,  and  many  who  have  been  skeptical  concerning  them  con¬ 
fess,  that  the  relief  and  aid  of  these  families  have  been  as  satisfactory 
as  those  from  private  sources,  while  some  claim  for  them  great 
superiority. 

Recently  I  had  the  privilege  and  duty  of  acting  as  an  examiner  of 
candidates  for  investigators  under  the  Board  of  Child  Welfare  and 
the  Bureau  of  Social  Investigations  of  the  Department  of  Public 
Charities  of  the  City  of  New  York.  I  am  also  frequently  called  upon 
to  choose  employees  for  a  large  charitable  society.  It  is  my  judgment 
that  those  who  presented  themselves  for  the  public  employment  com¬ 
pared  very  favorably  with  those  employed  for  similar  work  in  the 
private  charitable  societies.  This  has  not  always  been  so,  but  with 
the  development  of  the  civil  service  and  the  opportunities  for  special 


662 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


training  there  is  no  reason  why  there  may  not  be  as  high  standards  of 
qualifications  and  service  in  the  public  as  in  the  private  charities. 

The  charity  organization  movement  has  done  much  to  develop  the 
principles  and  to  standardize  the  technique  of  case  work  with  families, 
yet  it  may  be  that  its  greatest  service  will  be  to  present  these  principles 
and  this  technique  to  the  public  administration  and  to  educate  the 
taxpayer  to  an  appreciation  of  the  value  of  a  constructive  service  for 
families. 

89.  The  Administrative  Basis  of  Public  Outdoor 

Relief1 

r 

The  administrative  basis  of  any  movement  should  be  determined 
by  the  task  it  has  undertaken.  A  sound  administrative  basis  represents 
a  careful  analysis  of  the  problem  to  be  worked  out  in  terms  which  al¬ 
most  suggest  the  appropriate  administrative  machinery.  There  should, 
therefore,  be  a  close  connection  between  the  conception  of  a  given  task 
which  is  held  by  those  responsible  for  working  at  it  and  the  adminis¬ 
trative  procedure  which  they  follow. 

The  common  conception  of  the  task  of  public  outdoor  relief .  The 
common  conception  of  the  task  of  public  outdoor  relief  is  relatively 
simple.  It  assumes  a  group  of  persons  who  are  unable  to  provide  for 
their  own  needs,  and  it  is  satisfied  with  material  relief  as  the  means  of 
aiding  them.  This  conception  of  the  task  is  reflected  in  the  poor  laws 
of  the  various  states.  With  the  exception  of  Maryland,  every  state  in 
the  Union  defines  more  or  less  specifically  the  obligations  of  local 
communities  or  of  the  state  itself  to  give  relief  to  those  who  cannot 
maintain  themselves.  The  language  of  the  laws  varies ;  but  their 
beneficiaries  are  always  the  same;  they  are  the  "necessitous,”  the 
"pauper,”  "needy  persons,”  the  "indigent,”  or  the  "destitute,”  the 
implication  being  in  each  instance  that  they  lack  sufficient  income  for 
bare  subsistence. 

The  assistance  which  the  poor  law  makes  available  for  those  whose 
infirmities  it  thus  takes  into  account  is  practically  confined  to  material 
relief,  the  commodities  of  food,  fuel,  and  in  some  instances  of  rent, 
clothing,  and  transportation.  Almost  the  only  exception  is  that  in 

1By  Porter  R.  Lee,  Director  of  the  New  York  School  for  Social  Work.  From 
Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Social  Work,  1917,  pp.  146-154. 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  663 

some  places  free  medical  attention  may  be  arranged  for  if  application 
is  made  for  it. 

We  should  not  assume  that  the  mere  giving  of  relief,  which  is  the 
whole  of  this  program,  is  also  its  whole  purpose.  In  practice,  at  any 
rate,  there  are  evidences  that  the  recipients  of  relief  are  expected  with 
the  aid  of  the  relief  given  to  work  out  of  their  difficulties,  the  relief 
from  this  point  of  view  serving  the  purpose  of  "  tiding  them  over.” 
Moreover,  in  nine  states1  the  law  either  specifically  or  by  implication 
limits  public  outdoor  relief  to  cases  of  temporary  need.  This  also  con¬ 
templates,  apparently,  the  rehabilitation  of  the  recipients  of  such 
relief.  The  poor  laws  themselves,  however,  do  not  prescribe  any  active 
steps  on  the  part  of  public  relief  officials  to  bring  about  such  a  result. 
So  far  as  the  legal  provisions  go,  and  this  is  true  also  of  the  almost 
universal  practice,  anything  beyond  material  relief  which  is  needed  to 
,  restore  families  to  self-maintenance  is  not  a  part  of  our  traditional 
conception  of  the  task  of  public  outdoor  relief. 

Administrative  procedure  under  this  conception .  As  would  be  ex¬ 
pected,  the  administrative  machinery  provided  to  carry  out  this  con¬ 
ception  of  the  task  is  comparatively  simple.  No  poor  law  and  almost 
no  city  charter  recognizes  special  qualifications  for  the  work  of  ad¬ 
ministering  public  relief  as  of  sufficient  importance  to  warrant  specific 
mention  of  them.  With  few  exceptions  the  procedure  to  be  followed 
with  applications  is  not  stated,  except  as  certain  steps  are  implied  in 
the  condition  that  relief  shall  be  given  only  to  respectable  persons,  to 
those  not  able  to  work,  etc. 

If  we  pass  from  the  provisions  of  the  poor  law  to  the  working  prin¬ 
ciples  of  the  officials,  we  find  no  evidence  of  more  elaborate  procedure. 
At  best  the  well-nigh  universal  tests  by  which  public  officials  deter¬ 
mine  their  action  upon  requests  for  aid  are  two :  is  this  family  a 
relatively  decent  family,  and  is  their  income  really  insufficient  to  keep 
life  going?  The  chief  decision  is  to  aid  or  not  to 'aid,  aid  meaning 
usually  the  granting  of  meagre  amounts  of  groceries  or  fuel.  It  is 
unusual  to  find  officials  whose  chief  concern  is  to  avoid  aiding  if 
possible  and  if  a  decision  not  to  aid  is  reached,  their  responsibility 
is  ended.  This  old  conception  of  the  task  of  public  outdoor  relief  is 
not  adequate.  The  administrative  basis  for  which  it  is  responsible 

1  These  states  are  Alabama,  Connecticut,  Delaware,  Illinois,  Michigan,  Minne¬ 
sota,  Mississippi,  New  Jersey,  and  West  Virginia. 


664 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


can  never  lead  to  satisfactory  results.  To  formulate  an  administrative 
basis  that  will  get  satisfactory  result^,  it  is  necessary  to  analyze  the 
problem  of  dependence  which  furnishes  the  task  of  public  relief. 

Dependence  in  terms  of  disabilities.  In  a  study  of  the  charities  of 
Springfield,  Illinois,1  the  following  disabilities  were  discovered  in  the  three 
hundred  and  one  families  which  had  received  relief  from  the  overseer  of 
the  poor  during  the  year  1913:  widowhood,  desertion,  mental  deficiency, 
intemperance,  tuberculosis,  unemployment,  sickness  (not  tuberculosis), 
crippled  condition,  blindness,  non-support,  old  age,  orphaned  condition, 
imprisonment. 

The  report  of  the  Indiana  Board  of  State  Charities  gives  the  following 
causes  of  distress  in  the  families  aided  by  public  relief  officers  in  Indiana 
for  the  year  1914:  sickness  or  burial,  transportation,  lack  of  employment, 
old  age,  widowhood  or  non-support,  insanity  and  idiocy,  other  physical 
defects  (blind,  deaf,  or  crippled). 

In  a  study  of  three  hundred  and  sixty-four  families  receiving  public 
outdoor  relief  in  Missouri2  the  following  disabilities  were  noted:  old  age. 
chronic  physical  disability,  temporary  physical  disability,  mental  disability, 
intemperance,  immorality,  widowhood,  desertion,  non-support. 

In  1913  the  State  Charities  Aid  Association  made  an  inquiry  into  the 
administration  of  public  outdoor  relief  in  Dutchess  County,  New  York. 
Some  of  the  "obvious  problems”  found  within  the  one  hundred  and  six 
families  specially  studied  were:  sickness,  tuberculosis,  feeble-mindedness, 
probable  feeble-mindedness,  backward  children,  insanity,  alcoholism,  low 
mental  capacity,  shiftlessness,  immorality. 

An  examination  of  the  reports  of  public  relief  officials  will  reveal 
similar  lists  of  disabilities,  usually  classified  as  causes  of  distress, 
covering  much  the  same  items.  However  unsatisfactory  they  may  be 
as  classifications  of  causes  of  distress,  they  are  significant  because  they 
indicate  in  dependent  families  serious  disabilities  too  obvious  to  be 
ignored.  What  part  do  these  disabilities  play  in  dependence  ?  Obvi¬ 
ously,  a  large  par.t.  When  desertion,  sickness,  unemployment,  feeble¬ 
mindedness,  intemperance,  and  shiftlessness,  as  used  in  these  lists, 
apply  to  the  man  of  the  family,  they  usually  have  a  direct  effect  upon 
the  income.  When  they  apply  either  to  the  man  or  to  the  woman,  they 
almost  certainly  imply  the  serious  disorganization  of  family  life,  even 
though  the  income  is  not  entirely  cut  off.  Almost  any  one  of  them  is 

1  McLean,  The  Charities  of  Springfield ,  Illinois,  p.  141. 

-Warfield,  Outdoor  Relief  in  Missouri ,  p.  68. 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  665 

a  sufficient  handicap  to  self-maintenance,  and  must  be  removed  before 
complete  self-maintenance  is  possible. 

Under  the  old  conception  of  the  task  of  outdoor  relief,  their  re¬ 
moval  is  a  problem  for  the  family  itself,  with  the  assistance  of  meagre 
material  relief  while  they  are  solving  it.  In  many  instances  this 
tiding-over  is  all  that  is  required.  In  most  instances,  however,  these 
disabilities  have  already  proved  too  much  for  the  intelligence  and  re¬ 
sourcefulness  of  the  family  and  have  led  directly  to  their  application 
for  public  relief.  What  is  needed  is  not  primarily  material  relief,  but 
some  service  directed  towards  desertion,  sickness,  unemployment, 
feeble-mindedness,  intemperance,  or  shiftlessness  as  the  case  may  be. 
As  long  as  these  disabilities  are  present,  tiding-over  is  an  empty  for¬ 
mula,  for  there  is  no  landing  place  in  sight  where  the  tiding-over 
process  may  come  to  an  end. 

These  same  disabilities  also  nullify  the  legal  provision  that  relief 
shall  be  temporary.  While  they  do  not  necessarily  indicate  permanent 
need  for  relief,  relief  is  nevertheless  likely  to  be  needed  as  long  as  they 
are  present.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  studies  of  public  relief  show,  cases 
of  temporary  need  tend  to  become  permanent,  or  as  permanent  as  the 
relief  given.  If  relief  is  to  be  temporary,  it  must  in  most  cases  be 
accompanied  by  some  action  which  will  remove  these  disabilities  and 
any  other  handicaps  to  the  ability  of  these  families  to  finance  and 
manage  their  own  affairs.  The  presence  of  disabilities  requiring  special 
treatment  is  the  first  factor  in  the  problem  of  dependence  which  has 
a  bearing  upon  the  administrative  basis  of  public  outdoor  relief. 

Dependence  in  terms  of  psychology.  The  analysis  of  dependence 
reveals  another  factor  of  equal  importance.  This  is  the  attitude  of 
the  dependent  person  towards  his  own  situation  and  towards  the  as¬ 
sistance  he  is  receiving.  Dependence  is  the  result  of  failure — failure 
to  reach  society’s  accepted  standard  of  self-maintenance.  Those  who 
are  supported  entirely  or  in  part  by  public  outdoor  relief  are  for  the 
time  being  unable  to  provide  for  their  necessities  as  other  people  are 
expected  to  provide  for  theirs.  Their  material  needs  are  not  different 
from  those  of  other  persons.  They  can  be  provided  for  through  much 
the  same  channels.  Current  social  standards  demand  that  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  society  meet  most  of  these  needs  at  their  own  expense.  Those 
whose  needs  are  provided  for  at  the  expense  of  the  community  have 
failed  to  reach  this  standard,  although  they  may  in  other  particulars 


666 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


be  no  different  from  those  who  are  more  successful.  This  failure,  of 
which  dependence  is  a  manifestation,  may  be  caused  by  disabilities 
which  will  yield  to  treatment  as  we  have  seen.  From  this  point  of 
view  its  significance  is  largely  administrative — suggesting  the  need  for 
certain  action  by  the  relief  official,  or  some  large  preventive  movement. 

The  experience  of  failure,  however,  whatever  its  cause,  has  psycho¬ 
logical  significance  for  the  individual  concerned.  It  forces  recognition 
of  limitations.  It  exposes  these  limitations,  which  men  ordinarily 
struggle  to  keep  hidden,  to  more  or  less  public  observation.  It  in¬ 
volves  a  sense  of  dependence  upon  others  for  the  necessaries  of  life 
which  it  is  the  common  ambition  of  men  to  provide  for  themselves. 
With  some  persons  the  experience  of  failure  is  the  first  step  towards 
success.  With  those  whose  intellectual  and  economic  resources  are 
limited  it  may  have  the  opposite  effect ;  and  this  effect  is  not  likely  to 
be  lessened  when  after  such  a  failure  the  income  which  other  men 
earn  is  provided  by  relief.  This  is  not  an  indictment,  but  an  analy¬ 
sis  of  human  nature.  To  be  free  from  the  responsibility  for  self¬ 
maintenance  has  a  definite  effect  both  upon  the  disposition  and  upon 
the  capacity  for  self-maintenance,  as  those  persons  know  who  have 
been  coddled  through  an  illness  like  tuberculosis,  who  have  experienced 
a  long  period  of  enforced  idleness  at  a  time  of  industrial  depression  or 
who  have  lived  upon  inherited  wealth. 

The  mental  attitude  of  the  recipient  is  significant  from  still  another 
point  of  view.  Destitution  as  we  have  seen  is  usually  accompanied  by 
serious  disabilities.  To  get  out  of  this  condition  calls  for  a  large  meas¬ 
ure  of  intelligence,  resourcefulness,  and  determination.  It  is  a  task  for 
the  resolute,  for  those  who  recognize  opportunities  and  know  how  to 
take  advantage  of  them.  In  other  words,  it  requires  qualities  which 
the  destitute  usually  do  not  have,  and  it  is  chiefly  because  they  do  not 
have  them  in  sufficient  measure  that  they  are  destitute.  Furthermore, 
if  we  consider  the  effect  upon  the  human  spirit  of  the  disabilities  which 
are  generally  listed  in  connection  with  dependence,  it  becomes  evident 
that  the  spiritual  burdens  of  life  are  doubled  for  the  poor.  Widow¬ 
hood,  as  an  item  in  a  list  of  the  causes  of  distress,  may  mean  only  the 
total  loss  of  an  income  through  the  death  of  a  breadwinner.  The  social 
worker,  however,  interested  in  the  conservation  and  development  of 
the  power  of  self-maintenance  in  his  applicants,  sees  in  it  also  loss  of 
companionship  and  single-handed  responsibility  for  budget  making, 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


667 


discipline  of  children,  the  planning  of  the  future  of  the  family,  and 
all  the  other  vital  problems  of  family  life  upon  which  two  heads  are 
better  than  one. 

Intemperance,  in  its  narrowest  implication,  suggests  unsteady  in¬ 
come  and  the  good  old  adjective  -'unworthy.”  To  a  discerning  social 
worker  it  may  also  suggest  a  desire  to  reform  in  a  man  who  finds  his 
own  will  power  inadequate  for  the  task.  It  may  suggest  also  a  wife 
whose  spirit  has  become  so  broken  by  the  handicap  of  an  inebriate 
husband  that  she  has  lost  her  grip  entirely.  Unemployment  suggests 
a  lack  of  income,  and  in  normal  times  possibly  also  an  aversion  to 
work.  It  may  also  mean  the  shattered  courage  to  which  unsuccessful 
efforts  to  find  work  inevitably  lead.  The  worker  in  this  field  has  not 
faced  his  problem  squarely  until  he  has  recognized  behind  any  applica¬ 
tion  for  relief  a  state  of  mind  and  spirit  which  is  quite  as  much  a  factor 
in  dependence  as  fluctuation  in  income.  There  are  some  unhealthy 
states  of  mind  which  are  improved  by  receiving  relief ;  there  are 
probably  more  that  are  caused  by  receiving  relief ;  and  there  are  few, 
if  any,  that  receive  the  maximum  of  helpfulness  from  relief  alone. 

Disabilities  and  psychology  as  the  administrative  basis.  Our  analy¬ 
sis  has  revealed  two  important  factors  in  dependence :  If  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  our  public  outdoor  relief  is  to  assist  families  out  of  dependence, 
as  is  implied  when  we  prescribe  by  law  that  such  relief  shall  be  tem¬ 
porary,  these  two  factors  give  us  the  proper  administrative  basis. 
A  public  department  for  caring  for  the  poor  in  their  own  homes  should 
not  be  organized  primarily  for  the  giving  of  relief.  This  should  be 
only  an  incident,  though  an  essential  one,  in  its  program.  It  should  be 
organized  so  as  to  secure  for  its  applicants  whatever  treatment  is 
needed  for  their  disabilities  and  for  the  conservation  and  development 
of  their  own  powers  of  self-maintenance. 

This  is  in  no  sense  a  new  conception.  Heretofore,  however,  we  have 
accepted  relief  as  the  program,  the  basic  thing,  and  have  tried  to  graft 
upon  it  an  administration  which  would  recognize  this  conception  of  its 
possibilities.  The  time  has  come  when  we  should  be  ready  to  discard 
relief  absolutely  as  a  unit  of  organization,  substituting  for  it  social 
treatment,  in  which  relief  has  a  place.  What  does  this  mean  in  terms 
of  the  analysis  of  dependence  which  we  have  made  ? 

The  treatment  of  disabilities.  The  disabilities  which  accompany 
dependence  are  in  general  susceptible  to  treatment. 


668 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Desertion  is  now  a  punishable  offense  almost  everywhere  in  the 
United  States.  In  some  places  the  legal  provisions  covering  desertion 
go  beyond  punishment,  and  include  some  interest  in  steadying  the 
man  through  probation,  and  in  family  reconciliations  through  bureaus 
and  courts  of  domestic  relations.  Every  case  of  desertion  should  be 
taken  up  for  as  thorough  treatment  as  it  needs.  Whatever  this  may 
involve  in  securing  the  co-operation  of  the  wife  in  prosecuting,  in  find¬ 
ing  the  man,  or  in  seeing  the  process  through  should  be  undertaken  by 
the  public  relief  official  unless  there  is  some  other  designated  official 
who  should  and  will  carry  the  responsibility. 

Unemployment  has  been  recognized  by  many  states  as  too  big  a 
problem  for  the  resources  of  the  unemployed  man  himself ;  and  they 
have  undertaken  to  help  him  with  it  through  the  establishment  of 
public  employment  bureaus.  Unemployment,  however,  is  not  always 
met  by  offering  the  man  a  job.  Frequently  he  must  be  fitted  for  the 
job,  or  the  job  must  be  chosen  with  reference  to  his  limitations.  It 
may  be  a  question  how  far  a  public  employment  bureau  can  go  in 
such  matters ;  but  the  public  relief  official  who  recognizes  unemploy¬ 
ment  as  the  root  of  his  applicant’s  difficulty  must  go  as  far  as  human 
resources  permit. 

Illness  is  probably  the  most  conspicuous  factor  in  dependence. 
Facilities  for  dealing  with  it  in  its  various  forms  are  all  but  universal. 
Although  they  are  sometimes  not  well  organized  and  co-ordinated,  it 
is  probably  true  that  some  treatment  is  available  for  every  case  of 
sickness.  It  does  not  appear  from  a  study  of  the  activities  of  public 
relief  departments  that  they  very  generally  assume  responsibility  for 
securing  such  treatment.  In  some  places  city  physicians  undertake 
the  treatment  of  the  destitute  sick  upon  orders  from  the  public  relief 
officer ;  but  the  latter  ordinarily  does  not  order  it  unless  it  is  applied 
for  or  some  serious  illness  is  discovered  in  a  family  receiving  relief. 
This  attitude  contrasts  sharply  with  the  practice  of  medical  inspection 
of  all  school  children  and  the  growing  tendency  in  industrial  establish¬ 
ments  to  undertake  periodical  physical  examinations  of  all  employes 
in  the  interest  of  efficiency.  Sickness  is  a  handicap  to  self-maintenance. 
It  means  loss  of  income  and  impaired  efficiency  for  all  the  responsi¬ 
bilities  of  life.  Proper  medical  attention  should  be  arranged  for  every 
family  which  asks  for  public  assistance,  whether  ill-health  is  obvious 
or  not. 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


669 


Whatever  the  disabilities  are  which  have  led  to  the  loss  of  income 
or  to  the  application  for  relief,  they  should  be  the  first  point  of  attack. 
Whatever  facilities  the  community  affords  for  treating  them  should 
be  brought  into  co-operation  by  the  public  relief  officer.  This  is  as 
true  of  intemperance,  feeble-mindedness,  and  others  as  it  is  of  deser¬ 
tion,  unemployment,  and  sickness.  Relief  giving  is  futile  otherwise, 
although  it  is  frequently  necessary  at  the  same  time.  In  a  well- 
organized  department  for  the  treatment  of  the  poor,  this  will  be  the 
first  administrative  responsibility. 

Personal  influence  in  the  treatment  oj  dependence.  The  attitude 
of  the  recipient  of  relief  towards  his  own  situation  and  towards  the 
relief  which  he  is  receiving  creates  an  equally  definite  administrative 
problem.  The  development  of  resourcefulness  and  the  spirit  of  self- 
dependence,  or  their  conservation  when  they  are  threatened  by  ad¬ 
versity,  are  fundamental  tasks  for  the  public  relief  official.  Family 
dependence  is  frequently  a  matter  of  the  unwise  use  of  resources.  This 
may  spring  from  ignorance,  from  a  wrong  set  of  values,  from  shiftless¬ 
ness,  or  from  a  broken  spirit.  Whatever  the  cause,  successful  treat¬ 
ment  of  such  families  must  include  the  re-education  of  habit  and 
emphasis  upon  right  standards — through  personal  influence. 

Responsibility  for  this  phase  of  the  task  is  not  necessarily  dis¬ 
charged  when  specific  disabilities  have  been  successfully  treated.  Too 
often  it  is  assumed  that  a  family  whose  wage-earners  are  employed, 
wdiose  ill-health  has  had  successful  medical  treatment,  whose  truant 
children  through  fear  of  the  attendance  officer  are  regular  in  school, 
whose  babies  through  the  watchful  eye  of  the  nurse  at  the  milk  station 
have  for  weeks  been  properly  fed,  whose  deserting  husband  and  father 
has  been  restored  to  them  with  a  threat  from  the  court  which  for  the 
time  being  keeps  him  up  to  his  responsibilities — is  a  family  rehabili¬ 
tated.  Such  hopeful  developments,  however,  may  all  have  been 
effected  by  outside  pressure  which  leaves  untouched  the  family 
psychology  which  made  them  necessary. 

This  is  a  problem  in  personal  influence  for  which  there  is  no  for¬ 
mula.  The  fruits  of  personal  influence  in  a  worker  are  intangible  but 
vital.  They  are  worth  more  to  the  process  of  rehabilitation  than  any 
quantity  of  relief  or  the  removal  of  any  number  of  objective  dis¬ 
abilities.  In  a  well-organized  department  for  the  treatment  of  the 
poor,  they  represent  the  second  administrative  responsibility. 


THE'  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


670  - 

Equipment  for  good  administration.  It  is  evident  that  administra¬ 
tion  of  this  sort  of  a  public  program  calls  for  well-qualified  officials. 
At  present  we  tend  to  discuss  efficiency  in  the  administration  of  public 
outdoor  relief  in  terms  of  honesty,  an  adequate  reporting  system, 
supervision  by  competent  authority,  and  (in  a  few  places)  adequate 
investigation  of  cases.  It  must  be  admitted  that  in  most  American 
communities  the  attainment  of  even  these  negative  standards  of 
efficiency  would  represent  almost  incredible  advance.  It  is  high  time, 
however,  that  we  face  squarely  the  lessons  of  experience.  Destitution 
does  not  present  primarily  a  relief  problem,  but  a  problem  in  social 
treatment.  Social  treatment  has  many  instruments  of  which  relief  is 
only  one.  We  are  dealing  with  human  lives  whose  normal  motive 
power  has  broken  down.  It  is  not  a  task  for  those  who  are  chosen 
as  most  of  our  public  relief  officials  are.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  many 
such  officials  who  are  doing  the  finest  kind  of  work.  They  are  demon¬ 
strating  the  soundness  of  every  suggestion  in  this  paper.  As  illustra¬ 
tions,  let  me  refer  to  Denver,  Colorado,  and  to  Westchester  County, 
New  York.  That  we  have  such  officials  in  a  few  places  is  sheer  luck ; 
for  almost  nowhere  have  we  recognized  the  true  administrative  basis 
of  relief,  and  stipulated  by  law  the  qualifications  of  those  whom  we 
put  in  charge  of  it. 

It  is  not  within  the  scope  of  this  paper  to  discuss  these  qualifications 
in  detail.  They  include  the  ability  to  collect  and  interpret  relevant 
information,  to  analyze  disabilities,  to  make  intelligent  choice  between 
the  alternatives  in  treatment  which  trained  thinking  will  develop,  and 
skill  in  the  art  of  personal  influence — all  of  those  qualifications,  in 
other  words,  which  are  implied  in  social  diagnosis  and  treatment.  It 
would  be  idle  to  claim  that  either  social  diagnosis  or  the  art  of  treat¬ 
ment  had  reached  the  stage  of  development  which  insures  their  suc¬ 
cessful  use.  Our  knowledge  of  the  effect  of  disabilities  upon  human 
beings  is.still  meagre ;  our  tests  of  the  efficiency  and  the  character  of 
the  individual  are  still  crude;  and  our  resources  for  good  work  are 
still  inadequate.  The  development  of  all  three  is  necessary  for  any¬ 
thing  like  precision  in  social  treatment.  And  yet,  despite  the  tentative 
state  of  their  development,  social  diagnosis  and  treatment  have  proved 
their  possibilities,  even  in  the  field  of  public  outdoor  relief. 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


67J 


t 

90.  Almshouses:  Existing  Conditions  and  Needed 

Reforms1 

The  statements  that  follow  are  based  on  an  inquiry  sent  to  the  secre¬ 
taries  of  the  state  board  of  charities  of  each  state,  the  reports  of  the 
United  States  Census  Bureau,  and  on  personal  observation.  Where  per¬ 
centages  are  mentioned  and  the  source  is  not  given,  it  should  be  as¬ 
sumed  that  these  came  from  the  reports  of  the  state  boards  of  charities. 

In  almshouses  as  in  other  institutions  work  for  inmates  keeps  them 
out  of  mischief,  insures  discipline,  helps  time  to  pass  more  pleasantly, 
and  makes  their  stay  at  the  institution  more  agreeable.  On  the  other 
hand,  idleness  begets  viciousness,  the  inmates  are  more  unmanageable, 
whereas  efficiency  in  the  institution  is  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Despite 
this,  from  information  received  from  secretaries  of  state  boards  of 
charities  all  over  the  country,  hardly  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  in¬ 
mates  are  given  work  of  any  sort.  True  in  almshouses  a  large  propor¬ 
tion  of  the  inmates  are  old,  many  are  very  feeble,  and  not  a  few  are 
wholly  incapacitated  for  work  of  any  sort,  yet  there  is  no  question  but 
some  work  can  be  given  to  many  who  are  now  unemployed.  Alex¬ 
ander  Johnson  says: 

There  is  no  more  important  part  of  almshouse  administration  than  the 
employment  of  inmates.  While  their  labor  in  many  cases  has  little  cash 
value,  it  is  none  the  less  valuable  for  other  reasons.  It  may  be  stated  as  a 
rule  to  which  there  is  no  exception  that  every  inmate  except  the  bedridden 
ones  should  have  some  employment  during  a  part  of  the  day,  and  the  more 
fully  the  usual  hours  are  occupied,  the  better. 

Surely  something  is  radically  wrong  with  almshouse  management  when 
reports  show  three-quarters  of  these  institutions  providing  no  means 
of  supplying  this  natural  desire. 

Unregulated  admission.  One  of  the  greatest  evils  prevailing  in  our 
almshouse-systems,  however,  appears  to  be  the  indiscriminate  admis¬ 
sion  of  applicants.  For  instance,  reports  from  every  state  in  the 
Union  show  that  almost  fifty  per  cent  of  the  almshouses  admit  tramps. 
So  far  as  could  be  learned,  New  York  and  Massachusetts  are  th£  only 
states  that  have  prohibited  the  admission  of  this  class.  In  other  states 

1  By  Murray  A.  Auerbach,  Secretary  of  the  United  Charities  Association,  Little 
Rock,  Arkansas.  From  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction,  1914,  PP-  465-473- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


672  ' 

it  is  left  to  each  almshouse  to  do  as  it  thinks  best.  In  California, 
tramps  gain  easy  admission  to  all  such  institutions  and  the  same 
applies  to  Illinois  in  the  winter.  In  Connecticut,  Missouri,  and  Ohio 
it  applies  to  about  one-half  of  the  almshouses.  These  few  states  are 
mentioned  because  it  brings  out  the  fact  that  this  grave  evil  is  found 
existing  even  in  states  considered  socially  up-to-date,  Illinois,  Mis¬ 
souri,  and  Ohio  especially  having  some  of  the  best  types  of  institutions 
found  in  this  country.  The  tramp  in  the  almshouse  should  never  be  sanc¬ 
tioned.  He  is  a  social  problem  to  be  dealt  with  by  other  social  agencies 
organized  and  equipped  for  the  purpose.  When  we  consider  also  that 
in  almost  eighty  per  cent  of  our  poorhouses,  according  to  the  reports 
received,  there  is  insufficient  regulation  regarding  the  coming  and  go¬ 
ing  of  inmates  the  enormity  of  this  evil  is  more  readily  understood. 

The  tramp  also  by  being  allowed  to  come  and  go  at  will  helps  to 
spread  disease  to  other  communities.  For  he  can  very  easily  contract 
disease  in  the  almshouse  and  spread  it  to  every  village  he  passes 
through.  This  then  brings  the  almshouse  in  closer  relationship  to 
every  town  and  hamlet  in  the  country.  But,  aside  from  the  danger 
to  other  communities,  think  of  the  manner  in  which  those  who  belong 
in  the  almshouse  are  exposed  to  disease.  For  it  is  not  the  exceptional 
place  that  disregards  the  need  for  segregating  contagious  diseases. 
Only  forty  per  cent  of  our  almshouses — less  than  one-half — make  any 
provision  for  this.  A  growing  sentiment  due  perhaps  to  the  activities 
of  anti-tuberculosis  societies  or  other  social  agencies  has  brought  about 
some  care  for  the  tubercular,  for  in  many  places  though  cancer  and 
syphilis  are  given  no  attention  whatever,  those  afflicted  with  tubercu¬ 
losis  are  given  either  a  separate  ward  or  a  tent  in  the  open  air.  But 
in  comparatively  few  is  proper  medical  attention  given  those  afflicted 
with  other  ailments.  Most  of  the  institutions  are  small  and  cannot 
afford  a  physician  on  full  time  nor  is  there  room  for  separate  wards. 
The  physician  is  usually  hired  not  for  his  interest  or  ability  but  be¬ 
cause  he  is  cheapest.  The  work  is  let  to  the  lowest  bidder  and  in 
some  places  pays  no  more  than  $75  or  $100  a  year,  the  physician  to 
come  once  a  week  and  sometimes  simply  to  be  ready  for  call. 

Medical  records,  examinations  before  admission,  or  during  stay, 
are  unknown.  And  the  superintendent  who  is  either  paid  so  much  per 
capita  or  who  is  the  lowest  bidder  or  who  is  paid  a  small  annual 
stipend  from  which  he  must  pay  the  expense  of  running  the  institu- 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  673 

tion,  is  often  ignorant  of  almshouse  management,  conscientious  though 
he  may  possibly  be. 

Even  in  many  of  the  larger  almshouses  where  the  superintendent  is 
better  paid  is  this  true.  For  in  very  few  instances  are  superintendents 
chosen  for  knowledge  or  ability.  In  this  connection  it  may  be  well 
to  mention  that  the  secretary  of  the  Board  of  Public  Charities  of  North 
Carolina  recommends  a  trained  nurse  to  be  present  when  new  build¬ 
ings  are  opened,  and  to  remain  several  months  in  order  to  teach  the 
keepers  how  to  keep  the  place  in  a  sanitary  condition.  On  the  other 
hand  the  secretary  of  one  of  our  densely  populated  states,  Ohio,  re¬ 
ports,  "Very  little  attention  is  given  to  the  prevention  of  infectious  or 
contagious  diseases  and  facilities  for  handling  such  are  very  inade¬ 
quate.”  Surely  we  cannot  blame  the  respectable  poor  for  refusing  the 
shelter  of  the  almshouse. 

Separation  of  sexes.  This  also  leads  to  the  necessity  for  a  strict 
separation  of  sexes  not  only  in  the  almshouses  but  on  the  grounds. 
Composed  as  the  almshouse  is,  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  human 
beings,  there  should  be  absolutely  no  mingling  of  sexes  in  any  part  of 
the  institution.  In  almost  every  large  almshouse  this  separation  is 
carried  out,  and  though  the  reports  showed  that  eighty  per  cent  of 
these  institutions  have  rules  for  sex  separation  in  many  places,  espe¬ 
cially  the  smaller  ones,  this  was  not  made  complete  enough.  The 
United  States  Census  report  of  1910  shows  eleven  hundred  and  seven 
illegitimate  babies  born  in  the  almshouse.  Of  course,  a  considerable 
number  of  the  mothers  of  these  children  were  admitted  as  lying-in 
cases,  but  some  of  these  mothers  had  lived  at  the  institutions  for  some 
time,  and  in  at  least  twenty-eight  instances  the  fathers  of  these 
illegitimate  children  were  inmates  at  the  almshouses  at  which  they 
were  born.  The  secretary  of  the  state  board  of  charities  in  one  of 
our  largest  states  probably  expressed  correctly  the  situation  existing 
all  over  this  country  when  he  said  in  answer  to  an  inquiry,  "In  all  of 
our  almshouses  there  is  an  effort  toward  separation  of  sexes.  The 
type  of  construction  of  some  of  the  older  buildings  makes  this  exceed¬ 
ingly  difficult.”  This  is,  therefore,  a  good  argument  for  the  considera¬ 
tion  of  all  features  of  almshouse  management  when  the  plans  for 
buildings  are  submitted.  It  also  suggests  a  potent  reason  for  the 
doing  away  with  the  institutions  that  continue  to  perpetuate  these 
almost  unbelievable  conditions.  Far  better  would  it  be  to  destroy 


674 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


immediately  the  almshouses  that  help  to  weaken  the  human  race  than 
to  provide  such  meagre  shelter  as  they  afford  to  the  aged  and  infirm. 

Perhaps  the  most  pathetic  feature  of  old  age  poverty  is  that  of 
the  old  couple  who  after  many  years  of  congeniality  find  themselves 
without  shelter  or  care.  The  reward  for  former  service  to  the  com¬ 
munity,  meted  out  by  the  state,  is  generally  the  poorhouse — and  sepa¬ 
ration.  In  most  of  the  almshouses  there  is  no  provision  made  for  the 
old  couple.  To  be  consigned  to  the  poorhouse  means  to  be  separated 
till  death  joins  them  together  in  the  hereafter.  Of  a  number  of  secre¬ 
taries  of  charity  organization  societies  who  were  interviewed,  all 
stated  emphatically  that  respectable  old  couples  are  not  sent  by  their 
organizations  to  the  almshouse  where  separation  prevails  because  of 
the  hardship  and  anguish  it  would  entail.  This  is  indeed  a  sad  com¬ 
mentary  on  the  entire  system.  Instead  of  making  the  last  resting 
place  in  life  a  welcome  home  for  the  aged  and  infirm  it  is  instead 
viewed  with  dread  by  the  poor  and  the  social  worker  alike.  The  char¬ 
ity  organization  secretaries  may  have  seen  the  almshouse  in  only  a 
limited  fashion,  yet  their  attitude  is  significant. 

While  there  are  a  number  of  almshouses  that  make  provision  for 
old  couples  the  best  type,  perhaps,  is  the  New  York  City  Farm  Colony 
on  Staten  Island.  New  York  has  three  almshouses,  each  institution 
receiving  its  inmates  according  to  their  social  status.  The  better  kind, 
that  is,  those  who  have  been  rendered  public  charges  through  no  fault 
of  their  own,  and  those  who  have  led  exemplary  lives,  are  sent  to  the 
farm  colony,  where  the  old  couples  are  kept  together  in  little  cottages 
offering  them  all  the  comforts  of  home.  Not  alone  does  the  Farm 
Colony  allow  each  couple  a  room  for  themselves,  but  they  can  take  to 
their  room  furniture  and  pictures  which  have  been  made  dear  by 
association,  and  which  add  cheer  to  their  weary  lives. 

The  inmates  of  this  home  are  allowed  to  work  on  the  place  for  such 
time  as  their  strength  permits.  The  superintendent’s  report  for  1909 
says:  "The  old  men  find  great  interest  in  'our  vegetables.’  Enough 
are  raised  to  supply  the  colony  and  ship  two-thirds  of  the  crop  to  other 
institutions  in  the  department.  Some  help  is  hired.”  Bear  this  in 
mind  and  reflect  that  only  a  little  over  forty  per  cent  of  tillable  land 
belonging  to  almshouses  all  over  the  country  is  utilized.  The  Farm 
Colony  in  1909  alone  raised  $10,602.93  of  farm  products,  market 
value,  at  a  cost  of  $6,380.32,  or  a  profit  to  the  institution  of  $4,222.61. 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


675 


Present  almshouses  mistaken  charities.  The  almshouse  as  con¬ 
ducted  today  is  a  mistaken  charity.  It  is  in  many  instances  a  charity 
that  hurts  rather  than  helps.  It  is  a  charity  that  is  destructive  rather 
than  constructive.  We  have  just  considered  percentages.  Let  us  now 
consider  actual  figures  that  will  show  how  the  almshouse  is  continually 
creating  problems  for  the  next  generation  to  solve. 

Although  some  few  states  have  passed  laws  against  the  keeping  of 
children  in  the  almshouse,  the  United  States  Census  report  shows  that 
in  1910  there  were  harbored  in  these  institutions  thirty-two  hundred 
and  seventy-eight  children  up  to  nineteen  years  of  age.  The  census 
report  does  not  state  whether  this  includes  feeble-minded  children, 
but  assuming  that  it  does,  there  are  many  grades  of  feeble-mindedness 
that  are  improvable  and  which  are  not  improved  by  the  almshouse. 
Also  it  does  not  change  the  status  of  the  normal  children  involved. 

While  we  are  concerned  with  all  children,  the  greatest  danger  lies 
with  the  girls.  Of  these  there  were  fourteen  hundred  and  twenty 
in  almshouses  in  1910.  There  are  no  figures  to  show  how  many  years 
these  children  spent  with  their  associates  in  the  almshouse,  but  we  do 
know  that  one  hundred  and  thirteen  children  from  five  to  nineteen 
years  of  age  had  spent  all  their  days  in  the  institution  and  that  sixty- 
two  females  from  five  to  twenty-four  years  of  age  knew  no  other  home 
than  the  poorhouse. 

Mental  defectives.  Few  almshouses  are  equipped  to  care  for  mental 
defectives,  especially  the  feeble-minded.  Some  of  the  larger  institu¬ 
tions  are  provided  with  some  facilities,  but  the  smaller  the  institution, 
the  less  prepared  is  it  to  care  for  the  varied  cases  that  are  admitted. 
The  danger  of  keeping  the  feeble-minded  in  the  almshouse  is  a  par¬ 
ticularly  glaring  one.  Says  Alexander  Johnson : 

It  would  be  easy  to  give  hundreds  of  instances  of  abuse,  usually  sexual,  of 
feeble-minded  persons  in  almshouses.  It  is  the  common  understanding  that 
few  or  none  of  the  women  of  child-bearing  age  escape  maternity,  and  that 
their  children,  usually  of  strong-minded  fathers,  ordinarily  inherit  the 
mother’s  psychic  defect  in  one  of  its  various  forms.  The  conclusion  is  in¬ 
evitable — that  the  feeble-minded  woman  of  child-bearing  age  is  not  in  her 
proper  place  in  an  almshouse;  and  if  perforce,  she  is  kept  there,  in  default 
of  better  accommodation,  then  the  superintendent  and  matrons  and  govern¬ 
ing  board,  too,  are  under  the  strongest  obligation  to  protect  her  against 
abuse  and  the  state  against  her  possible  progeny. 


676 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Let  us  again  revert  to  the  figures  of  the  United  States  Census 
Bureau.  In  1910  there  were  in  the  almshouses  of  this  country  2857 
insane,  9813  feeble-minded,  and  1289  epileptics.  Were  we  to  add  to 
this  the  540  deaf  and  2427  blind,  we  have  a  total  of  16,926.  Also 
add  to  this  the  3278  children  above  referred  to  and  it  gives  a  grand 
total  of  20,204  persons  in  almshouses  but  who  did  not  properly  belong 
there.  These  classes  should  not  be  cared  for  at  the  almshouse.  They 
belong  in  institutions  specially  equipped  for  the  specialized  treatment 
the  cases  demand. 

Political  abuse.  For  the  causes  of  almshouse  evils,  we  must  not 
blame  the  superintendent  altogether — for  he  often  acts  according  to 
his  best  knowledge,  but  the  entire  system  must  be  condemned.  Missouri 
may  be  taken  as  an  average  state.  It  has  densely  populated  centers 
and  sparsely  inhabited  districts.  It  contains  some  of  the  largest  cities 
and  the  smallest  hamlets.  It  has  some  of  the  best  institutions  and 
some  of  the  poorest.  Its  almshouses  rank  among  the  best  and  among 
the  worst.  Therefore,  what  is  true  of  Missouri  may  be  true  in  a 
greater  or  lesser  measure  of  other  states.  Through  the  kindness  of  the 
secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities  and  Corrections  we  have 
some  figures  that  throw  interesting  light  on  the  subject.  The  average 
time  of  service  of  the  superintendent  is  three  and  a  half  years.  The 
average  length  of  service  for  seventeen  superintendents  was  eleven 
years ;  and  for  eighty-one,  one  and  eight-ninths  years.  Here  are  human 
beings  consigned  to  the  care  of,  in  many  cases,  ignorant,  illiterate 
persons  who  have  shown  merit  only  in  producing  a  few  votes.  Human 
beings  experimented  with  by  politicians  to  further  their  own  political 
careers.  The  almshouse  becomes  not  a  home  for  the  aged  and  infirm, 
but  a  place  of  torture  for  the  respectable  poor.  Under  the  political 
system  even  if  a  man  who  is  conscientious  is  appointed,  he  is  sorely 
handicapped.  He  may  study  almshouse  management  with  a  view  to 
instituting  many  reforms  that  will  make  the  place  more  habitable, 
but  before  he  is  able  to  carry  his  plans  into  effect  a  new  election  takes 
place  and  he  is  succeeded  by  a  new  appointee  who  knowing  nothing 
of  the  almshouse  must  begin  all  over  again  only  in  time  to  be  succeeded 
by  another.  Does  this  sound  like  an  exaggeration  when  eighty-one  of 
ninety-eight  superintendents  in  Missouri  served  on  an  average  of  one 
and  eight-ninths  years  ? 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


677 


Another  most  important  feature  to  consider  is  the  compensation  of 
the  superintendent.  Let  us  take  Missouri  again  for  an  illustration. 
The  ten  best  paid  superintendents  average  $99  a  month ;  for  sixty-six 
the  average  is  $55.60 ;  and  for  fifty-five,  the  average  salary  is  $47.53. 
Imagine  getting  expert  service  for  less  than  $50  a  month.  Yet  all 
defectives,  physical  wrecks,  the  dissolute,  and  the  sensitive  are  thrown 
together  into  one  group,  and  the  problems  emanating  from  this  group 
are  left  to  a  poorly  paid  executive  with  no  previous  experience,  ability, 
or  adaptability.  Social  workers  today  boast  of  preventing  problems, 
yet  here  are  they  created  in  geometrical  proportion  to  the  solution. 
Here  are  selfish  communities  saving  a  few  dollars  now  but  sacrificing 
the  health  and  happiness  of  human  beings  and  creating  huge  economic 
and  social  losses  for  the  country  at  large  and  for  succeeding  generations. 

Suggested  improvements.  After  considering  the  faults  of  existing 
almshouses  let  us  now  observe  conditions  as  they  should  be.  In  the 
first  place,  there  is  something  in  a  name,  and  the  name  "  almshouse  ” 
or  "poorhouse”  through  its  many  years  of  usage  and  abuse  has  at¬ 
tracted  to  it  a  stigma  that  can  never  be  eradicated  so  long  as  the  names 
continue.  After  all,  the  institution  is  intended  to  be  a  "home  for  the 
aged  and  infirm, ”  which  would  be  quite  an  appropriate  name.  In 
some  places  the  name  of  some  person  or  locality  is  adopted  as  the 
William  C.  Graves  Home  in  Illinois,  or  the  Bay  View  Home  in  Balti¬ 
more,  both  excellent  means  of  doing  away  with  the  objectionable  name 
"poorhouse.” 

The  ideal  system  would  include  the  cottage  plan  and  a  close  classi¬ 
fication  of  inmates  upon  their  entry  to  the  institution,  considering 
their  past  lives  and  the  places  held  by  them  in  the  communities  from 
which  they  came.  Those  who  are  of  higher  moral  and  social  standard 
should  be  kept  separate  from  those  of  lower  standards.  This  may  jar 
the  sense  of  equality  but  it  is  decidedly  unfair  to  take  old  people  who 
have  led  exemplary  lives  and  ask  them  to  choose  as  bed  fellows  and 
general  companions  victims  of  drunkenness  and  debauchery. 

It  is  not  easy  of  course  to  effect  the  separation  in  a  smaller  institu¬ 
tion,  but  the  fact  that  the  smaller  institutions  cannot  afford  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  proper  conduct  is  the  best  argument  for  their  being  wiped 
out.  The  almshouse  does  not  serve  its  purpose  if  it  does  not  help  to 
lessen  the  number  and  complexity  of  social  problems  for  the  future. 


678 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


This  study  has  brought  out  one  prominent  fact — that  the  best  condi¬ 
tions  are  found  in  the  larger  institutions  and  the  worse  affairs  are 
found  in  the  numerous  smaller  institutions  that  dot  the  country. 

The  small  institutions,  by  the  way,  far  outnumber  the  large  ones. 
In  1910,  there  were  a  total  of  twenty-three  hundred  and  ninety-six 
almshouses  in  the  United  States  of  which  the  following  classification 
was  made: 


Population  400  and  over . 26 

Population  300  to  400 . 9 

Population  200  to  300 . 26 

Population  100  to  200 . 80 

Population  10  and  under . 1005 


A  little  more  than  one-half  of  one  per  cent  of  the  almshouses  in 
this  country  have  a  population  of  one  hundred  or  more  while  forty-two 
per  cent  have  a  population  of  ten  or  less.  Surely  this  is  sufficient 
evidence  in  view  of  the  facts  already  brought  out  that  there  is  going 
on  continually  a  great  economic  waste  at  a  fearful  social  cost. 

What  is  needed  most  is  the  application  of  organized  charities  prin¬ 
ciples  to  almshouse  management.  A  social  worker  keen  to  his  respon¬ 
sibilities  to  the  inmates  and  the  public  must  be  placed  in  charge,  and 
all  cases  should  be  given  study,  investigation,  and  care.  If  this  were 
done,  the  almshouse  could  be  made  a  source  of  great  help  to  the  aged 
poor  by  locating  relatives  who  may  be  financially  able  to  care  for  the 
applicant  or  inmate,  and  by  placing  the  responsibility  where  it  belongs. 
Indeed,  by  interesting  the  relatives  intelligently  a  family  may  be  re¬ 
united,  and  the  applicant  reap  the  benefit  of  home  life. 

The  almshouse  can  be  made  the  most  useful  of  social  institutions, 
if  each  locality  would  but  awaken  to  its  social  duty  and  its  responsi¬ 
bility  to  posterity. 

91.  Local  versus  Centralized  Administration1 

Wherever  in  the  operation  of  systems  of  public  relief  of  the  poor 
the  responsibility  for  development  and  execution  is  allowed  to  rest 
with  small  local  units  of  government,  there  will  be  found  an  excessive 

1From  The  History  of  Public  Poor  Relief  in  Massachusetts  (pp.  189-191),  by 
Robert  W.  Kelso,  Executive  Secretary  of  the  Boston  Council  of  Social  Agencies. 
Copyright,  1922,  by  R.  W.  Kelso.  Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  Boston. 


THE  POOR  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


679 


degree  of  activity  on  the  part  of  officials  aimed  solely  at  the  satisfac¬ 
tion  of  local  self-interest.  Wherever  the  responsibility  for  such  relief 
has  been  removed  from  the  small  local  community,  there  will  be  dis¬ 
covered  a  dangerous  tendency  in  legislation  which  seeks  to  redistribute 
the  wealth  of  the  community  by  taking  from  the  thrifty  citizen  who 
has,  and  giving  to  him  who  has  not.  It  is  a  dilemma. 

When  the  price  of  independence  and  the  shame  of  losing  social 
place,  however  lowly,  are  removed  from  the  receipt  of  public  bounty, 
the  inevitable  result,  born  of  human  nature  itself,  is  a  clamor  for  aid 
— a  demand  as  of  right — a  shameless  scramble  for  that  which  should 
come  only  by  the  toil  and  initiative  of  the  citizen  himself.  To  remove 
the  burden  of  relieving  the  poor  from  the  small  neighborhood  circle  in 
which  each  inhabitant  and  his  daily  affairs  are  known  to  every  one  else 
is  to  screen  him  from  the  eye  of  his  mentors  and  to  free  him  from  that 
fear  of  ridicule  which  is  the  greatest  spur  to  self-support. 

To  administer  poor  relief  by  an  authority  beyond  the  horizon  of 
such  small  neighborhoods,  out  of  funds  not  directly  extracted  from 
the  pockets  of  its  residents,  is  to  give  this  impersonal  cast  to  relief 
which  encourages  pauperism.  The  centralization  of  administration 
in  the  State  Government  is  a  plan  which  is  pregnant  with  the  dangers 
of  pauperization.  It  is  unsafe. 

How,  then,  shall  poor  relief  be  administered?  In  Massachusetts 
there  are  three  hundred  and  fifty-four  cities  and  towns.  In  spite  of 
long-continued  and  gradual  absorption  of  relief  functions  by  the  State 
Government,  each  local  community  remains  at  this  day  an  independent 
sovereignty  for  purposes  of  relieving  the  poor.  The  history  of  the 
past  three  hundred  years  of  poor  relief  by  these  municipalities  is  a 
record  of  endless  bickering  and  sharp  practice,  indulged  in  by  officials 
of  small  outlook,  conscientiously  defending  their  towns  from  public 
burdens.  To  the  social  worker  engaged  in  private  charity  the  term 
"overseer  of  the  poor”  is  a  byword  for  inadequate,  unthinking  doles. 
In  the  overseer’s  hands  relief  has  seldom  been  adequate  to  the  need ; 
and  rarely  has  it  betrayed  a  constructive  plan  looking  to  the  return 
of  the  pauper  to  self-support.  Relieving  the  town’s  poor  has  in  all 
decades  been  a  crude  piece  of  work.  If  State  administration  is  unsafe, 
independent  local  administration  does  not  function,  and  is  unsound. 

Students  of  social  welfare  have  variously  asserted  that  public  out¬ 
door  relief  can  never  be  administered  without  pauperization  and  there- 


68o 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


fore  should  be  abolished ;  that  the  State  should  perform  all  public 
relief  functions,  excluding  the  counties  and  towns,  because  the  central¬ 
ized  plan  affords  a  comprehensive  system ;  that  the  State  should  have 
no  share  in  it,  because  problems  of  poverty,  like  problems  of  crime, 
are  local  and  must  be  locally  met.  None  of  these  proposals  would 
provide  the  solution.  The  evolution  of  the  Massachusetts  system  is 
itself  the  demonstration  of  the  right  method.  Essentially  the  system 
now  in  operation  decentralizes  the  administration  of  public  poor  relief 
by  leaving  it  to  the  smallest  unit  of  government,  the  town;  and 
centralizes  the  development  of  the  right  method — the  social  pro¬ 
gramme — in  the  State  Government.  This,  then,  is  the  answer:  cen¬ 
tralized  policy ;  decentralized  administration. 


CHAPTER  XXV 


RELATION  BETWEEN  PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 

92.  The  Relation  between  Philanthropy  and  State 

or  Municipal  Action1 

There  seems,  on  first  thought,  nothing  in  common  between  the  im¬ 
pulsive  response  of  the  heart  to  the  appeal  for  charity  and  the  coldly 
ordered  activity  of  a  government  department.  But  in  a  densely 
peopled  community,  whether  of  the  Old  World  or  the  New,  with  all 
the  complications  of  city  life,  philanthropy  itself  becomes  complicated, 
and  charity  perforce  organized. 

Thus  we  see,  alike  in  the  cities  of  the  United  States  and  in  those  of 
Europe,  the  up-growth  of  great  philanthropic  corporations.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  government  itself  becomes  differentiated  in  structure 
as  in  function,  and  learns  how  to  make  use  of  volunteers.  Thus,  we 
find  on  the  one  hand,  an  extensive  substitution  for  the  personal  dis¬ 
tribution  of  alms,  of  independent  corporations  and  societies  adminis¬ 
tering,  through  salaried  officials,  funds  voluntarily  subscribed  for  the 
purpose ;  and,  on  the  other,  a  great  and  growing  use,  as  part  of  the 
governmental  machinery,  central  or  local,  of  the  unpaid  and  voluntarily 
serving  amateur.  We  see,  in  fact,  the  paradox  that  a  large  and  grow¬ 
ing  part  of  the  activities  of  the  voluntary  agencies  in  great  cities  are 
exercised,  not  by  volunteers,  but  by  a  paid  bureaucracy ;  whilst  over 
an  extensive  and  steadily  increasing  field  the  operations  of  the  local 
or  central  government  are  carried  on,  not  by  officials,  but  by  unprofes¬ 
sional  volunteers.  We  have  been  groping  our  way  to  a  clear  and 
rational  theory  as  to  the  proper  relationship  between  the  government, 
on  the  one  hand,  whether  national  or  municipal,  and  the  voluntary 
agency  on  the  other. 

*By  Sidney  Webb,  LL.B.,  Professor  of  Public  Administration  in  the  Univer¬ 
sity  of  London.  From  "The  Extension  Ladder  Theory  of  the  Relation  between 
Voluntary  Philanthropy  and  State  or  Municipal  Action,”  the  Survey ,  Vol.  XXXI, 
No.  23  (1914),  PP-  703-707. 


682 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  idea  that  there  ought  to  be  any  deliberate  organization  of  our 
charitable  feelings,  or  that  there  can  be  any  systematic  relation  be¬ 
tween  individual  philanthropy  and  the  action  of  the  state,  is  a  com¬ 
paratively  modern  one.  There  are  still  many  good  people  among  us 
who  instinctively  resent  any  discouragement  of  the  personal  impulse 
to  give  alms  or  to  perform  "good  works ”  as  a  religious  duty  by  which 
we  "acquire  merit”  or  do  glory  unto  God,  quite  irrespective  of  the 
effect  really  produced  upon  the  recipients  and  beneficiaries.  To  them, 
at  least  in  theory,  personal  charity  is  everything. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  still  amongst  us  representatives  of  the 
unspoken  views  of  the  "early  Victorian”  economists,  who  regard  every 
kind  of  philanthropic  action  as  a  hideous  mistake,  calculated  to  under¬ 
mine  the  independence  and  lessen  the  energy  of  the  poor,  and  even 
to  promote  the  survival  of  the  unfit.  To  them,  personal  charity  and 
government  provision  are,  at  least  in  theory,  alike  anathema. 

Leaving  aside,  for  the  moment,  these  extremists  on  either  side,  let 
us  deal  simply  with  the  facts.  We  have  in  the  field  both  voluntary 
philanthropy  and  government  action,  and  therefore,  necessarily,  some 
relation  between  them.  What  ought  it  to  be  ? 

To  determine  this,  we  must  first  have  clearly  in  our  minds  the 
specific  advantages  and  actual  potentialities  of  each  of  these  instru¬ 
ments.  In  the  United  Kingdom  of  today,  and  I  presume  also  in  the 
United  States,  voluntary  agencies  are  superior  to  the  public  authorities 
in  three  main  features :  in  invention  and  initiative,  in  their  ability  to 
lavish  unstinted  care  on  particular  cases,  and  in  the  intensity  and 
variety  of  the  religious  influences  that  they  can  bring  to  bear  on 
personal  character. 

In  the  domain  of  social  pathology,  we  are,  as  yet,  only  groping  in 
the  dark  and  experimenting.  The  opportunity  and  capacity  for  orig¬ 
inating  new  developments  in  the  treatment  of  individuals  lie  princi¬ 
pally  with  the  voluntary  agency.  The  public  authority  is  bound  down 
by  law,  as  well  as  limited  by  the  disinclination  of  the  local  taxpayers 
to  expend  money  in  unfamiliar  ways.  "We  must  not  experiment  with 
the  public  money”  is  perpetually  an  effective  plea.  All  sorts  of  preju¬ 
dices  and  dislikes  amongst  the  elected  aldermen  or  councillors  have  to 
be  considered.  In  a  voluntary  agency,  a  person  with  new  ideas,  or  a 
group  of  enthusiasts  for  new  methods  of  treatment  of  particular  cases, 
can  put  new  devices  to  the  test  of  experiment. 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


683 


Looking  back  on  the  social  history  of  the  last  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  we  must  recognize  that  nearly  all  the  successful  developments  in 
the  United  Kingdom  as  in  the  United  States,  in  the  way  of  collective 
provision  for  any  class,  have  been  preceded  and  rendered  practicable 
by  private  experiments.  This  is  true  of  practically  our  whole  educa¬ 
tional  organization,  from  the  kindergarten  to  the  university,  from  the 
primary  school  to  the  reformatory,  from  cookery  instruction  and 
manual  training  and  special  schools  for  the  defective  to  university 
extension  courses,  and  vacation  schools. 

The  same  sort  of  philanthropic  experimenting  with  voluntary  or¬ 
ganization  and  private  funds  has  preceded,  and  is  still  preceding,  the 
official  organization  of  the  public  health  service,  from  paving  and 
cleansing  and  lighting  the  streets  to  the  provision  of  a  constant  water 
supply,  from  isolation  hospitals  to  tuberculin  dispensaries,  from  health 
visiting  and  schools  for  mothers,  to  school  clinics  and  convalescent 
homes.  And  there  is  still  much  to  discover  and  to  learn.  The  future 
hides  within  it,  we  may  hope  and  assume,  as  much  as  we  have  found 
in  the  past.  It  is  the  first,  the  highest,  and  in  many  ways  the  most 
useful  duty  of  voluntary  agencies  to  perform  this  indispensable  service 
of  invention  and  initiative  and  perpetual  experimenting  in  the  unknown. 

The  second  specific  feature  of  the  voluntary  agency,  and  one  which 
gives  it  an  enormous  advantage  in  its  appropriate  sphere,  is  that  the 
volunteer  worker  or  the  voluntary  institution  can,  if  desired,  lavish 
a  wholly  disproportionate  amount  of  care  on  a  difficult  case  or  a  dif¬ 
ficult  class  of  cases.  The  salaried  teachers  or  inspectors  of  a  public 
authority  must  "do  equal  justice  to  all  their  clients”;  the  unpaid 
volunteer  can  spend  days  and  months  on  one  particular  person  or 
family  that  may  seem  to  call  for  more  concentration  and  thought  and 
feeling  than  the  ordinary  run  of  cases.  A  beneficent  patron  may  spend 
his  whole  capital  on  establishing  one  particular  institution  of  a  special 
type,  perhaps  for  a  class  of  persons  statistically  of  no  great  importance 
to  the  community.  And  as  in  the  case  of  experiment  and  invention, 
though  volunteers  and  voluntary  agencies  may  fail  in  ninety-nine 
cases,  the  hundredth  case  which  turns  out  to  be  a  success  may  be  of 
untold  importance  to  the  community. 

Finally,  we  have  the  significant  fact  that  it  is  only  through  volun¬ 
teers  and  voluntary  agencies,  that,  in  England  and  I  suppose  also  in 
the  new  England,  we  can  bring  to  bear,  in  the  treatment  of  any  in- 


684 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


dividual  or  class  of  individuals,  the  specific  religious  atmosphere.  It 
may  be  that  this  is  not  an  inherent  distinction  between  voluntary 
agencies  and  state  action.  It  may  be  that  in  some  communities,  in 
some  phases  of  public  opinion,  we  might  have  the  public  authority 
providing  an  intensely  religious  atmosphere  for  those  whom  it  succours 
or  treats. 

But,  given  the  strong  feeling  against  any  preference  by  the  state  for 
one  denomination  over  another,  and  the  strong  objection  to  submitting 
any  person  to  the  influence  of  a  creed  with  which  he  may  not  agree, 
or  with  which  his  parents  may  not  agree,  or  with  which  the  taxpayers 
who  bear  the  cost  may  not  agree,  it  is  practically  impossible  to  bring 
to  bear  on  the  individual  treated  in  a  public  institution  those  potent 
reformatory  influences  which  are  evoked  chiefly,  and  perhaps  exclu¬ 
sively,  in  an  atmosphere  of  fervent  spiritual  faith  of  a  specific  religious 
denomination. 

As  to  the  real  efficacy  of  such  spiritual  influences  opinions  will  differ. 
We  may  recognize  that  they  are  not  appropriate  for  all  cases,  nor  for 
all  kinds  of  treatment.  But  it  would  be  both  blind  and  intolerant  to 
deny  their  value,  and  even  their  extraordinary  potency,  in  some  o‘f 
the  cases,  and  along  with  some  of  the  kinds  of  treatment  to  which 
they  are  appropriate.  None  but  fanatics  would  object  to  making  use, 
under  all  due  safeguards,  of  voluntary  agencies  which  offer  to  provide 
an  apparently  efficacious  treatment,  with  a  definitely  religious  atmos¬ 
phere,  at  less  cost  than  that  at  which  the  state  can  itself  do  the  work, 
for  those  sufferers  who  already  belong  to  the  particular  denomination 
in  question,  or  who,  being  adult,  deliberately  prefer  such  an  institution 
to  that  which  the  state  provides. 

There  is,  indeed,  every  reason  to  believe  that  without  some  such 
arrangement,  we  cannot,  in  fact,  do  what  is  best  for  the  fallen  woman 
or  the  inchoately  criminal  child — perhaps  also  for  some  types  of  the 
congenitally  feeble-minded,  the  habitual  inebriate,  and  the  "work  shy.” 

The  three  specific  advantages  of  voluntary  agencies  are  accompanied 
by  equal  specific  defects  from  which  public  authorities  are  free. 

The  first  of  these  drawbacks  is  the  unfair  incidence  of  the  cost  of 
voluntary  philanthropy.  It  must  be  stigmatized  as  a  distinct  disad¬ 
vantage  that  those  who  actually  bear  the  cost  of  these  agencies  are 
few  and  far  between,  and  the  bulk  of  citizens  are  excluded  from  a 
charge  to  which  all  should  contribute  according  to  their  ability.  This 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


685 


characteristic  incidence  of  the  cost  of  all  private  philanthropy  amounts, 
in  effect,  to  a  penalty  on  the  good  and  conscientious ;  and  is,  at  the 
same  time,  equivalent  to  a  bounty  on  those  who  are  selfish  and  with¬ 
out  public  spirit. 

Moreover,  the  financial  basis  of  voluntary  institutions  is  not  only 
inequitable,  but  the  revenue  thus  obtained  is  extraordinarily  fitful, 
and  its  collection  absorbs  the  time  and  energy  of  the  organizers  to  an 
altogether  extravagant  extent.  It  has  been  said  that  half  the  time  of 
the  promoters  and  managers  of  the  best  and  most  approved  voluntary 
institutions  is  absorbed  in  raising  subscriptions  to  support  them.  It 
is  this  which  makes  the  voluntary  hospitals  of  the  United  Kingdom 
the  most  extravagantly  wasteful  of  funds  and  energy  of  all  the  depart¬ 
ments  of  our  common  life. 

The  second  great  drawback  of  voluntary  agencies  springs  partly 
from  this  financial  uncertainty,  but  partly  also  from  their  sporadic 
and,  so  to  speak,  accidental  growth ;  it  is  practically  impossible  for 
voluntary  agencies  to  perform  any  task,  or  execute  any  service,  com¬ 
pletely  and  continuously. 

The  most  picturesque  example  of  this  lack  of  completeness  and 
continuity  would  have  been  discovered  by  a  citizen  of  London  in  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  those  days  it  was  left  practically 
to  each  individual,  or  to  voluntary  associations  of  individuals,  to  pave, 
and  light,  and  cleanse  the  streets.  The  service  was  naturally  very 
discontinuous.  Here  would  be  a  patch  of  stone  cobbles,  then  a  heap 
of  mud,  following  that  a  deep  hole,  and  possibly  a  plank  or  some 
cinders  as  an  agreeable  alternative.  One  house  would  have  a  lantern, 
and  the  next  ten  would  be  without  them.  The  watchmen  were  long 
limited  practically  to  such  "  select  ”  quarters  as  St.  James’s  Square, 
where  the  inhabitants  decided  that  they  had  valuable  property  to 
protect. 

It  was,  in  fact,  the  impracticability  of  getting  any  complete  and 
continuous  action  from  voluntary  agencies  that  led  to  the  first  great 
municipal  enterprise  of  paving,  lighting,  and  watching  the  streets. 
The  provision  of  schools  for  poor  children  was  long  the  favourite 
service  of  private  philanthropy.  But  such  schools  failed  altogether  to 
cover  the  whole  ground ;  and  it  was  only  the  desire  to  give  complete 
and  continuous  education  to  all  children  that  led  to  the  establishment 
of  the  local  education  authority,  with  its  compulsory  rate  and  its  com- 


686 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


pulsory  attendance.  The  local  health  authority  had  to  be  called  in  to 
supply  the  deficiency  in  hospitals,  as  soon  as  it  was  considered  neces¬ 
sary  to  have  the  means  of  isolating  all  infectious  cases  everywhere. 

Whenever  it  is  considered  necessary,  with  regard  to  any  particular 
service,  any  particular  class  of  patients,  or  any  particular  treatment, 
that  it  should  be  extended  to  every  case,  or  to  every  part  of  the 
country,  or  for  the  whole  period  of  the  contingency,  the  community 
finds  it  impossible  to  depend  on  voluntary  agencies.  The  public 
authority  alone  can  insure  a  provision  that  is  universal,  ubiquitous, 
complete,  or  continuous. 

Closely  connected  with  the  inability  of  the  voluntary  agency  to  give 
complete  and  continuous  treatment  to  the  cases  that  it  purports  to 
undertake  is  its  inability  to  " compel  them  to  come  in” ;  its  powerless¬ 
ness  to  enforce  submission  to  treatment  or  to  the  conditions  of  effica¬ 
cious  treatment ;  and,  withal,  its  helplessness  in  the  way  of  prevention. 
This  lack  of  power  in  the  voluntary  agency,  as  contrasted  with  the 
public  authority,  the  inability  to  alter  the  social  environment,  to 
change  the  industrial  conditions,  to  arrest  the  course  of  evil  influences, 
to  ward  off  physical  calamities,  at  once  disqualifies  the  voluntary 
agency  for  the  supremely  important  task  of  preventing  the  occurrence 
of  the  destitution  that  springs  from  adverse  environment.  But  the 
same  disability  cripples  the  voluntary  agency  in  its  action  on  the 
individual. 

The  most  disastrous  effect,  from  the  standpoint  of  personal  charac¬ 
ter  of  the  volunteer  and  the  voluntary  agency,  is  that  treatment  is  not 
and  cannot  be  accompanied  with  any  enforcement  of  obligation.  The 
voluntary  agency  stands  open  to  those  who  choose  to  accept  it,  and 
equally  open  to  those  who  choose  to  leave  it.  It  is  perpetually  drift¬ 
ing,  whatever  the  intention  of  its  promoters,  into  a  curious  kind  of 
subsidy  to  the  wayward  impulses  of  those  who  are  in  need. 

A  sick  person  may  go  from  dispensary  to  dispensary,  from  hospital 
to  hospital,  taking  the  advice,  or  swallowing  the  medicine  that  he  gets, 
with  or  without  any  proper  maintenance,  with  or  without  any  hygienic 
lodging,  even  pursuing  a  course  of  life  bound  to  result  in  an  aggrava¬ 
tion  of  the  disease  which  he  professes  to  wish  to  get  rid  of. 

All  the  voluntary  charities  for  children,  however  good  their  effect 
may  be  on  the  child,  are  necessarily  unconnected  with  any  enforcement 
of  parental  responsibility ;  sometimes,  even,  a  demoralizing  system  of 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


687 


bribes  has  to  be  adopted  to  induce  the  parents  of  the  children 
to  let  them  enter  in.  It  is  extraordinary  that  persons  who  are  really 
concerned  about  the  maintenance  of  parental  responsibility  should 
prefer  to  see  an  organized  system  of  providing  school  dinners  for  the 
hungry  at  the  expense  of  private  philanthropy — which  cannot  by  any 
possibility  be  connected  with  the  enforcement  of  parental  responsi¬ 
bility  on  merely  negligent  or  drunken  parents — instead  of  the  provi¬ 
sion  being  entrusted  to  the  local  education  authority,  which  can  and 
might  make  it  an  effective  instrument  for  raising  the  standard  of  child 
nurture  and  compelling  all  parents  who  could  afford  it  to  keep  their 
children  up  to  the  higher  standard. 

When  we  leave  the  ordinary  normal  citizen  and  his  family,  and  pass 
to  a  consideration  of  the  mentally  defective,  it  becomes  clear  that 
all  treatment,  however  benevolent,  if  it  is  to  attain  its  ends,  must 
necessarily  be  accompanied  by  a  certain  disciplinary  supervision  and 
enforced  control,  involving  powers  which  are  not  easily  granted  to 
voluntary  agencies.  Wherever  the  case  requires  compulsory  removal, 
segregation,  detention,  or  control,  the  public  authority  must  intervene 
as  responsible  for  safeguarding  the  liberty  of  the  subject. 

Once  we  have  realized  the  characteristic  qualities  and  defects  of 
voluntary  agencies  on  the  one  hand,  and  public  authorities  on  the 
other,  we  are  in  a  better  position  to  determine  what  should  be  their 
mutual  relationship. 

We  see,  to  begin  with,  that  it  is  vital,  in  the  public  interest,  that  no 
case  should  go  undealt  with ;  and  that  no  treatment  should  be  left 
unfinished.  Thus,  however  good  and  effective  may  be  the  voluntary 
agencies  at  work,  the  public  health  authority,  as  the  only  organization 
covering  all  the  field,  has  necessarily  to  look  after  births  and  "  search 
out”  all  dangerous  diseases.  However  excellent  may  be  the  voluntary 
agencies  in  education,  it  is  the  public  education  authority  that  must 
see  to  it  that  no  child  grows  up  below  the  prescribed  standard.  How¬ 
ever  benevolent  may  be  the  voluntary  agencies  dealing  with  the  men¬ 
tally  defective,  it  is  on  the  public  lunacy  authority  that  we  put  the 
responsibility  for  getting  all  lunatics  and  idiots  under  proper  control. 

Thus,  in  all  these  great  departments  of  the  work,  we  see  that  the 
public  authority  cannot  content  itself  with  dealing  with  some,  only, 
of  the  cases.  Wherever  there  is  a  reason  for  its  intervention  it  must 
have  all  the  cases  on  its  books.  The  prescribed  national  minimum  has 


688 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


to  be  ensured  and  enforced,  at  all  times,  as  regards  every  case.  And 
whilst  on  the  one  hand  this  indispensable  minimum  is  secured  to 
everyone — as  we  cannot,  for  our  own  sake,  allow  anyone  to  fall  below 
it — it  is  indispensable  that  personal  obligations  and  parental  respon¬ 
sibilities  should  be  enforced  with  equal  universality ;  and  that  there 
should  always  be,  along  with  the  treatment,  the  due  measure  of  dis¬ 
ciplinary  supervision  and  control,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  case, 
to  ensure  that  the  individual  co-operates  in  his  own  cure.  For  all  these 
purposes  the  voluntary  agency  is  disqualified  and  inappropriate. 

On  the  other  hand,  though  the  public  authority  concerned  must  be 
responsible  for  the  adequate  treatment  of  all  the  cases  needing  atten¬ 
tion,  this  does  not  mean  that  it  need  do,  for  all  cases,  everything  that 
needs  to  be  done.  There  is,  as  we  shall  see,  an  enormous  part  of  the 
work  which  voluntary  agencies  can  do  better  than  the  public  authori¬ 
ties,  in  which  they  can  bring  to  bear  their  specific  advantages  on 
particular  cases  or  classes  of  cases,  or  in  particular  parts  of  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  all  cases. 

In  every  branch  of  social  work,  with  regard  to  every  conceivable 
class  of  case,  there  is  the  utmost  need  for  the  initiative,  the  inventive¬ 
ness,  and  the  practical  experimenting  which  voluntary  agencies  have 
so  much  at  their  command.  Moreover,  there  is  practically  no  part 
of  the  field  in  which  we  do  not  find  particular  kinds  of  need,  which 
require  and  which  would  repay  the  devotion  to  their  service  of  an 
amount  of  individual  care  and  thought  and  money  altogether  dispro¬ 
portionate  to  their  statistical  importance,  which  it  is  seldom  within 
the  power  of  any  public  authority  to  bestow.  And  we  shall  most  of 
us  consider  that,  alike  for  children,  for  the  feeble-minded,  for  certain 
classes  of  sick  persons,  for  various  types  of  able-bodied  men  and 
women  who  have  fallen  out  of  regular  productive  work,  and  possibly 
for  others,  there  is  room  for  institutions  and  personal  ministrations  of 
more  distinctively  religious  character  than  the  government  of  today 
will  be  permitted  to  organize. 

Thus,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  dispense  with  or  to  exclude  voluntary 
agencies ;  and  it  is  clear  that  their  part  in  any  effective  national  cam¬ 
paign  against  destitution  must  be  a  large  and  important  one.  Nor  is 
there  any  ground  for  restricting  their  co-operation  to  the  "deserving” 
case!  As  the  late  General  Booth  of  the  Salvation  Army  rightly  in¬ 
sisted,  it  is  just  those  whom  we  call  the  "undeserving”  who  present 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


689 


the  greatest  difficulties  to  state  action,  and  for  whom  the  special  serv¬ 
ices  of  voluntary  agencies  are  often  most  applicable.  This  is  equally 
true  of  the  later  form  of  discrimination  adopted  by  the  London 
Charity  Organization  Society. 

It  is  not  alone  for  the  cases  that  are  classified  as  "helpable”  that 
the  state  needs  the  co-operation  of  the  voluntary  agencies.  Many  of 
those  whom  the  Charity  Organization  Society  now  rejects  as  "unhelp- 
able  ”  are  admittedly  very  deserving ;  and  there  is  no  reason  why  these 
should  be  excluded  from  the  ministrations  of  the  charitable.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  just  among  the  so-called  "unhelpable”  cases  that 
the  generous  lavishing  of  love  and  personal  care,  which  the  State 
cannot  bestow,  has  often  achieved  its  greatest  triumphs. 

We  must  therefore  reject,  once  for  all,  what  has  been  called  the 
"parallel  bars”  theory  of  the  relationship  between  voluntary  philan¬ 
thropy  and  state  action.  There  can  be  no  sharing  of  cases  between 
them.  It  is  indispensable  that  the  public  authority  should  be  and  re¬ 
main  responsible  for  seeing  that  every  case,  without  exception,  receives 
the  necessary  and  appropriate  treatment,  that  every  individual  born 
into  the  community  is  given  the  opportunity  to  maintain  the  prescribed 
"national  minimum”  of  civilized  life;  and  that  his  obligation  to  come 
up  to  that  standard  is  uniformly  and  invariably  enforced. 

Instead  of  a  division  of  cases,  we  get,  therefore,  a  division  of  func¬ 
tions.  Under  this  theory,  the  voluntary  agencies,  with  their  perpetual 
seeking  after  new  methods  of  treatment,  with  their  loving  care  of 
difficult  cases,  with  their  varied  religious  influences,  must  be  de¬ 
liberately  made  use  of  in  the  public  service  to  be  constantly  raising 
the  standard  of  civilized  conduct  and  physical  health  above  the 
comparatively  low  minimum  which  alone  can  be  enforced  by  the 
public  authority. 

Here  we  have  a  conception,  not  of  "parallel  bars”  wholly  separate 
and  distinct  from  the  other,  with  a  large  intervening  space  of  "missed 
cases” ;  but  of  an  "extension  ladder”  placed  firmly  on  the  foundation 
of  an  enforced  minimum  standard  of  life,  and  carrying  onward  the 
work  of  the  public  authorities  to  far  finer  shades  of  physical,  moral, 
and  spiritual  perfection. 

We  may  adduce,  as  an  instance  of  the  co-ordination  of  voluntary 
agency  and  state  action,  upon  this,  the  "extension  ladder,”  theory  of 
their  relationship,  the  widespread  organization  of  poor  relief  in  Ger- 


6go 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


many  that  we  call  the  Elberfeld  system.  The  local  authorities,  of¬ 
ficially  responsible  for  providing  for  the  poor,  make  use  of  an  ex¬ 
tensive  staff  of  unpaid  and  unprofessional  volunteer  workers,  who 
visit  the  homes  and  make  themselves  acquainted  with  the  circum¬ 
stances  of  every  family.  This  voluntary  service  is  nominally  obliga¬ 
tory  upon  all  citizens,  much  as  were,  in  England,  the  ancient  offices 
of  the  manor  and  the  parish  surviving  in  the  constable  and  the 
overseer. 

The  really  distinctive  feature  of  the  Elberfeld  system  and  the  one 
to  which  its  excellence  is  due,  however,  is  not  this  obligation  of  service, 
which  is  seldom  enforced,  but  the  organic  relationship  in  which  the 
voluntary  helper  stands  with  regard  to  the  public  authority.  To  the 
necessitous  family  he  comes  as  a  friend,  a  neighbor,  and  a  fellow- 
citizen,  concerned  to  get  them  over  their  trouble  in  the  best  possible 
way.  But  on  his  other  side,  the  voluntary  helper  is  the  agent  of  the 
public  authority,  registering  his  cases  in  the  official  records,  reporting 
what  he  has  seen,  carrying  out  in  his  ministrations  the  official  instruc¬ 
tions  which  he  has  received,  procuring  admission  for  his  families  to 
the  several  public  institutions,  dispensing  as  outdoor  relief  the  funds 
provided  by  the  local  authority  out  of  rates  and  taxes,  and  acting 
throughout  under  the  constant  supervision  and  direction  of  the  expert 
municipal  officials  in  each  department. 

He  is  thus,  to  our  eyes,  a  combination  of  the  "friend  of  the  street,” 
of  the  Guild  of  Help,  and  the  poor  law  relieving  officer ;  of  the  member 
of  a  children’s  care  committee  and  the  salaried  health  visitor  sent  by 
the  medical  officer  of  health  ;  of  the  volunteer  collector  of  the  country 
children’s  holiday  fund  and  the  school  attendance  officer.  He  is,  in 
short,  not  a  charitable  worker,  but  a  volunteer  official ! 

The  great  advantages  of  the  Elberfeld  system  are  that  ( i )  no  case 
escapes  notice  or  is  prematurely  dropped ;  (2)  there  is  no  restriction 
of  funds  or  opportunities  to  those  which  private  philanthropy  can 
afford;  and  (3)  the  volunteer,  having  a  very  few  cases  to  deal  with 
and  being  able  to  take  his  own  time  over  them,  can  give  any  amount 
of  personal  care  and  personal  friendship  in  the  discharge  of  his  duties. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  also,  he  is  allowed  to  use  free  discretion  within 
certain  regulations. 

But  although  the  so-called  Elberfeld  system  of  German  poor  relief 
has  this  excellence  of  form,  it  has  the  radical  defect,  as  we  can  now 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


691 


see,  of  concerning  itself  only  with  the  relief  of  the  families  after  des¬ 
titution  has  occurred.  It  does  not  deal  with  the  more  important  part 
of  the  problem — preventing  the  occurrence  of  destitution. 

It  is,  in  fact,  only  with  regard  to  the  domiciliary  treatment  of  the 
destitute  that  the  German  Empire  has  developed  any  separate  poor 
law  administration.  Practically  all  the  institutions  are  unconnected 
with  poor  relief  as  such,  and  properly  form  part  of  the  specialized 
local  administrations  dealing  with  public  health,  education,  lunacy,  or 
the  maintenance  of  the  able-bodied  unemployed.  In  these  depart¬ 
ments  of  the  work,  however,  we  do  not  need  to  go  to  Germany  for  the 
best  examples  of  what  we  have  called  the  "extension  ladder”  relation¬ 
ship  between  state  action  and  voluntary  agencies. 

In  most  of  the  cities  of  England  we  see  developing,  in  all  branches 
of  really  preventive  work,  a  most  promising  system  of  co-operation 
between  the  several  municipal  departments  and  appropriate^  spe¬ 
cialized  volunteers.  Working  under  the  local  health  authority,  in 
strict  co-ordination  with  the  efforts  of  the  health  committee  of  the 
City  Council,  and  actually  under  the  direction  of  the  medical  officer 
of  health,  we  have  growing  staffs  of  volunteer  health  visitors,  the 
rapidly  multiplying  "schools  for  mothers,”  philanthropic  sanatoria, 
and  convalescent  homes,  even  here  and  there  a  voluntary  hospital,  all 
dependent  on  private  zeal  and  charitable  benevolence  for  personal 
service  and  funds.  Working  under  the  supervision  and  direction  of 
the  education  committee  of  the  City  Council  and  its  chief  officers,  we 
have  all  the  varieties  of  children’s  care  committees  or  school  canteen 
committees,  country  holiday  fund  committees,  and  "spectacle  commit¬ 
tees,”  the  play  centers  and  the  vacation  schools,  and  here  and  there 
even  a  privately  subsidized  dental  clinic  or  general  school  clinic,  all 
illustrating  the  initiative,  inventiveness,  and  the  devoted  personal  zeal 
of  the  voluntary  and  philanthropic  institution. 

Working  in  connection  with  the  asylums  committee  of  the  City 
Council,  we  have  already  a  few  "after-care”  committees  and  various 
philanthropic  institutions.  Here  and  there  the  old  age  pension  com¬ 
mittees  of  the  City  Councils,  new  as  they  are,  have  already  begun  to 
develop  a  system  of  voluntary  pension  visitors,  and  to  look  out  for 
donors  of  almshouses  in  which  to  lodge  the  most  deserving  and  the 
most  helpless  of  their  pensioners.  The  government  labour  exchanges, 
with  their  scheme  of  unemployment  insurance,  which  have  been 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


692 

started  only  two  years,  have  already  advisory  committees,  after-care 
committees,  and  juvenile  labour  committees,  and  may  find  themselves 
presently  in  organic  connection  with  a  series  of  labour  colonies,  man¬ 
aged  by  the  devoted  zeal  of  the  great  religious  denominations. 

It  is  already  clear  that  the  English  City  Councils  will  call  for,  and 
will  obtain  in  their  work  of  collective  provision  for  the  non-effectives 
the  help  of  a  multitude  of  voluntary  workers  and  the  co-operation  of 
a  whole  series  of  voluntary  institutions. 

We  suggest  that  this  "extension  ladder”  theory  of  the  relation¬ 
ship  between  state  action  and  voluntary  agencies,  and  the  organic 
connection  which  it  establishes  between  the  specialized  municipal  de¬ 
partments  and  the  similarly  specialized  voluntary  workers  and  philan¬ 
thropic  institutions,  affords,  for  the  first  time,  a  most  promising  basis 
for  that  real  organization  of  charity,  which  is  so  badly  required. 
However  it  may  be  in  New  York  or  Chicago,  in  London  voluntary 
philanthropy  is  not  systematic  or  co-ordinated. 

After  nearly  half  a  century  of  incessant  and  devoted  efforts,  the 
London  Charity  Organization  Society  has,  everywhere  and  completely, 
failed  in  any  sense  to  "organize”  even  the  corporate  charitable 
agencies.  The  explanation  seems  to  us  clear.  The  theory  on  which 
they  have  been  working — the  attempt  to  segregate  the  beneficiaries 
into  two  absolutely  distinct  camps,  so  that  the  public  authority  alone 
deals  with  one  set  of  poor  people,  and  the  voluntary  agencies  alone 
with  quite  another  set,  virtually  excludes  the  public  authority  from 
the  work  of  charity  organization,  whereas  it  is  the  public  authority 
alone  that  can  accomplish  it.  No  one  charitable  agency  will  be  al¬ 
lowed  by  the  others  to  control  them.  The  Charity  Organization 
Society  is  a  charitable  agency  like  any  other ;  and  every  corporate 
charitable  agency,  feeling  itself  in  rivalry  with  the  rest,  is  intensely 
jealous  of  every  other  one.  But  once  it  is  accepted  that  the  public 
authority  and  the  voluntary  agencies  have  both  to  deal  with  the  same 
persons,  and  to  undertake  distinct  functions  with  regard  to  these 
persons  there  is  not  the  same  rivalry  between  the  two  organizations. 
Moreover,  all  charitable  agencies  are,  so  to  speak,  on  the  same  plane. 
One  charitable  agency  can  seldom  do  anything  to  complete  and  sup¬ 
plement  the  work  of  another  charitable  agency,  because  both  alike 
suffer  from  the  defects  of  their  qualities — they  cannot  give  continuous 
treatment,  and  they  cannot  exercise  disciplinary  powers. 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


693 

In  the  public  authority,  the  voluntary  agency  discovers  a  partner 
who  is  willing  to  remain  in  the  background,  but  who  has  the  necessary 
resources  and  the  necessary  powers  to  make  good  the  position  of  the 
voluntary  agency  as  regards  its  effect  on  the  character  of  the  persons 
whom  it  treats.  The  farm  colony  or  the  voluntary  hospital,  the 
orphanage  or  the  play  center,  however  excellent  may  be  the  treatment 
which  it  affords,  can  do  nothing  to  prevent  the  "abuse”  of  its  hos¬ 
pitality  ;  it  cannot  make  conditions  or  exercise  supervision  as  to  the 
conduct  of  the  person  before  and  after  treatment,  though  this  may  be 
essential  to  its  success. 

The  unlimited  free^  medical  treatment  afforded  by  the  voluntary 
hospitals  is  so  unconnected  with  any  disciplinary  supervision  over  the 
person  who  takes  advantage  of  it,  that  it  frequently  acts  as  a  subsidy 
to  unhygienic  if  not  to  immoral  living.  Moreover,  patients  have  to  be 
turned  out  with  the  practical  certainty  that  there  is  no  place  to 
which  they  can  go  to  be  saved  from  dropping  back  into  the  disease 
from  which  they  have  recently  emerged.  The  farm  colony  is  ham¬ 
pered  by  having  no  such  outlet  for  the  good  man  as  a  universal 
exchange  and  government  responsibility  for  finding  either  work  or 
training  would  afford ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  can  inspire  no  fear 
of  relegation  to  a  reformatory  detention  colony  in  the  man  who  is 
hopelessly  recalcitrant. 

We  shall  never  get  the  full  advantage  of  all  the  brilliant  invention 
and  devoted  zeal  and  work  existing  among  our  volunteers  and  our 
voluntary  institutions  until  we  can  place  them  on  the  sure  foundation 
of  public  responsibility  for  the  maintenance  and  enforcement  of  a 
minimum  standard  of  life.  When  we  have  once  secured  this  solid 
foundation,  our  voluntary  agencies  will  become  what  they  ought 
essentially  to  be — on  the  one  hand  the  eyes  and  face  and  fingers  by 
which  the  stiffly  moving  machinery  of  collective  action  can  be  brought 
most  effectively  to  bear  upon  particular  cases. discovered  by  or  re¬ 
mitted  to  them ;  and  on  the  other — pioneer  endeavors  to  raise  ever 
higher  and  higher  the  standard  of  what  human  conduct  can  be  made 
to  be ;  by  showing,  in  this  direction  and  in  that  how  and  where  it  is 
possible  actually  to  raise  the  "national  minimum.”  In  this  way  will 
be  pushed  ever  upward  the  conception  of  the  order,  the  freedom,  and 
the  beauty  that  it  is  possible  to  secure  to  and  for  every  individual  in 
the  community. 


694 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


93.  The  Elberfeld  System1 

In  order  to  understand  German  poor  relief  we  must  call  to  mind 
the  fact  that  throughout  Germany,  with  the  exception  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  the  care  for  the  poor  is  made  a  legal  obligation.  This  ob¬ 
ligation  is  enjoined  upon  communes,  municipalities,  and  communal 
corporations.  Whether,  in  any  individual  case,  aid  is  really  necessary, 
and  of  what  kind,  and  in  what  amount, — all  of  these  questions  are 
decided  by  the  authorities  in  whose  district  the  applicant  is  living. 
Complaint  because  of  the  refusal  of  aid  can  be  registered  only  with 
the  officers  of  relief,  not  in  a  court  of  law. 

In  view  of  the  great  variety  of  organizations  for  poor  relief,  the 
poor  laws  are  content  to  make  one  general  requirement,  viz.,  that 
aid  is  -to  be  granted  in  case  of  need,  within  the  range  of  necessity. 
Details  as  to  plan  of  work,  organization,  etc.,  are  left  for  each  com¬ 
munity  to  decide  for  itself.  In  what  manner  the  work  is  to  be  carried  * 
on  must  be  determined  by  local  conditions,  such  as  the  wealth  of  the 
church  and  ecclesiastical  orders,  the  wealth  of  the  community  at  large, 
the  extent  of  the  population,  and  the  administrative  system  underlying 
the  work.  In  smaller  communities  and  less  densely  populated  locali¬ 
ties,  where  the  entire  field  can  be  easily  surveyed,  a  moderate  fund  is 
raised  for  charitable  purposes,  the  dispensation  being  left  entirely  in 
the  hands  of  a  salaried  official  (mayor  or  alderman).  Occasionally 
we  find  a  community  possessing  such  liberal  endowments  that  public 
relief  is  hardly  necessary.  In  the  poorer  rural  districts  people  generally 
prefer  to  furnish  their  dependents  provisions  and  necessaries  of  life, 
or  give  them  a  home  in  the  poorhouse.  In  medium  sized  places  (cities 
of  20,000  to  ioo, ooo),  however,  as  well  as  in  large  cities  (of  over 
100,000  inhabitants),  a  particular  organization  becomes  necessary, 
which  is  generally  quite  separate  from  the  strictly  administrative 
machinery,  and  is  met  with  under  such  names  as  Armenverwaltung , 
Armendirection ,  Armenbehorde,  and  the  like.  Among  the  latter  we 
may  distinguish  three  principal  methods.  First,  the  director  of  the 
Armenverwaltung,  generally  the  mayor  or  some  member  of  the  local 

aFrom  Modern  Methods  of  Charity  (pp.  3-8),  by  Charles  Richmond  Hender¬ 
son,  formerly  Professor  of  Sociology  in  The  University  of  Chicago.  Copyright, 
1904,  by  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York.  Reprinted  by  permission.  Adapted 
by  Henderson  from  articles  by  Dr.  Emil  Miinsterberg  in  the  American  Journal 
of  Sociology ,  January  and  March,  1897. 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


695 


administration,  examines,  usually  through  paid  officials,  every  applica¬ 
tion  for  aid ;  these  officials  report  on  the  case  and  thus  reach  a  decision. 
This  is  now  the  least  common  method,  all  more  important  relief 
authorities  having  dropped  it.  Second,  the  administrative  board  has 
a  number  of  unpaid  assistants ;  to  each  of  these  is  assigned  one  or  two 
small  districts,  within  which  he  is  to  examine  carefully  all  cases  of 
poverty  and  distress  that  may  occur;  his  findings  he  reports  to  the 
board,  usually  with  some  suggestion  or  recommendation  as  to  the 
kind  of  aid  to  be  granted ;  the  decision  of  this  matter,  however,  rests 
with  the  board.  Third,  the  board  has  the  entire  business  management 
in  its  hands ;  the  individual  cases  are  divided  among  a  number  of  honor 
offices;  the  holders  of  these  offices  not  only  examine  and  report  on 
cases  in  their  charge,  but  also  determine  what  relief  measures  are 
to  be  employed,  and  if  the  case  does  not  require  hospital  care  or  re¬ 
moval  to  an  institution,  they  even  apply  the  remedy  themselves  and 
assume  a  sort  of  guardianship  over  the  dependents  during  the  time 
they  receive  aid.  This  is  the  method  now  most  generally  in  use ;  it 
is  based  on  the  principle  of  the  Elberfeld  system,  that  the  unpaid 
official  must  be  held  responsible  for  the  resources  which  the  community 
places  at  his  disposal  for  the  work.  Following  the  example  of  Elber¬ 
feld,  nearly  all  the  cities  of  the  Rhine  have  adopted  this  system, 
while  many  other  large  cities  have  reestablished  or  revived  it,  as 
Hamburg  did.  The  old  charity  system  of  the  city  of  Hamburg, 
superseded  in  1893  by  the  present  one,  was  organized  by  Busch  and 
Voigt  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  was  received,  at  the 
time,  with  a  great  deal  of  well-deserved  admiration.  It  was  based  on 
entirely  similar  principles. 

The  fundamental  principle  of  the  Elberfeld  system  might  also  be 
expressed  thus:  thorough  examination  of  each  individual  dependent, 
continued  careful  guardianship  during  the  period  of  dependence,  and 
constant  effort  to  help  him  regain  economic  independence.  But  these 
requirements  can  be  fulfilled  only  through  the  assistance  and  coopera¬ 
tion  of  a  sufficient  number  of  well-qualified  persons.  And  the  great 
results  the  Elberfeld  system  has  attained  must  be  attributed  largely 
to  its  success  in  regulating  and  keeping  alive  this  cooperation.  The 
first  experiments  along  this  line  were  made  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century  in  the  form  of  an  organization  of  municipal  charities,  in¬ 
cluding  all  religious  denominations ;  its  purpose  was  in  the  first  place 


696 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


to  check  indiscriminate  almsgiving,  thus  diminishing  the  great  evil 
of  mendicity,  and  at  the  same  time  to  take  the  place  of  ecclesiastical 
poor  relief,  which  no  longer  sufficed.  Here,  already,  the  principle  of 
thorough  examination,  careful  guardianship,  and  continued  assistance 
was  established.  But  in  practical  administration  the  greatest  difficulty 
was  experienced  because  of  the  small  number  of  helpers  at  command 
and  their  insufficient  organization.  Then  the  number  of  helpers  was 
increased,  they  were  divided  among  the  local  districts,  and  their 
duties  defined  as  those  we  have  indicated.  But  the  successful  working 
of  this  arrangement  was  again  curtailed  and  hampered  by  the  fact 
that  the  helpers  remained  mere  investigators  and  reporters,  the  de¬ 
cision  as  to  manner  and  amount  of  the  aid  to  be  granted  still  remaining 
in  the  hands  of  the  supervising  board.  The  evils  which  it  was  intended 
to  combat  were  not  remedied,  the  poor  taxes  increased,  the  number  of 
beggars  was  on  the  increase,  and  the  ideas  of  the  poor  regulations 
were  not  carried  out.  It  remained  for  a  citizen  of  Elberfeld  to  discover 
the  proper  method,  establishing  the  personal  responsibility  of  the 
helpers.  Thus  a  great  advance  was  made  toward  the  solution  of  one 
of  the  most  important  problems  of  poor  relief,  viz.,  the  proper  rela¬ 
tion  between  donor  and  recipient.  In  this  spirit  the  reorganization 
was  effected,  at  Elberfeld,  in  1852.  We  recognize  in  the  reorganiza¬ 
tion  three  points  of  importance :  ( 1 )  individualization,  (2 )  the  visitors 
have  a  voice  in  the  determination  of  means,  (3)  decentralization.  The 
first  is  attained  by  a  division  of  the  entire  city  into  quarters,  such  that 
each  shall  not  contain  more  than  four  dependents  (individuals  or 
heads  of  families),  and  the  placing  of  each  quarter  under  the  supervi¬ 
sion  of  a  visitor.  The  visitor  ( Armenpfleger )  is  the  chief  organ  of  poor 
relief ;  it  is  his  duty  to  visit  the  poor  of  his  quarter  at  regular  intervals, 
to  keep  himself  constantly  informed  as  to  their  circumstances,  and  to 
exert  an  educational  and  refining  influence  over  them  and  their  families. 
He  is  to  be  their  friend  and  adviser,  and  is  to  insist  on  discipline  and 
order.  Ill-disposed  and  lazy  persons  it  is  his  duty  to  report  to  the 
authorities  for  legal  prosecution.  The  arrangement  which  gives  the 
visitors  the  decision  as  to  manner  and  amount  of  the  aid  is  this: 
The  quarters  are  grouped  into  circuits  or  districts;  the  visitors  of  a 
circuit  have  regular  meetings  for  the  purpose  of  discussing  the  work, 
taking  counsel,  and  deciding  on  the  amount,  the  kind,  and  duration 
of  the  assistance  to  be  given.  At  the  head  of  each  such  circuit  there 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


697 


is  a  superintendent  or  inspector  ( Vorsteher ),  who  presides  over  and 
directs  the  proceedings  of  the  circuit  and  negotiates  between  the  visi¬ 
tors  and  the  central  board.  The  central  administrative  board  (Haupt- 
verwaltung)  is  composed  of  a  representative  of  the  city  administration 
( Stadtverwaltung )  and  of  members  of  the  city  council.  It  has  charge 
of  the  general  direction  of  poor  relief,  the  control  of  the  decisions  and 
resolutions  of  the  circuits,  the  making  of  general  regulations  affecting 
all  quarters,  the  supervision  of  institutional  and  hospital  relief,  etc. 
Moreover,  it  is  the  duty  of  this  central  board  to  search  out  the  causes 
of  poverty,  to  acquaint  itself  with  the  conditions  of  the  poorer  classes, 
to  prepare  and  direct  measures  of  a  general  nature,  to  see  that  the 
means  at  disposal  are  wisely  used, — in  short,  to  attend  to  everything 
not  directly  connected  with  passing  upon  the  individual  cases.  Their 
control  over  the  proceedings  of  the  circuit,  therefore,  does  not  imply 
a  suspicious  scrutinizing  of  each  individual  case,  but  is  merely  to 
give  them  an  opportunity  to  see,  in  a  general  way,  that  the  prin¬ 
ciples  laid  down  in  the  poor  laws  are  being  carried  out.  The  validity 
of  the  decisions  of  the  circuit  is  not  dependent  on  the  approval  of 
the  board. 

With  the  single  exception  of  the  chairman  of  the  general  board,  who 
usually  belongs  to  the  higher  class  of  salaried  municipal  officials,  all 
the  offices,  those  of  the  board,  the  superintendents,  and  the  visitors, 
are  purely  honor  offices.  The  members  of  the  general  board  are  chosen 
by  the  municipal  council,  the  remaining  officials  by  the  board ;  and 
all  are  obliged  to  perform  the  duties  of  their  respective  offices  without 
any  remuneration.  This  is  in  accord  with  the  entire  system  of  Ger¬ 
man  self-government,  which  makes  a  large  number  of  offices  purely 
honorary ;  especially  is  this  true  of  their  system  of  poor  relief.  And 
the  peculiarity  of  this  latter  system  is  that,  contrary  to  the  custom  of 
other  forms  of  self-government,  the  offices  are  not  limited  to  per¬ 
sons  who  have  already  won  the  greatest  respect  of  their  community, 
or  who  are  made  prominent  by  reason  of  wealth  or  social  position, 
or  who  may  have  leisure  to  attend  to  the  duties  of  an  honor  office. 
Here  we  find,  on  the  contrary,  that  all  classes  of  citizens  are  drawn 
into  the  service,  and  that  a  special  effort  is  made  to  enlist  the  citizens 
of  modest  means,  the  tradesman,  the  mechanic,  and  the  better  class 
of  laborers  as  visitors.  Experience  has  proved,  beyond  a  doubt,  that 
circuits  made  up  entirely  of  helpers  from  the  upper  classes  distribute 


6gS 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


their  funds  far  more  lavishly  than  those  composed  of  helpers  of  all 
classes,  and  that  helpers  drawn  from  the  upper  classes  too  easily  lose 
their  sympathy  with  their  wards,  from  whom  they  are  socially  too  far 
removed.  Moreover,  both  at  Elberfeld  and  in  other  cities,  it  has  be¬ 
come  a  tacitly  accepted  custom  that  the  office  of  a  visitor  in  the  poor 
relief  department  is  the  first  round  in  the  ladder  of  municipal  honor 
offices ;  and  no  one  can  reach  the  upper,  more  highly  esteemed  posi¬ 
tions,  who  does  not  begin  on  the  bottom  round. 

The  machinery  we  have  thus  described  is  complemented  by  a 
thoroughly  organized,  well-regulated  business  management.  This  is 
composed  of  a  number  of  salaried  officials  forming  a  division  of  the 
general  board,  whose  work  supplements,  in  a  variety  of  ways,  that  of 
the  honor  offices.  It  is  their  duty  to  gather  statistics  concerning  each 
individual  receiving  aid,  to  collect  these  statistics  in  books  and 
papers,  so  that  they  will  be  easily  accessible  to  anyone  desiring 
information  concerning  a  particular  person.  It  is  also  their  duty  to 
examine  the  proceedings  of  the  circuits  and  to  bring  to  the  notice  of 
the  general  board  any  faults  that  may  be  discovered.  The  object  of 
all  this,  however,  is  not  to  control  or  direct  the  work  of  the  visitors, 
but  to  supplement  it ;  but  without  this  cooperation,  supervision,  and 
mediatory  interposition  there  would  be  no  decentralization,  but  the 
exact  opposite  ;  for  the  independence  of  the  several  circuits  would  lead 
to  entire  arbitrariness,  to  a  dangerous  inequality,  and  the  system  would 
be  lost.  Finally,  it  may  be  added  that  the  work  of  all  these  offices, 
the  general  board,  the  superintendents,  the  helpers,  and  the  business 
management,  must  be  carefully  regulated  by  wise  poor  laws  and  by 
instructions.  These  must  furnish  a  good,  reliable  guide  to  a  judicious 
performance  of  duty,  without  curtailing  in  the  least  the  freedom  of 
decision  in  a  particular  case.  The  value  of  good  directions  can  never 
be  overestimated.  Lack  of  them  and  dependence  upon  the  good  sense 
and  good  will  of  the  various  officials  may  entirely  frustrate  the  accom¬ 
plishment  of  the  desired  results.  To  draw  up  proper  regulations  and 
directions,  without  going  too  much  into  minute  details,  and  to  care¬ 
fully  adapt  them  to  a  local  environment  will  always  be  the  most  im¬ 
portant  part  of  the  preparation  for  a  reform  of  poor  relief.1 

XA  letter  dated  February  15,  1923,  received  from  Dr.  Leopold  von  Wiese,  Pro¬ 
fessor  at  the  University  of  Cologne,  makes  the  following  statement  concerning 
recent  modifications  of  the  Elberfeld  system: 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


699 


94.  State  Money  and  Privately  Managed  Charities1 

Of  all  problems  in  social  policy  none  is  more  harassing,  more  com¬ 
plex  and  perennial  than  that  of  determining  the  proper  relation  of  the 
state  to  privately  managed  charities  within  its  borders. 

Shall  the  state  pay  the  private  institution  for  caring  for  the  state’s 
wards?  If  so,  shall  it  discriminate  among  institutions,  giving  money 
to  those  of  state-wide  scope  and  withholding  it  from  those  operating 
in  local  areas ;  or  shall  it  make  its  distinction  lie  between  the  classes 
of  dependents  helped,  not  the  institutions?  If  the  state  shall  not 
pay  money  to  private  institutions,  what  principles  shall  underlie 
its  own  charitable  endeavor?  And  finally,  shall  it  fight  shy  of 
all  binding  rules  and  merely  adopt  the  flaccid  expedient  of  "doing 
good”? 

Within  the  next  few  years  these  questions  will  vex  a  dozen  constitu¬ 
tional  conventions.  Within  the  past  year  they  have  strained  the  bonds 
of  friendship  among  social  workers  and  public  servants  in  at  least  one 
state  and  have  put  rocks  in  the  path  of  a  progressive  city  administra¬ 
tion  in  another. 

Twenty-two  states  make  no  appropriations  whatever  to  privately 
managed  charities,  fifteen  make  such  appropriations  sparingly,  and 
nine  place  no  apparent  restriction  on  their  grants.2  The  practice 

The  strict  Elberfeld  system  is  to-day  in  use  in  only  a  few  towns.  In  a  good 
many  towns  it  has  been  modified  by  a  scheme  adopted  for  the  first  time  in  Strass- 
burg  in  1912.  The  lack  of  qualified  poor  law  guardians  and  the  disadvantages  of 
the  district  system  by  which  one  guardian  is  appointed  for  all  the  relief  cases  in 
his  neighbourhood  made  the  Strassburg  local  authorities  appoint  special  officials 
for  the  administration  of  the  poor  law.  The  poor  asking  public  relief  have  now 
to  apply  first  at  the  poor  law  office  of  their  district — not  at  the  guardian’s  as 
before — and  the  officials  when  they  do  not  look  after  the  case  themselves — as 
is  done  in  case  of  sending  people  to  hospitals  or  children  to  an  orphanage  — 
select  a  guardian  qualified  for  the  special  case  according  to  its  need  and  as 
guardians  are  available.  The  aim  is  to  make  paid  and  unpaid  guardians  work 
•together  each  supervising  the  cases  he  is  best  fitted  for.  Only  a  few  cases  are 
given  to  one  guardian  and  he  also  looks  after  them  when  they  move  to  an¬ 
other  district. — Ed. 

iBy  Alexander  Fleisher.  Adapted  from  the  Survey,  Vol.  XXXIII,  No.  5 
(1914) ,  pp.  no-112. 

2  As  no  answers  to  inquiries  were  received  from  Alabama  and  Utah,  this  study 
is  based  on  the  experience  of  forty-six  states.  This  study  applies  only  to  appropria¬ 
tions  by  the  state  itself  and  not  to  local  appropriations  by  counties,  cities,  and  towns. 


700 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


of  these  last  two  groups  has  been  made  the  subject  of  analysis  for 
the  Public  Charities  Association  of  Pennsylvania.  The  results  are 
presented  here.  The  work  has  been  done  with  an  impartial  desire  to 
draw  the  meaning  of  varied  past  experiences  for  the  sake  of  the  future. 
The  amounts  of  appropriations,  the  types  of  institutions  assisted  or 
of  persons  cared  for,  and  the  results  of  state  policy  on  institutions, 
on  the  public,  on  politics,  and  on  the  state’s  charities  are  the  main 
points  considered. 

The  fifteen1  states  in  the  first  of  the  two  groups  studied  restrict 
their  appropriations,  either  deliberately  or  accidentally,  to  the  care 
of  a  few  special  classes  of  dependents.  A  study  of  the  facts  surround¬ 
ing  the  making  of  appropriations  by  these  states  shows  that  each  of 
them,  in  giving  money  to  privately  managed  charities,  is  simply  seek¬ 
ing  to  care  for  classes  of  dependents  for  which  it  feels  responsible  but 
for  which  it  has  as  yet  made  no  provision  in  publicly  managed  institu¬ 
tions.  These  states  are  without  comprehensive  systems  of  state  care 
and  responsibility,  and  are  therefore  merely  resorting  to  the  privately 
managed  institution  until  such  time  as  they  can  undertake  the  full 
task  themselves. 

This  is  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  several  states,  notably  Massa¬ 
chusetts,  Michigan,  and  New  Jersey,  have  already  gone  so  far  as  to 
assume  complete  responsibility  for  dependent  children.  In  thirteen 
states  the  proper  care  of  the  tuberculous  is  being  sought  by  citizens 
through  joint  action  by  state  and  county.  Delaware  and  New  Hamp¬ 
shire,  although  making  some  public  provision  for  the  tuberculous, 
have  not  developed  adequate  facilities,  and  are  therefore  boarding  out 
a  number  of  patients. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  these  apparently  temporary  expe¬ 
dients  is  the  state  care  of  fallen  women  in  Arizona,  Nevada,  Oregon, 
and  Washington.  None  of  the  older  and  more  experienced  states  has 
regarded  the  care  of  fallen  women  as  a  state  function. 

The  nine  states  in  the  second  group  do  not  restrict  their  subsidies 
to  the  care  of  special  classes,  but  bestow  their  money  quite  miscella¬ 
neously.  The  number  of  institutions  receiving  help  from  these  states 
and  the  amounts  of  their  annual  appropriations  are  as  follows : 

1  Arizona,  California,  Delaware,  Idaho,  Massachusetts,  Nevada,  New  Hamp¬ 
shire,  New  Jersey,  New  York,  North  Carolina,  Oklahoma,  Oregon,  Vermont, 
Virginia,  Washington. 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


701 


Institutions 

Amount 

Connecticut 

. 28 

$t56,993 

Kansas  . 

. 61 

15,000 

Kentucky 

.  3 

70,000 

Maine 

. 4i 

139,400 

Maryland  . 

. 82 

453,450 

New  Mexico 

. 11 

22,000 

Pennsylvania  . 

. 277 

3,714,713 

Rhode  Island  . 

.  4 

13,000 

West  Virginia  . 

.  3 

14,700 

Several  differences  of  practice  between  this  group  of  states  and  the 
former  are  observable.  Among  the  nine  making  such  miscellaneous 
appropriations  there  is  slight  differentiation  between  state  and  private 
responsibility.  We  have  already  seen  that  a  tendency  to  such  dif¬ 
ferentiation  does  exist  among  the  fifteen  that  restrict  their  gifts  to 
special  classes  and  that  these  states  for  the  most  part  appear  to  con¬ 
sider  their  subsidies  to  privately  managed  charities  as  mere  temporary 
expedients  pending  the  establishment  of  adequate  facilities  by  the 
state  itself.  This  conception  of  public  responsibility  does  not  seem  to 
enter  into  the  policy  of  this  second  group  of  states,  which  appropriate 
money  to  more  varied  groups  of  charities. 

Another  difference  is  that  whereas  the  first  group  of  states  shows  a 
tendency  to  make  its  appropriations  on  a  per  capita  basis  and  is  often 
represented  on  the  boards  of  managers  of  the  subsidized  institutions, 
the  second  group  is  more  apt  to  make  its  grants  in  lump  sums  without 
retaining  any  control  over  their  expenditure.  These  lump  sums  are 
generally  "for  maintenance,”  though  not  infrequently  provision  is 
made  for  buildings  also. 

A  third  difference  between  these  groups  is  that  many  of  the  first 
show  a  disinclination  to  subsidize  charities  operating  in  a  local  area, 
while  few  of  the  second  group  make  any  distinction  between  charities 
doing  state-wide  and  those  doing  purely  local  work.  Frequently  hos¬ 
pitals,  day  nurseries,  and  other  institutions  whose  very  nature  confines 
their  service  to  narrow  geographical  limits  are  given  help. 

The  nine  states  making  unrestricted  and  miscellaneous  appropria¬ 
tions  also  fall  into  two  classes.  The  first  includes  those  that  give  to 
but  few  institutions  or  that  give  comparatively  small  amounts.  These 
are  Kansas,  Kentucky,  New  Mexico,  Rhode  Island,  and  West  Vir¬ 
ginia.  The  second  includes  those  that  give  to  many  institutions  or 


702 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


that  give  large  amounts.  These  are  Connecticut,  Maine,  Maryland, 
and  Pennsylvania. 

A  significant  difference  in  the  policies  of  these  smaller  groups  ap¬ 
pears.  It  is  that  the  first  five  states,  giving  to  few  institutions  or  giv¬ 
ing  only  small  amounts,  tend  to  limit  donations  to  one  or  two  kinds  of 
charities,  while  the  second  group  spreads  its  money  out  over  a  hetero¬ 
geneous  assortment  of  institutions.  Thus,  of  the  first  five,  Kansas 
gives  to  sixty-one  hospitals  and  homes;  Kentucky  to  two  children’s 
homes  and  one  home  for  incurables ;  New  Mexico  to  eleven  hospitals ; 
Rhode  Island  to  two  hospitals,  one  children’s  home,  and  one  prisoners’ 
aid  society ;  West  Virginia  to  two  hospitals  and  one  children’s  home. 

Maryland  typifies  the  policy  of  the  second  group.  She  gives  to 
eight  reformatories,  one  institution  for  epileptics,  two  for  the  deaf, 
two  for  the  tuberculous,  twenty-two  general  hospitals,  two  special 
hospitals,  eleven  homes  for  adults,  two  rescue  homes,  one  home  for 
incurables,  twenty-two  children’s  homes,  three  placing-out  societies, 
four  day  nurseries,  and  two  homes  for  crippled  children. 

The  lack  of  any  differentiation  between  local  and  state-wide  chari¬ 
ties  is  strikingly  seen  in  the  four  states  that  give  large  amounts  or  to 
many  institutions.  The  following  table  makes  this  clear : 


Hospitals 

Sanatoria 

Homes,  etc. 

Number 

A  mount 

Number 

A  mount 

Number 

Amount 

Connecticut 

23 

123,875 

per  capita 

5 

33,118 

Maine . 

16 

56,650 

7 

23,100 

16 

42,450 

Maryland  .... 

24 

2  20,500 

2 

31,500 

45 

119,750 

Pennsylvania  . 

149 

2,528,910 

5 

45,ooo 

116 

427,850 

These  are  the  important  facts  to  be  borne  in  mind  by  anyone  who 
would  turn  to  the  experience  of  the  past  for  safe  guidance  in  determin¬ 
ing  the  proper  relation  of  the  state  to  privately  managed  charities. 
The  twenty-two  states  making  no  appropriations  to  such  charities 
include  some  that  are  regarded  as  the  most  advanced  in  their  state 
charitable  work  and  some  that  are  regarded  as  backward :  Arkansas, 
Colorado,  Florida,  Georgia,  Illinois,  Indiana,  Iowa,  Louisiana,  Michi¬ 
gan,  Minnesota,  Mississippi,  Missouri,  Montana,  Nebraska,  North 
Dakota,  Ohio,  South  Carolina,  South  Dakota,  Tennessee,  Texas, 
Wisconsin,  and  Wyoming. 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


703 


This  analysis  of  the  country’s  experience  helps  one  to  the  following 
statement  of  the  alleged  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  making  state 
appropriations  to  privately  managed  charities : 

Alleged  Advantages 

It  is  cheaper  for  the  state  to  allow  private  agencies  to  carry  on 
the  work ; 

Charities  are  removed  from  the  blight  of  partisan  politics ; 

The  system  has  a  better  effect  on  dependents,  especially  children, 
whom  it  allows  to  receive  moral  instruction ; 

It  does  not  stigmatize  the  recipients  of  charity. 

Disadvantages 

Although  politics  are  frequently  removed  from  management,  they 
enter  into  the  securing  of  appropriations ; 

Managers  and  supporters  of  private  charities  are  compelled  to  op¬ 
pose  general  measures  of  social  reform ; 

The  system  encourages  the  duplication  of  institutions ; 

It  harms  the  charitable  institutions  receiving  aid ; 

It  tends  to  increase  pauperism  by  disguising  it ; 

It  causes  a  confusion  of  function  between  state  and  private  philan¬ 
thropy.  The  state  fails  to  outline  a  constructive  policy  for  the  pre¬ 
vention  of  dependency ; 

It  necessitates  neglect  of  those  who  are  properly  state  wards.1 

Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  the  disadvantages  far  outweigh  the 
advantages  ?  Indeed,  some  of  the  alleged  advantages  can  not  go  un¬ 
challenged.  It  is  to  be  doubted  if  it  is  economical  for  the  state  to 
assist  in  the  support  of  local  institutions,  privately  managed.  The 
theory  here  is  that  if  this  work  were  not  done  for  the  state,  the  state 
would  have  to  assume  the  entire  responsibility,  but  in  a  large  number 
of  instances  the  state  would  not  be  called  upon  at  all.  Again,  why 
is  the  recipient  of  the  help  of  a  Florence  Crittenden  Home  less  stigma¬ 
tized  by  the  institution  because  a  part  of  her  support  has  been  fur¬ 
nished  by  the  state  ?  There  is  no  stigma  that  attaches  to  a  state 

1  Compare  A.  G.  Warner,  American  Charities,  3d  ed.,  pp.  409-429,  New  York, 
1919;  Homer  Folks,  The  Care  of  Destitute,  Neglected,  and  Delinquent  Children, 
pp.  145-149,  New  York,  1902 ;  F.  A.  Fetter,  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol. 
VII,  No.  3  (1901),  pp.  359-385. 


704 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


institution  that  does  not  attach  with  equal  force  to  a  private  one. 
The  alleged  advantage  that  this  system  permits  children  to  receive 
moral  instruction  is  answered  by  the  fact  that  they  may  receive  this 
instruction  also  as  wards  of  the  state. 

Charities  are  forced  into  politics  by  their  dependence  on  appropria¬ 
tions.  A  whip  is  held  over  independent  members  of  the  Legislature 
by  the  threatened  withholding  of  appropriations,  and  prominent  citi¬ 
zens  fail  to  support  progressive  legislation,  fearing  that  the  institutions 
in  which  they  are  interested  will  suffer. 

Communities  are  burdened  by  the  duplication  of  institutions.  In 
spite  of  repeated  recommendations  by  the  State  Board  of  Public  Chari¬ 
ties  in  Pennsylvania,  two  Negro  hospitals  within  a  few  blocks  of  each 
other  are  subsidized.  Two  hospitals,  located  in  adjoining  buildings, 
treating  almost  exclusively  diseases  of  women,  do  not  combine  because 
each  is  receiving  sufficient  state  aid  to  warrant  its  continuation  as  a 
separate  institution.  In  this  way  duplication  is  not  only  countenanced 
but  encouraged,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  has  been  shown  that 
throughout  the  year  an  average  of  one-third  of  the  beds  of  the  hos¬ 
pitals  in  Philadelphia  County  are  unoccupied  and  that  the  same 
condition  holds  true  of  children’s  institutions  throughout  the  state. 

The  institutions  receiving  support  are  seldom  benefited.  Private 
subscriptions  fall  off  when  the  state  undertakes  to  support  them,  even 
partially,  and  valuable  moral  support  is  withdrawn.  The  report  of 
one  hospital  states:  "This  appropriation,  grand  as  it  appears  in  fig¬ 
ures,  has  almost  acted  as  a  detriment  to  us,  as  ever  so  many  donations 
heretofore  received  by  the  hospital  have  been  withheld  during  the 
last  year.” 

The  money  raised  by  general  taxation  is  used  to  assist  special 
localities.  It  is  inconceivable  that  a  day  nursery  in  a  large  city  can 
do  more  than  serve  a  very  small  geographical  area,  yet  the  entire 
population  of  Maryland  is  taxed  to  support  four  day  nurseries  in 
Baltimore.  All  general  hospitals  must,  for  the  most  part,  serve  local 
needs,  and  yet  one  hundred  and  forty-nine  hospitals  in  Pennsylvania 
received  appropriations  from  the  Legislature  of  1913. 

The  system,  once  started,  grows  by  leaps  and  bounds.  Twenty-five 
years  ago  35  institutions  under  private  management  in  Pennsylvania 
received  $1,228,276.20  for  a  biennial  period.  At  the  last  session  of  the 
Legislature  277  such  institutions  received  $7,429,427. 


PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 


7°5 


The  most  serious  result,  however,  is  that  the  state  fails  to  perform 
those  charitable  functions  which  it  can  do  best.  It  is  a  generally 
conceded  rule  of  state  policy  that  the  state  shall  first  care  for  those 
individuals  for  whom  it  is  best  able  to  care — those  who  should  be 
handled  in  large  units,  such  as  the  insane,  the  inebriate,  the  vagrant, 
and  those  whose  care  must  extend  over  a  long  period  of  time,  such 
as  the  feeble-minded. 

These  classes  suffer  neglect  when  the  state  dissipates  its  money  and 
energy  in  grants  to  privately  managed  charities.  The  state  merely 
ignores  its  own  responsibility  to  assume  that  of  a  municipality  or  of  a 
private  philanthropy.  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania,  for  example, 
have  made  practically  no  provision  for  the  adult  feeble-minded  or 
for  the  epileptic.  The  hospitals  for  the  insane  in  these  states  are 
inhumanly  overcrowded. 

The  history  of  the  states  here  examined  betrays  throughout  a  con¬ 
fusion  between  simply  "doing  good7’  and  the  proper  and  legitimate 
functions  of  the  state.  Giving  public  money  to  any  institutions  that 
apply  vehemently  enough,  as  long  as  that  money  lasts  or  the  people 
will  stand  for  the  outlay,  and  without  a  conscious  and  scientific  prin¬ 
ciple  of  helpfulness,  is  exactly  analogous  to  an  individual  giving  from 
his  pocket  to  every  stray  beggar  that  accosts  him  on  the  streets. 

Unless  there  is  a  strong  sentiment  among  the  people  of  the  state 
against  these  appropriations,  nothing  short  of  absolute  prohibition  in 
the  constitution  will  prevent  them.  Absolute  prohibition  will  do  this. 
Colorado,  Louisiana,  Montana,  Texas,  Illinois,  and  Wyoming  are  theonly 
states  that  have  put  such  a  prohibition  into  their  constitutions 1  and  none 
of  these  states  makes  appropriations  to  privately  managed  charities. 

On  the  other  hand,  some  states  have  put  partial  restrictions  on  their 
Legislatures  in  making  such  appropriations  and  have  required  a  two- 
thirds  vote.  Alabama,  Arkansas,  Mississippi,  Pennsylvania,  Rhode 
Island,  and  South  Dakota  have  done  this,2  yet  two  of  these  states  do 
make  such  appropriations. 

1  Colorado  (1876) ,  Art. V, sect. 34 ; Louisiana  (1898), Art. LIII ;  Montana  (1889) , 
Art.  IV,  sect.  35;  Texas  (1876),  Art.  XVI,  sect.  6  (amendment,  1904,  Art.  Ill, 
sect.  51) ;  Illinois  (1870),  Art.  IV,  sect.  16;  Wyoming  (1889),  Art.  Ill,  sect.  36. 

2 Alabama  (1901),  Art.  IV,  sect.  73  (see  also  amendment,  1875,  Art.  IV, 
sect.  34)  ;  Arkansas  (1874),  Art.  V,  sect.  29;  Mississippi  (1890),  Art.  IV,  sect.  66; 
Pennsylvania  (1873),  Art.  Ill,  sect.  17;  Rhode  Island  (1842),  Art.  IV,  sect.  14; 
South  Dakota  (1889),  Art.  XII,  sect.  2. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


706 

California,  New  York,  and  Virginia  forbid  appropriations  except 
to  special  groups  of  institutions,  but  this  has  not  operated  to  prevent 
confusion  in  those  states  between  public  and  private  responsibility. 

Both  the  testimony  of  the  past  and  a  clear  perception  of  the  state's 
proper  responsibility  to  its  dependent  classes  point  to  the  following 
as  principles  that  every  state  ought  to  follow : 

The  state  should  provide  first  for  the  care  of  those  groups  that  are 
properly  state  wards; 

No  appropriations  should  be  made  to  charities  under  private  man¬ 
agement  until  the  reasonable  needs  of  the  charities  managed  and  sup¬ 
ported  by  the  state  have  been  fully  met  and  an  adequate  system  of 
state  institutions  developed  (it  may  safely  be  said  that  no  state  can 
now  foresee  the  arrival  of  such  a  blessed  time). 

In  order  to  accomplish  such  a  program  in  the  states  that  at  present 
give  state  appropriations  to  privately  managed  institutions  the  fol¬ 
lowing  policies  should  be  adopted  : 

No  appropriation  should  be  made  to  any  institution  whose  work  is 
not  state-wide  and  which  in  the  natural  operation  of  its  functions  does 
not  receive  wards  from  the  entire  state ; 

No  lump  sum  gifts  should  be  made  and  all  appropriations  should 
be  in  return  for  service  rendered,  on  a  pro  rata  basis;  such  service 
to  be  measured  by  the  free  work  done  on  the  order  of  a  proper 
public  official.1 

In  the  case  of  some  institutions  it  will  perhaps  be  necessary  to 
arrange  for  a  gradual  reduction  of  appropriations.  The  first  step  is 
for  the  state  to  add  no  new  institutions  to  the  list.  The  suggestion 
made  by  the  Board  of  State  Aid  and  Charities  of  Maryland  that  ap¬ 
propriations  be  made  for  one  year  and  thereafter  be  discontinued,  is 
perhaps  too  severe.  It  may  be  advisable  to  allow  the  adjustment  to 
cover  a  period  of  four  years  with  a  2  5  per  cent  reduction  of  appropria¬ 
tions  after  each  year. 

1  Compare  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Standards  and  Qualifications  in  Grant¬ 
ing  State  Aid;  Report  of  the  Pennsylvania  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correc¬ 
tions ,  1912,  pp.  70  ff . ;  and  also  the  article  by  Charles  H.  Frazier,  M.D.,  in  the 
Press,  Philadelphia,  November  9,  1913. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 

95.  Social  Work  with  Families  and  Individuals1 

» 

Persons  who  need  charitable  assistance  are  not  different  from  other 
persons  except  in  the  power,  or  the  inclination,  to  satisfy  their  own 
needs.  Whatever  it  is  that  enables  non-dependent  families  and  in¬ 
dividuals  to  meet  the  contingencies  of  life  through  their  own  knowl¬ 
edge  and  effort  is  the  particular  thing  which  the  dependent  lacks. 
Primarily  it  is  neither  the  loss  of  a  job,  sickness,  lack  of  income,  bad 
habits,  or  other  disability  that  leads  a  man  to  ask  for  charity.  If  it 
were,  most  people  would  be  dependent  frequently,  since  these  liabili¬ 
ties  are  not  confined  to  the  poor.  In  any  community  more  of  those 
who  are  affected  by  them  are  above  the  line  of  dependence  than  below 
it.  It  is  only  those  who  lack  the  power  of  self-maintenance  who  be¬ 
come  dependent. 

It  is  true  that  social  work  is  organized  for  the  most  part  in  terms 
of  material  needs.  We  have  laws  for  the  preservation  of  health,  for 
the  protection  of  those  who  work,  for  the  protection  of  children,  and 
for  compulsory  education.  We  have  public  departments  for  the  ad¬ 
ministration  of  the  machinery  which  these  laws  create.  We  have 
official  and  voluntary  agencies  for  the  improvement  of  housing  condi¬ 
tions,  for  the  care  of  the  sick,  for  the  provision  of  material  relief,  for 
the  care  of  children.  We  have  agencies  for  the  study  of  working  and 
living  conditions  with  a  view  to  the  improvement  of  such  as  are  preju¬ 
dicial  to  the  common  welfare ;  and  we  have  a  steady  emphasis  laid  by 
all  agencies  upon  the  need  for  changes  in  our  common  habits  and  prac¬ 
tices  which  affect  the  welfare  of  the  community  and  all  its  members. 

These  organized  activities,  however,  are  not  intended  to  lift  from 
.any  person  responsibility  for  his  own  welfare.  They  are  rather  the 
effort  of  the  community  to  help  him  discharge  that  responsibility  more 

1From  Social  Work  with  Families  and  Individuals  (pp.  3-16),  by  Porter  R. 
Lee,  Director  of  the  New  York  School  for  Social  Work.  Russell  Sage  Founda¬ 
tion,  New  York,  1915. 


707 


708 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


successfully  and  more  easily,  and  at  less  cost  to  himself  and  society. 
Any  activity — whether  in  legislation,  in  relief,  in  medical  treatment, 
or  in  industrial  reform — which  seeks  to  meet  the  normal  needs  of  men 
from  the  outside  rather  than  to  develop  within  men  the  power  to  meet 
their  own  needs,  represents  a  low  plane  of  social  work.  To  develop 
the  power  of  self-maintenance,  while  he  recognizes  and  provides  for 
immediate  disabilities,  is  the  important  problem  for  the  social  worker. 

An  application  is  an  opportunity.  Disabilities  do  not  stand  alone. 
If  they  did,  a  charitable  agency  might  conduct  its  work  very  much 
like  a  business  house.  The  applicant,  like  a  customer,  might  ask  for 
what  he  needed.  The  only  question  facing  the  social  investigator 
would  be  whether  the  commodity  or  service  requested  is  part  of  its 
stock  in  trade,  and  if  so,  whether  it  desires  to  place  them  at  the  dis¬ 
posal  of  this  particular  applicant.  The  disabilities  of  the  poor,  how¬ 
ever,  are  even  more  varied  than  the  forms  of  social  work,  and  they 
rarely  come  singly.  Inefficiency,  ill-health,  waywardness,  unemploy¬ 
ment,  and  unstable  character  have  a  way  of  intertwining  themselves, 
and  in  the  atmosphere  in  which  they  develop  are  found  also  many 
attendant  evils  like  bad  housing,  ignorance,  and  immorality.  Unlike 
a  business  house  a  charitable  agency  cannot  deal  alone  with  the  one 
disability  for  which  an  applicant  seeks  its  aid.  There  are  usually 
others  just  as  urgent,  and  one  cannot  be  successfully  treated  without 
taking  account  of  them  all. 

The  precise  request  made  by  an  applicant  may  represent  his  greatest 
need  and  it  may  not.  Usually  it  represents  his  own  selection  from 
among  a  variety  of  needs,  any  one  of  which  would  justify  long  and 
intelligent  interest  by  a  social  worker.  What  he  asks  for — commit¬ 
ment  of  children,  transportation,  relief,  hospital  care,  institutional 
care  for  a  defective  child — may  seem  to  him  to  meet  his  most  obvious 
need ;  it  may  be  the  most  urgent  thing ;  it  may  be  merely  the  thing 
he  thinks  he  is  most  likely  to  get;  it  may  be  what  a  neighbor  did 
actually  succeed  in  getting.  Whatever  the  reason  behind,  it  should 
signify  to  a  social  worker  an  opportunity  to  study  the  applicant’s 
whole  situation,  in  order  to  discover  how  many  and  how  varied  his  dis- 

% 

abilities  may  be,  and  what  service  the  community  has  made  available 
in  its  organized  social  work  to  help  him  meet  them. 

Diagnosis  of  the  disabilities  of  applicants  and  the  cooperation  of 
different  agencies  in  treating  them  have  come  to  be  part  of  a  definite 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


709 


process.  Every  charitable  service  to  a  disabled  family  or  individual 
should  be  preceded  by  an  inquiry  into  the  history  and  present  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  applicant  which  will  yield  the  facts  necessary  to  intelligent 
action.  This  inquiry  has  come  to  be  known  technically  to  social 
,  workers  as  an  investigation. 

Disabilities  and  assets.  There  are  many  misconceptions  as  to  the 
purpose  of  an  investigation.  No  intelligent  social  agency  investigates 
merely  in  order  to  separate  residents  from  non-residents,  or  the  worthy 
from  the  unworthy.  The  unworthy  poor  to  an  older  generation  in¬ 
cluded  all  those  degenerate,  shiftless,  dishonest,  lazy,  deliberate  vic¬ 
tims  of  misconduct  who  do  not  readily  respond  to  benevolent  interest. 
A  large  part  of  modern  social  work,  on  the  other  hand,  is  dedicated  to 
the  defense  of  society  against  misconduct  and  of  the  " unworthy” 
against  themselves.  The  medical  treatment  of  inebriates,  farm  colo¬ 
nies  for  vagrants,  and  colonies  for  the  feeble-minded,  contrast  with 
the  harsh  and  uncharitable  treatment  which  was  formerly  given.  It 
is  a  misconception  to  think  of  an  investigation  as  an  attempt  to  estab¬ 
lish  the  truth  or  falsity  of  an  applicant’s  statements,  or  as  causing 
procrastination  in  relief.  Social  investigation  expedites  relief. 

The  fact  is  that  the  more  thorough  and  specialized  the  treatment  of 
disabilities  becomes,  the  more  important  it  is  that  we  have  informa¬ 
tion  regarding  them  before  taking  any  but  emergency  action.  A  well- 
known  physician  says  that  whereas  a  generation  ago  ten  minutes  would 
serve  for  the  diagnosis  of  most  diseases,  an  average  of  an  hour  is 
required  at  the  present  time.  This  is  largely  because  we  know  more 
about  disease,  have  better  facilities  for  studying  it,  and  see  its  relation 
to  many  other  factors  in  the  life  of  the  patient.  This  is  equally  true 
in  the  treatment  of  social  disabilities.  The  need  of  hospital  treatment 
may  prompt  an  application  to  a  charitable  agency.  Behind  the  ill¬ 
ness,  in  work,  habits,  or  home  environment,  lies  a  cause.  These  social 
disabilities  may  need  treatment  quite  as  urgently  as  the  illness.  No 
permanent  result  from  any  charitable  relief  can  be  hoped  for  until  the 
social  cause  is  known  ;  until  account  has  been  taken,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
all  the  other  disabilities,  and,  on  the  other,  of  the  family  assets  in  char¬ 
acter,  earning  capacity,  income,  and  moral  influences.  These  assets  are 
the  foundation  upon  which  the  power  of  self-maintenance  may  be  built. 

The  facts  regarding  these  disabilities  and  assets  must  be  ascertained 
at  the  outset.  If  the  situation  is  critical,  emergency  treatment  such  as 


7io 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


shelter,  food,  or  hospital  care  may  need  to  be  secured  at  once  without 
waiting  for  investigation.  If  the  agency  receiving  the  application  is 
not  able  to  give  this  emergency  assistance,  it  must  be  obtained  from 
some  other  organization.  Such  emergency  action  should  not  interfere 
with  the  securing  of  facts  as  a  basis  for  extended  treatment.  If  this* 
is  not  done,  short-sighted,  inappropriate,  or  utterly  ineffective  service 
may  be  given,  or  even  an  actual  injury.  The  kindest  service,  and  in 
terms  of  family  welfare,  the  least  costly  service,  is  that  service  which 
is  most  intelligent.  The  most  intelligent  service  is  that  which  leads  to 
results  of  permanent  value. 

The  process  of  discovering  a  family's  assets  and  needs  is  not  a 
separate  and  different  process  covering  distinct  ground  according  as 
it  is  made  necessary  by  ill-health,  inefficiency,  lack  of  income,  law¬ 
breaking,  or  orphanhood.  A  man  can  present  only  one  character,  one 
personality,  one  history,  one  life,  whether  he  stands  before  the  applica¬ 
tion  desk  of  a  hospital,  a  relief  society,  a  shelter  for  homeless  men,  a 
domestic  relations  bureau,  or  a  police  station.  A  human  being  presents 
the  same  set  of  traits  to  reckon  with  or  build  upon  wherever  he  may 
be.  He  has  just  one  set  of  weaknesses,  one  set  of  prejudices,  one  set 
of  strong  points,  one  personality,  one  temperament.  This  is  true  of 
the  family  as  of  the  individual.  Just  as  different  traits  group  them¬ 
selves  into  an  individuality,  so  different  disabilities  and  different  re¬ 
sources  group  themselves  in  the  family  problem  and  must  be  considered 
together.  It  is  not  five  different  kinds  of  welfare  that  five  different 
social  organizations  desire  for  one  family  in  which  all  are  concerned. 
There  may  be  many  different  factors  in  the  achievement  of  social  wel¬ 
fare.  One  may  be  more  interested  in  one  factor  and  another  in 
another.  But  all  are  interested  in  securing  that  combination  of  cir¬ 
cumstances  upon  which  social  welfare  depends. 

Methods  oj  investigation.  It  is  the  task  of  a  social  worker  in  his 
investigation  to  analyze  the  needs  and  assets  of  his  families  in  some 
such  process  as  this.  The  information  necessary  can  be  acquired  only 
in  certain  fairly  definite  ways  which  have  come  to  be  established  as 
the  method  of  social  investigation.  We  know  what  a  man's  health  is, 
what  his  capacities,  habits,  temperament  are,  when  we  have  made 
use  of  certain  definite  sources  of  information. 

The  health  of  an  individual  is  a  prime  factor  in  any  plan  for  his 
welfare.  This  is  obvious  when  his  application  to  a  charitable  society 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


7i  i 

is  due  to  sickness.  It  is  also  true  when  other  needs,  like  employment 
or  relief,  are  more  apparent.  His  present  state  of  health  can  be 
ascertained  by  medical  examination.  Frequently,  however,  it  is  de¬ 
sirable  to  know  his  previous  health  history.  This  can  be  learned  partly 
from  his  own  statement,  and  partly,  in  many  cases,  from  some  institu¬ 
tion  where  he  has  been  under  treatment.  Disabilities  of  many  kinds 
are  so  often  due  to  poor  physical  condition  that  definite  information 
on  this  point  should  be  part  of  practically  every  investigation. 

The  earning  power  of  a  family  is  important.  Children  in  New  York 
state  are  forbidden  to  work  until  they  are  fourteen  years  old,  and 
between  fourteen  and  sixteen  only  after  reaching  certain  standards  of 
education  and  physical  development.  The  capacity  of  a  worker  chiefly 
determines  his  earning  power.  This  can  be  ascertained  for  both  adults 
and  children  by  consultation  with  former  employers  and  this  inquiry 
will  frequently  lead  to  valuable  information  regarding  habits  and 
general  intelligence. 

The  personal  qualities  of  a  man  are  important  factors  in  any  treat¬ 
ment.  Intelligence,  reasonableness,  reliability,  moral  standards,  thrift, 

% 

and  general  responsibility  are  traits  which  make  self-maintenance  pos¬ 
sible  once  the  opportunity  is  given.  Their  absence  will  wreck  any  plan 
which  the  social  worker  may  make.  The  degree  to  which  a  person 
possesses  them  cannot  often  be  determined  in  one  interview.  One 
must  know  his  habits,  his  reactions  upon  others,  his  response  to  those 
persons  and  organizations  that  have  a  claim  upon  him.  This  knowl¬ 
edge  may  be  gained  by  conference  with  relatives,  employers,  school 
teachers,  friends,  pastors,  and  others  who  have  known  him.  It  is 
usually  well  to  avoid  inquiries  in  the  neighborhood  where  a  family 
lives.  Such  inquiries  nearly  always  lead  to  embarrassing  publicity. 

The  same  sort  of  inquiry  will  reveal  the  help,  financial  and  other¬ 
wise,  which  many  of  these  same  relatives,  churches,  benefit  societies, 
and  friends  can  contribute  to  the  particular  plan  of  treatment  neces¬ 
sary  to  restore  a  family  to  some  degree  of  normal  living.  Not  every 
case  of  need  will  require  so  extended  an  investigation.  The  inquiry 
should  go  far  enough  however  to  enable  the  social  worker  to  discover 
the  strong  and  the  weak  points  in  the  individual  members  of  the  family 
and  to  formulate  clearly  a  plan  of  treatment  which  with  the  aid  of  the 
city’s  organized  social  service  will  develop  the  strong  points  to  over¬ 
come  the  weak. 


712 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  use  of  other  social  agencies.  Investigation  may  show  that  the 
action  required  is  not  a  function  of  the  agency  or  department  receiving 
the  application.  A  full  measure  of  responsibility  on  the  part  of  such 
an  agency,  however,  demands  that  such  application  be  not  dismissed 
summarily,  but  referred  to  some  one  of  the  community’s  organizations 
whose  function  it  is  to  receive  them.  New  York  City  has  many  facili¬ 
ties  for  dealing  with  the  disabilities  of  the  poor.  Laws  and  institutions 
abound.  Societies  and  public  departments  exercise  various  functions. 
It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  poor  will  know  which  to  call  upon  or 
how  to  use  them  all.  Hence  a  large  part  of  the  task  which  every 
application  presents  to  a  social  worker  is  the  calling  in  of  the  ap¬ 
propriate  services  of  other  organizations.  This  responsibility  demands 
of  social  workers  a  knowledge  of  the  city’s  resources  and  of  the  pro¬ 
cedure  for  using  them  effectively,  and  in  meeting  it  the  use  of  the 
Charities  Directory  is  indispensable. 

Some  of  these  agencies  confine  their  work  to  certain  districts,  and 
some  cover  the  entire  city.  Most  of  them  have  fairly  definite  func¬ 
tions.  A  social  worker  whose  duties  are  limited  to  a  particular  district 

* 

should  familiarize  himself  with  the  resources  of  the  district — hospitals, 
dispensaries,  nursing  service,  milk  stations,  relief  societies,  probation 
officers,  tenement  inspectors,  public  schools,  playgrounds,  settlements, 
employment  agencies,  and  police  stations.  He  should  know  their 
general  powers  and  the  scope  given  them  by  law  or  by  their  own 
organization.  He  should  know  how  to  secure  the  services  of  each. 
The  more  personal  and  informal  the  cooperation  among  such  agencies 
the  better  for  those  in  need  of  help. 

The  most  important  single  factor  in  the  use  of  the  other  agencies 
is  the  Social  Service  Exchange,  with  telephone  service.  The  efficient 
social  agencies  of  the  city  which  deal  with  families  and  individuals 
use  the  Exchange  regularly.  By  inquiry  of  the  Exchange  the  social 
worker  receiving  an  application  from  a  family  in  need  can  learn  at 
once  what  other  organizations  have  inquired  concerning  the  same 
family.  He  can  then  put  himself  into  touch  with  these  agencies  and 
receive  the  benefit  of  their  experience.  This  avoids  duplication  of 
work,  but  more  important  than  this  it  enables  him  to  learn  how  his 
families  have  responded  to  other  forms  of  social  treatment,  and  this 
in  turn  will  help  him  in  deciding  upon  his  own  plans. 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


713 

The  importance  of  cooperation.  The  division  of  labor  in  social 
work  has  proceeded  so  far  that  the  cooperation  of  charities  is  no  longer 
an  exchange  of  courtesies  merely.  No  one  agency  can  meet  all  the 
needs  of  any  one  family.  If  the  service  needed  is  found  to  come  more 
appropriately  from  some  other  agency,  or  if  one’s  own  organization 
can  meet  only  a  part  of  the  difficulty,  then  the  social  worker  must 
assume  the  responsibility  of  intelligent  cooperation  with  others. 

For  example,  the  commitment  of  children  may  be  a  function  of  the 
Department  of  Public  Charities  or  of  the  Children’s  Court.  If  an 
application  for  commitment  is  rejected  for  good  reasons  after  inquiry, 
but  the  family  situation  requires  strengthening  in  other  ways,  the  De¬ 
partment  or  the  Court  has  not  discharged  its  responsibility  until  its 
social  investigators  through  their  own  efforts  or  in  cooperation  with 
the  community’s  voluntary  or  official  agencies  have  made  sure  that 
these  other  phases  of  the  situation  will  be  met.  If  the  children  are 
committed,  the  public  interest  in  the  rehabilitation  of  the.  home  is 
still  more  direct.  Whatever  conditions  made  the  commitment  neces¬ 
sary — the  lack  of  the  power  of  self-maintenance — must  be  removed 
before  the  children  can  be  returned.  Otherwise  the  work  of  the  De¬ 
partment  and  the  Court  with  the  children  will  be  wasted.  To  discover 
just  when  its  disabilities  have  been  overcome,  so  that  the  children  can 
wisely  be  returned,  is  as  elementary  an  obligation  as  the  commitment 
when  that  is  necessary. 

Cooperation  among  charities,  like  all  relationships,  is  a  process  of 
give  and  take.  As  long  as  social  work  is  in  a  tentative  stage,  there 
will  be  different  standards  in  different  agencies,  different  ways  of 
meeting  similar  problems.  The  response  of  other  organizations  for 
cooperation  will  not  always  be  what  is  expected.  Demands  upon  an 
organization  may  exceed  its  financial  resources  or  its  legal  powers. 
Its  experience,  with  the  full  force  of  which  other  agencies  are  un¬ 
familiar,  may  dictate  policies  which  at  first  sight  seem  unreasonable. 
One  cannot  expect  others,  however,  to  concede  the  validity  of  his  ex¬ 
perience  in  his  own  field  unless  he  makes  a  similar  concession  to  them. 
Those  who  attempt  to  cooperate  with  other  agencies,  as  all  social 
workers  must,  may  well  consider  in  this  connection  those  factors  which 
make  any  human  relationships  run  smoothly  and  with  satisfaction  to 
those  concerned. 


7i4 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Some  factors  in  successful  social  work .  In  social  work,  besides  these 
general  considerations,  there  are  others  of  practical  value  in  relations 
with  other  organizations.  Personal  acquaintance  with  workers  in 
other  organizations  makes  results  possible  where  correspondence  and 
telephone  communications  alone  do  not.  Knowledge  of  the  charitable 
resources  of  the  city  and  one’s  district  should  include  such  acquaint¬ 
ance.  Definite  suggestions  as  to  the  sort  of  action  which  a  given  situa¬ 
tion  requires  are  better  than  general  requests  for  cooperation.  This 
implies  a  thorough  knowledge  of  one’s  own  case  and  of  the  point  in  a 
plan  of  treatment  at  which  the  cooperating  agency  can  enter.  Negotia¬ 
tions  with  other  agencies  should  go  far  enough  to  enable  all  parties 
to  understand  one  another.  Plans  involving  several  organizations 
may  well  be  worked  out  in  conference.  A  situation  should  never  be 
left  indefinite.  There  must  be  agreement  on  some  plan  of  work  in 
which  all  concerned,  including  the  family  itself,  have  a  definite  part. 

The  following  considerations  lie  at  the  basis  of  good  social  work : 

1 .  Action  should  not  be  confined  to  the  particular  request  which  an 
applicant  makes.  The  aim  should  be  to  meet  the  actual  needs  and, 
when  possible,  to  bring  about  the  self-dependence  of  the  family  or 
individual,  with  all  that  this  implies. 

2.  A  plan  for  relief  involves  a  foundation  of  facts  gained  through 
a  careful  investigation.  This  investigation  involves  the  use  of  certain 
definite  sources  of  information,  including  the  family  itself,  in  order  to 
understand  both  its  disabilities  and  its  assets. 

3.  To  carry  out  the  plan  usually  involves  the  use  of  other  agencies 
in  a  definite  arrangement  for  cooperation.1 

1The  "Family  Welfare  Society  of  Boston”  (formerly  the  "Associated  Chari¬ 
ties”)  states  its  aims  to  be: 

1.  To  promote  sound  family  life,  by  helping  families  and  individuals  to 
overcome  their  difficulties  and  find  opportunities  for  development ;  by  emphasiz¬ 
ing  health,  education,  industry,  recreation,  and  character  as  essential  elements; 
by  encouraging  thrift,  initiative,  and  responsibility  within  the  family  group. 

2.  To  relieve  distress. 

3.  To  encourage  sympathetic  and  understanding  service  by  volunteers. 

4.  To  foster  joint  effort  in  social  work. 

5.  To  interpret  social  facts  so  as  to  lead  to  improvement  of  conditions, 
through  an  aroused  public  consciousness. 

On  the  subject  of  private  agencies  of  relief  and  family  social  work  see  Frank 
D.  Watson,  The  Charity  Organization  Movement  in  the  United,  States. 


/ 

SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  715 

96.  Social  Case  Work  as  Personality  Development1 

Let  me  make  the  broadest  generalization  about  social  case  work 
that  I  can.  Its  theories,  its  aims,  its  best  intensive  practice  all  seem 
to  have  been  converging  of  late  years  toward  one  central  idea ;  namely, 
toward  the  development  of  personality.  What  does  this  term  imply 
when  the  social  worker  uses  it  ? 

A  Scotch  metaphysician  of  the  eighteenth  century  wrote,  "When 
a  man  loses  his  estate,  his  health,  his  strength,  he  is  still  the  same 
person  and  has  lost  nothing  of  his  personality .”  Few  social  workers 
would  agree  with  the  italicized  portion  of  this  sentence.  Loss  of  social 
status  and  health,  if  at  the  same  time  it  revealed  untapped  resources 
wdthin  and  without,  might  possibly  develop  a  man’s  personality,  but 
could  hardly  leave  it  unchanged.  In  fact,  such  losses  cripple  person¬ 
ality  far  more  often  than  they  strengthen  it.  If  for  personality 
Thomas  Reid  had  substituted  individuality,  few  would  differ  from 
him.  Without  attempting  any  close  analysis  of  the  many  varied  and 
technical  uses  of  these  two  words  by  biologists,  psychologists,  and 
others,  there  is  a  serviceable  distinction  between  them  which  has  long 
been  recognized  and  one  which  ought  not  to  be  lost  sight  of.  If  we 
accept  that  definition  of  individuality  which  limits  it  to  "the  unique¬ 
ness  of  a  living  being,  or  its  difference  from  others  of  its  kind  and 
from  the  rest  of  nature,”2  then  personality  is  the  far  more  inclusive 
term,  for  it  signifies  not  only  all  that  is  native  and  individual  to  a 
man  but  all  that  comes  to  him  by  way  of  education,  experience,  and 
human  intercourse.  Our  physical  heredity,  our  innate  qualities  trans¬ 
mitted  and  unalterable  are  individual,  but  all  that  portion  of  our 
social  heritage  and  our  environment  which  we  have  been  able  in  day 
by  day  living  to  add  to  individuality  and  make  a  part  of  ourselves  is 
personal ;  and  the  whole  becomes  our  personality. 

1From  What  Is  Social  Case  Work?  (pp.  90-93,  97-99,  253-260),  by  Mary  E. 
Richmond,  Director  of  the  Charity  Organization  Department,  Russell  Sage 
Foundation.  Copyright,  1922,  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation. 

-Century  Dictionary.  In  the  sentences  immediately  following  I  may  seem 
to  overemphasize  the  width  of  the  separation  in  meaning  between  "  individ¬ 
uality”  and  "personality”  by  holding  the  use  of  the  former  to  very  narrow 
limits.  It  did  not  seem  wise,  however,  in  so  non-technical  a  discussion  to  intro¬ 
duce  the  third  word  "temperament,”  now  often  used  by  psychologists  for  innate 
make-up,  but  having  a  different  connotation  for  the  general  reader. 


7 1 6 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


In  other  words,  it  is  our  personality  which  relates  us  closely  to  our 
human  kind ;  not  only  to  the  socius  our  brother,  but  to  all  the  com¬ 
munities  and  institutions  he  has  developed.  There  is  no  conflict  be¬ 
tween  the  idea  of  individual  differences,  about  which  I  shall  have 
something  to  say  later,1  and  this  complementary  idea  of  relatedness. 
Difference  is  as  characteristic  of  personality  as  of  the  tone  colors  in 
an  orchestra,  but  the  differences  between  personalities,  no  two  of 
which  are  alike,  also  resemble  those  of  orchestral  instruments  in  that 
they  are  attuned  and  related  differences.  While  a  man’s  individu¬ 
ality  does  not  change,  his  personality,  which  includes  both  his  native 
and  acquired  qualities,  is  forever  changing.  If  it  does  not  expand  and 
grow  from  day  to  day  by  full  exercise  of  function,  it  contracts  and 
even  atrophies. 

It  is  true  that  social  case  work  has  dealt  and  will  continue  to  deal 
with  questions  of  restoration  to  self-support,  with  matters  of  health 
and  personal  hygiene,  as  well  as  with  the  intricacies  of  mental  hygiene, 
and  that  each  of  these  things  has  a  direct  relation  to  personality.  But, 
in  so  far  as  each  is  a  specialty  (some  are  specialties  demanding  quite 
other  forms  of  professional  skill),  social  case  work  will  be  found  to  be 
coterminous  with  none  of  them,  but  to  have,  in  addition  to  its  supple¬ 
mentary  value  in  these  other  tasks,  a  field  all  its  own.  That  field  is 
the  development  of  personality  through  the  conscious  and  compre¬ 
hensive  adjustment  of  social  relationships,  and  within  that  field  the 
worker  is  no  more  occupied  with  abnormalities  in  the  individual  than 
in  the  environment,  is  no  more  able  to  neglect  the  one  than  the  other. 
The  distinctive  approach  of  the  case  worker,  in  fact,  is  back  to  the 
individual  by  way  of  his  social  environment,  and  wherever  adjust¬ 
ment  must  be  effected  in  this  manner,  individual  by  individual,  in¬ 
stead  of  in  the  mass,  there  some  form  of  social  case  work  is  and  will 
continue  to  be  needed.  So  long  as  human  beings  are  human  and  their 
environment  is  the  world,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  state  of  affairs 
in  which  both  they  and  the  world  they  live  in  will  be  in  no  need  of 
these  adjustments  and  readjustments  of  a  detailed  sort. 

To  state  this  in  a  more  formal  way  is  to  arrive  at  my  tentative  defi¬ 
nition:  Social  case  work  consists  of  those  processes  which  develop 
personality  through  adjustments  consciously  effected,  individual  by 
individual,  between  men  and  their  social  environment. 

iMary  E.  Richmond,  What  Is  Social  Case  Work?  pp.  144-158. —  Ed. 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


717 


What  do  we  mean  by  "social  environment”?  The  dictionary  de¬ 
fines  environment  as  "the  aggregate  of  surrounding  things  and  condi¬ 
tions,”1  but  when  we  put  "social”  in  front  of  it,  it  becomes  evident 
at  once  that  many  persons  and  things  have  been  excluded  and  many 
substitutes  included ;  the  environment  ceases  to  be  environment  in 
space  merely — it  widens  to  the  horizon  of  man’s  thought,  to  the 
boundaries  of  his  capacity  for  maintaining  relationships,  and  it  nar¬ 
rows  to  the  exclusion  of  all  those  things  which  have  no  real  influence 
upon  his  emotional,  mental,  and  spiritual  life.  A  physical  environ¬ 
ment  frequently  has  its  social  aspects ;  to  the  extent  that  it  has  these 
it  becomes  a  part  of  the  social  environment. 

Examples  of  social  case  work  show  that,  by  direct  and  indirect  in¬ 
sights,  and  direct  and  indirect  action  upon  the  minds  of  clients,  their 
social  relations  can  be  improved  and  their  personalities  developed. 

Insights  imply  a  knowledge  of  innate  make-up  and  of  the  effects 
of  environment  upon  the  individual.  The  failure  of  a  case  worker  to 
learn  his  client’s  social  and  personal  background  usually  means  failure 
to  effect  any  permanent  adjustment,  but  these  diagnostic  processes 
interplay  with  those  of  treatment,  and  no  sharp  line  can  be  drawn 
between  them. 

Action  ranges  from  the  humblest  services,  guided  by  affection, 
patience,  and  personal  sympathy,  to  such  radical  measures  as  complete 
change  of  environment,  the  organization  of  resources  where  none 
existed  before,  and  the  reknitting  of  ties  long  broken.  Officialism  is  to 
be  avoided.  The  most  successful  case  work  policies  are  encourage¬ 
ment  and  stimulation,  the  fullest  possible  participation  of  the  client 
in  all  plans,  and  the  skilful  use  of  repetition.  Sometimes  there  must 
be  warning  and  discipline ;  always  there  must  be  direct  action  of  mind 
on  mind.  One  of  the  most  characteristic  methods  of  case  work  is  its 
many-sided  approach,  its  assembling,  binding  together,  and  readjust¬ 
ing  processes.  The  social  case  worker  is  not,  however,  a  sort  of  be¬ 
nevolent  middleman.  It  is  true  that  he  acts  through  other  specialists, 
other  agencies,  and  through  his  client’s  own  social  group,  but,  in 
bringing  people  together,  he  is  far  from  washing  his  hands  of  the 
consequences  of  the  contacts  effected ;  on  the  contrary,  he  is  deeply 
concerned  to  discover,  with  all  these  others,  a  joint  program  which 
shall  achieve  the  desired  social  result.  It  is  the  combination  of  all 


1  Century  Dictionary. 


7i8 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


these  enumerated  services,  or  of  most  of  them  and  not  of  any  one  or 
two,  which  constitutes  social  case  work  of  professional  grade. 

No  case  worker  is  bound  to  accept  the  philosophy  of  any  other,  but 
a  philosophy  of  some  kind  he  must  have.  The  foundation  stones  of 
such  a  philosophy  are  suggested  in  this  book ;  they  are  given,  how¬ 
ever,  with  the  fullest  realization  that  other  and  even  more  fundamental 
ones  may  soon  be  revealed.  These  suggested  foundations,  to  restate 
them  informally,  are  as  follows : 

1.  Human  beings  are  interdependent.  There  is  a  spiritual  unity 
about  this  conception  which  means  a  great  deal  to  those  who  have 
grasped  its  full  meaning  and  are  trying  to  live  by  it.  Professor  Mac- 
Iver  tells  us  that  "  society  is  best  ordered  when  it  best  promotes  the 
personality  of  its  members.”  The  converse  is  also  true.  We  achieve 
personality  through  right  relations  to  society  and  in  no  other  way. 
The  art  of  social  case  work  is  the  art  of  discovering  and  assuring  to 
the  individual  the  best  possible  social  relations. 

2.  Human  beings  are  different.  A  genuinely  democratic  social 
program  equalizes  opportunity  by  intelligent  mass  action,  and  pro¬ 
vides  at  the  same  time  for  an  administrative  policy  which  does  dif¬ 
ferent  things  for  and  with  different  people. 

3.  Human  beings  are  not  dependent  and  domestic  animals.  This 
fact  of  man’s  difference  from  other  animals  establishes  the  need  of  his 
participation  in  making  and  carrying  out  plans  for  his  welfare.  Indi¬ 
viduals  have  wills  and  purposes  of  their  own  and  are  not  fitted  to  play 
a  passive  part  in  the  world ;  they  deteriorate  when  they  do. 

Perhaps  this  is  why  men  and  women  who  are  to  become  assets  to 
society  must  have  had  a  careful  preparation  for  that  network  of  in¬ 
terrelations  which  we  call  life.  They  cannot  be  turned  out  at  whole¬ 
sale.  In  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  making  of  a  social  person 
takes  time  and  detailed  attention,  the  home  is  the  social  institution 
to  which  is  usually  entrusted  the  beginnings  of  this  task,  and  it  is  in 
the  home  that  the  first  case  work  adjustments  were  attempted.  The 
workshop  is  another  place  in  which  the  case  work  method  is  destined 
to  effect  beneficent  changes,  though  its  introduction  there  is  recent 
and  not  yet  fully  developed.  Wherever  case  work  becomes  a  service¬ 
able  adjunct  of  some  other  and  older  profession,  as  in  the  social 
institutions  of  the  school,  the  hospital,  and  the  court,  it  is  even  more 
important  than  elsewhere  that  its  practitioners  should  be  thoroughly 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


719 

grounded  in  their  own  specialty  before  attempting  to  supplement  the 
work  of  other  specialists. 

The  whole  of  social  work  is  greater  than  any  of  its  parts.  All  parts 
serve  personality,  but  in  different  ways.  Case  work  serves  it  by  effect¬ 
ing  better  adjustments  between  individuals  and  their  social  environ¬ 
ment  ;  group  work  serves  it  by  dealing  with  people  face  to  face  but 
no  longer  one  by  one ;  social  reform  serves  it  by  effecting  mass  better¬ 
ment  through  propaganda  and  social  legislation ;  and  social  research 
serves  personality  by  making  original  discoveries  and  re-interpreting 
known  facts  for  the  use  of  these  other  forms  of  social  work.  The  case 
worker  should  know  something  of  all  forms — the  more  knowledge  he 
has  of  all  the  better — and  should  carry  through  his  special  task  in  such 
a  way  as  to  advance  all  of  the  types  of  social  work  just  enumerated. 

Finally,  the  highest  test  of  social  case  work  is  growth  in  personality. 
Does  the  personality  of  its  clients  change,  and  change  in  the  right 
direction  ?  Is  energy  and  initiative  released,  that  is,  in  the  direction 
of  higher  and  better  wants  and  saner  social  relations?  Only  an  in¬ 
stinctive  reverence  for  personality,  and  a  warm  human  interest  in 
people  as  people  can  win  for  the  social  case  worker  an  affirmative 
answer  to  this  question.  But  an  affirmative  answer  means  growth  in 
personality  for  the  case  worker  himself.  The  service  is  reciprocal. 

97.  Example  of  Case  Work  in  which  "  Relief ” 

is  not  Involved1 

The  D’s  were  a  Cuban  family  who  had  been  in  this  country  less 
than  five  years.  The  family  consisted  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  D  and  five 
children,  the  oldest  a  boy  of  fourteen,  the  youngest  a  girl  of  six ;  twin 
girls  of  eleven  and  an  eight-year-old  boy  completed  the  family. 

Financial  need  did  not  figure  in  this  problem,  and  yet  the  society 
was  able  to  render  most  definite  and  valuable  service  during  its 
sixteen  months’  contact  with  the  family. 

The  case  was  referred  to  the  society  for  attention  to  Josey,  the 
eight-year-old  boy,  who  was  unruly  and  troublesome,  always  in  mis¬ 
chief,  the  leader  among  boys  younger  than  himself.  The  society’s 
visitor  learned  that  Josey  had  been  run  over  by  an  automobile  a  year 
before  her  acquaintance  with  the  family,  and  had  undergone  an  opera- 

1From  "Relief  Not  Needed,”  The  Family ,  Vol.  I,  No.  3  (1920),  pp.  16-17. 


720 


THE  PROBLEM  OF- POVERTY 


tion  during  which  a  small  bone  had  been  removed  from  his  head.  At 
the  time  of  the  operation  the  doctors  had  assured  Mr.  and  Mrs.  D 
that  there  would  be  no  bad  after-effects ;  his  bad  behavior,  however, 
dated  from  the  time  of  this  accident.  The  other  children  were  normal 
and  attractive. 

A  thorough  mental  and  physical  examination  revealed  the  fact  that 
Josey’s  condition  was  not  abnormal,  but  that  the  operation  had  left 
his  brain  in  an  extremely  sensitive  state  and  that  his  difficulties  were 
probably  due  to  bad  environment.  Special  care  was  recommended, 
and  through  the  society  Josey  was  placed  in  a  boarding  home  for  boys 
outside  of  the  city  where  he  would  be  under  the  best  influences  and 
would  have  the  additional  advantages  of  a  private  school  training ;  his 
board  was  paid  from  the  compensation  fund  paid  to  the  D’s  at  the 
time  of  the  automobile  accident.  Josey  responded  amazingly  to  this 
treatment ;  he  became  quiet  and  tractable  and  at  the  end  of  a  year 
was  able  to  return  to  his  family. 

In  the  meantime  the  society  had  offered  a  number  of  opportunities 
to  the  D’s  which  the  family  had  not  failed  to  grasp  and  which  mate¬ 
rially  benefited  their  condition.  Mr.  D,  when  a  youth  in  Cuba,  was 
trained  to  be  both  a  cigar-maker  and  a  carpenter ;  and  he  entered  the 
cigar-making  trade  when  he  came  to  this  country,  because  his  lack 
of  knowledge  of  English  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  follow  the 
carpentry  trade.  When  the  society  leatned  these  facts  they  encour¬ 
aged  Mr.  D  to  attend  night  school,  where  he  learned  English ;  and 
later  they  secured  a  position  for  him  as  carpenter,  the  wages  in  that 
trade  far  exceeding  those  paid  in  cigar-making  and  the  health  condi¬ 
tions  being  very  much  better.  The  family  were  encouraged  to  move 
to  a  better  house  and  neighborhood,  situated  conveniently  near  to 
Mr.  D’s  place  of  employment.  Under  the  society’s  care  the  health  of 
Mrs.  D  (who  had  a  tendency  to  tuberculosis)  and  of  the  children, 
who  were  anemic  and  run  down,  was  greatly  improved  through  their 
availing  themselves  of  clinical  care ;  and  the  twins  were  connected 
with  a  settlement  house  where  music  lessons  were  given  at  the  reason¬ 
able  rates  Mrs.  D  could  afford  to  pay.  In  short,  the  entire  family 
was  materially  benefited  through  its  contact  with  the  society. 

This  family  furnished  good  material  with  which  to  work,  though 
they  were  of  a  type  which  might  have  been  considered  above  the 
average  and  capable  of  looking  out  for  themselves.  Mr.  D  was  in- 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


72 1 


telligent  and  industrious,  fond  of  his  family,  and  anxious  to  do  well 
by  them;  Mrs.  D  was  an  unusual  mother,  devoted  and  self-sacrific¬ 
ing  and  wholly  wrapped  up  in  her  children’s  happiness ;  the  children 
themselves  were  normal  and  affectionate,  and  with  the  exception  of 
Josey  were  the  pride  of  their  teachers.  Yet  given  all  of  these  qualities, 
this  family  stood  in  need  of  certain  definite  lifts  which  the  society 
was  able  to  give  to  them. 

Josey  would  probably  have  developed  into  a  headstrong  yoyth  and 
a  bad  man  had  the  opportunity  for  suitable  training  and  development 
been  denied  him;  and  the  D’s  had  the  necessary  funds  with  which  to 
pay  for  this  but  lacked  the  knowledge  of  how  to  secure  it.  The  father 
would  probably  have  stuck  to  his  poorly  paid  cigar-making,  and  the 
family  health  might  have  suffered  serious  collapse  save  for  the  kindly 
oversight  and  skilled  advice  of  the  society’s  visitor. 

This  then  is  an  illustration  of  case  work.  By  means  of  it,  much  of 
good  was  accomplished  for  the  D  family.  Without  it  the  family  would 
have  been  left  in  the  same  condition  they  were  in  when  first  known 
to  the  society.  Josey,  the  eight-year-old  boy,  would  have  been  in  an 
infinitely  worse  condition,  for  as  he  grew  older  his  difficulties  would 
have  multiplied  and  he  would  probably  have  turned  into  an  unruly 
youth  and  a  bad  man. 

The  evidences  of  case  work  in  this  story  are  as  follows : 

1.  The  discovery  of  Josey’s  early  injury. 

2.  His  mental  and  physical  examination. 

3.  The  placing  of  Josey  in  a  home. 

4.  The  visitor’s  discovery  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  D  had  learned  a  second 
trade. 

5.  The  helping  of  Mr.  D  to  better  paid  employment. 

6.  The  encouraging  of  the  D’s  to  move  to  a  better  house  and  neighbor¬ 
hood. 

7.  Medical  care  secured  for  the  whole  family. 

How  easy  it  would  have  been  for  an  overworked  secretary  to  give 
this  family  little  or  no  attention  because  of  the  fact  that  they  were 
not  in  financial  need !  There  is  little  chance  that  twenty-five  years 
ago  the  D’s  would  have  received  any  considerable  benefit  from  contact 
with  a  family  society,  or  associated  charities,  as  it  would  then  have 
been  called.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  many  societies  today  where 
only  the  crudest  measures  are  taken  to  help  applicants — no  verifica- 


722 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


tion  of  the  applicant’s  story,  no  inquity  into  the  real  circumstances  of 
the  case,  no  effort  to  discover  the  underyling  causes  of  the  family’s 
difficulties,  and  treatment  limited  to  a  two-dollar  grocery  order  or  a 
pair  of  shoes  to  the  man,  woman,  or  child  who  comes  to  the  office 
and  asks  help. 

98.  Individualization1 

Thr^  words — relief,  prevention,  and  promotion — express  the 
changing  emphasis  in  social  case  work.  As  long  as  relief  was  regarded 
as  an  end  in  itself  the  " applicant  for  charity”  was  sometimes  branded 
as  "worthy”  or  as  a  "fraud”  or  "fakir,”  but  little  attention  was  given 
to  his  personality.  The  acceptance  of  prevention  as  one  of  the  aims 
of  social  work  led  to  greater  consideration  of  the  individual,  but  it 
remained  for  the  more  recent  emphasis  upon  promotion  to  bring  about 
general  recognition  of  the  vital  importance  of  personality. 

Social  case  work  is  the  effort  to  promote  opportunity  and  incentive 
for  the  development  of  the  best  capacity  of  the  individual  in  relation 
to  the  family  and  the  community.  The  family  is  the  unit  but  each 
member  of  the  family  must  be  dealt  with  as  an  individual  having  defi¬ 
nite  privileges,  duties,  and  responsibilities  in  relation  to  other  members 
of  the  group.  Assent  to  this  definition  of  case  work  carries  with  it  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  the  fundamental  importance  of  individualizing  each  client. 
"To  promote”  connotes  the  attempt  to  secure  action  by  another.  The 
promoter  knows  that  individuals,  being  different,  will  not  respond  in 
the  same  way  to  the  same  stimulus.  The  promoter  is  most  successful 
who  best  understands  the  persons  with  whom  he  deals  and  adapts  his 
approach  to  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  each.  An  "opportunity”  for 
one  man  may  be  a  hardship  for  another,  and  an  "incentive”  for  one 
may  act  as  a  deterrent  for  another.  So,  also,  each  individual  differs 
from  every  other  in  "capacity”  and  in  his  responsibilities  toward  his 
"family”  and  "community.”  Case  work  is  based  upon  individual 
differences  and  cannot  be  done  successfully  without  an  understanding 
of  the  capacity,  experience,  ideals,  and  motives  of  each  client. 

aBy  Stockton  Raymond,  General  Secretary  of  the  Family  Welfare  Society, 
Boston,  Mass.  From  "The  Individualization  of  the  Different  Members  of  the 
Family:  The  Individualization  of  the  Parent,”  Proceedings  of  the  National  Con¬ 
ference  of  Social  Work ,  pp.  258-261.  Copyright,  1922,  by  the  National  Conference 
of  Social  Work. 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


723 


An  individual  is  the  result  of  his  heredity  and  of  every  experience 
which  he  has  encountered.  The  product — personality — is  in  constant 
process  of  modification,  due  to  the  continuous  and  ever  changing  cir¬ 
cumstances  and  relationships  which  focus  upon  the  individual.  Intelli¬ 
gence  and  physical  capacity,  the  natural  resources  of  personality,  may 
be  developed  or  exploited  according  to  the  influences  to  which  the 
individual  is  subjected  and  his  response  to  them.  In  the  process  of 
individualization  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  to  determine,  through 
mental  and  physical  tests,  the  intelligence  and  physical  condition  of 
the  individual.  If  case  work  seeks  to  develop  the  "best  capacity”  of 
the  individual  the  knowledge  of  capacity,  both  mental  and  physical, 
is  a  prerequisite  to  any  plan  of  action. 

But  under  conditions  of  modern  life  good  intelligence  and  sound 
physique  do  not  necessarily  insure  the  presence  of  such  qualities  as 
love,  truth,  honor,  courage,  kindliness,  industry,  generosity,  honesty, 
duty,  and  responsibility.  Thus,  an  individual  may  test  "poor”  in 
memory,  yet  because  of  a  high  sense  of  responsibility  may  forget  fewer 
things  in  connection  with  his  work  than  another  having  a  better 
memory  but  less  sense  of  responsibility.  So,  a  man  may  have  high 
intelligence  and  yet  develop  anti-social  conduct.  In  the  effort  to 
understand  personality — to  individualize — these  less  tangible  quali¬ 
ties  must  be  given  due  consideration.  They  reveal  personality  to  a 
far  greater  degree  than  does  an  array  of  facts  about  past  acts  of  the 
individual.  These  qualities  of  spirit,  together  with  such  instincts  as 
appetite,  sex,  curiosity,  fear,  acquisitiveness,  play,  and  competition 
are  the  forces  which  motivate  the  individual  and  must  be  understood 
in  order  to  deal  with  him. 

Lucius  E.  Wilson,  of  the  American  City  Bureau,  says  that  in  the 
growth  of  a  city  the  spirit  of  its  inhabitants  counts  for  more  than  its 
natural  resources.  It  is  equally  true  that  the  spirit  of  an  individual 
often  counts  for  more  than  his  native  intelligence  and  physical  powers. 
To  illustrate :  I  once  knew  a  man  with  good  intelligence  and  splendid 
physique  who  was  a  candidate  for  a  college  football  team.  He  was 
fast  on  his  feet  and  could  kick  the  ball  in  practice  regularly  from  fifty 
to  sixty  yards,  and  yet  in  a  contest  he  proved  useless  and  did  not  make 
the  team.  In  contrast  to  this  man  is  another  of  whom  I  was  told  by  a 
former  Cornell  coach.  This  young  man  was  slight  in  build,  lacking 
many  of  the  physical  qualifications  which  are  generally  supposed  to  be 


724 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


necessary  for  a  football  player.  Through  constant  practice  and  by 
conscientiously  following  the  advice  of  the  coach,  he  eventually  be¬ 
came  a  star  player.  In  one  game  the  Cornell  team  was  pushed  back 
to  the  shadow  of  its  own  goal  posts.  A  long  kick  was  necessary  to 
save  the  day.  Standing  behind  his  own  goal  line,  this  young  player 
received  the  pass  from  the  center  and  kicked  the  ball  farther  than  he 
had  ever  kicked  it  before  in  his  life.  Just  as  in  football,  something 
more  than  intelligence  and  a  sound  physique  is  necessary  for  the 
game  of  life. 

Spirit  and  ideals  are  closely  related.  The  ideals  of  an  individual 
are  the  roots  of  his  spirit.  They  represent  the  progress  of  the  individ¬ 
ual,  as  a  rational  being,  beyond  the  absolute  control  of  blind  instinct. 
The  social  case  worker,  conscious  of  the  significance  of  ideals  in  the 
development  of  personality,  must  build  upon  the  ideals  of  his  client 
and  infuse  new  ones  as  the  occasion  and  opportunity  arises.  At  the 
same  time  he  must  insist  upon  greater  emphasis  upon  ideals  in  the 
education  and  training  provided  in  the  home,  at  the  school,  and 
through  the  church.  Ideals  instilled  through  careful  training  may  be 
proof  against  even  the  most  adverse  surroundings.  It  is  equally  true 
that  the  whole  course  of  a  life  may  be  altered  by  the  power  of  an  ideal. 
Whether  or  not  we  like  Billy  Sunday  and  his  methods  it  is  a  fact  that 
he  is  able  to  reach  men  in  such  a  way  as  to  alter  their  conduct.  This 
he  does  by  gripping  their  minds  with  a  vision  of  a  future  worth  effort 
to  attain.  Billy  Sunday  knows  that  a  strong  motive  is  necessary  to 
induce  the  effort  necessary  to  change  the  habits  of  a  lifetime.  His 
success  in  dealing  with  men  is  due  to  his  ability  to  instil  ideals  and 
to  reach  motives  strong  enough  to  bring  about  action  in  accordance 
with  ideals.  The  social  case  worker,  in  the  effort  to  promote  oppor¬ 
tunity  and  incentive  for  the  development  of  the  best  capacity  of  the 
individual,  must  give  more  consideration  to  ideals  and  motives.  The 
mind  is  the  man.  Any  real  understanding  of  the  inner  man — the 
personality — depends  upon  an  understanding  of  his  mental  processes. 
There  is  a  constant  conflict  in  every  individual  between  his  ideals  and 
his  baser  desires.  Physical,  as  well  as  mental  elements,  are  involved, 
since  they  are  reflected  in  the  strength  or  weakness  of  the  contending 
forces.  The  conflict  is  one  of  the  motives,  with  victory  on  the  side 
of  those  which,  for  the  time  at  least,  prove  the  strongest.  The  struggle 
is  often  decided  by  the  introduction  of  new  factors.  The  temptation 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


725 


of  a  man  to  take  a  pocketbook  may  be  terminated  by  the  appearance 
of  the  owner.  A  book,  the  advice  of  a  friend,  or  almost  any  other  in¬ 
cident,  may  prove  to  be  the  determining  factor.  If  motives  are  under¬ 
stood  it  is  often  possible  for  the  social  worker  to  strengthen  ideals  or 
weaken  opposing  forces.  Obviously,  individualization  requires  an  un¬ 
derstanding  of  the  motives  of  the  client,  without  which  the  social 
worker  cannot  hope  to  deal  successfully  with  him. 

Dr.  R.  R.  Reeder,  years  ago  in  his  book  How  Two  Hundred  Chil¬ 
dren  Live  and  Learn ,  explained  the  principle  of  motivation.  He  be¬ 
lieved  that  any  normal  person  will  respond  if  the  right  incentive  is 
provided.  Dr.  Reeder  illustrates  his  principle  by  the  following  story: 
The  children’s  home  at  Hastings-on-Hudson  was  organized  on  the 
cottage  plan.  The  children  in  each  cottage,  under  the  direction  of  the 
cottage  mother,  did  most  of  the  work,  including  washing  and  wiping 
the  dishes  and  setting  the  table.  In  several  of  the  cottages  the  chil¬ 
dren  had  become  careless  and  many  dishes  were  being  broken.  The 
problem  was  to  find  a  motive  which  would  insure  greater  care  and 
prevent  breakage.  Dr.  Reeder  knew  the  pride  of  the  children  in  the 
appearance  of  their  cottages.  He  decided  upon  a  definite  quota  of 
breakage  for  each  cottage  and  told  the  children  that  all  over  that 
amount  would  be  replaced  by  tinware,  which  they  knew  would  spoil 
the  appearance  of  the  cottage,  and,  at  the  same  time,  be  a  badge  of 
their  carelessness.  Breakage  in  excess  of  the  quota  ceased  at  once. 
A  motive  sufficient  to  insure  care  in  the  handling  of  the  dishes  had 
been  found. 

The  desire  for  success — for  recognition — is  one  of  the  most  com¬ 
pelling  motives  of  men.  Whiting  Williams  is  authority  for  the  state¬ 
ment  that  the  promotion  of  a  common  laborer  to  be  an  oiler  means 
vastly  more  to  him  than  is  represented  by  the  increase  in  the  com¬ 
pensation  which  he  receives.  Each  man  is  fighting  for  his  place  in 
the  sun.  As  long  as  he  continues  to  fight  success  is  possible.  But 
sometimes  a  man  quits  fighting,  and,  accepting  failure,  asks  to  be 
supported  in  it.  The  first  task  of  the  social  worker  under  such  cir¬ 
cumstances  is  to  again  arouse  the  fighting  spirit.  Fortunately,  most 
everyone  keeps  on  fighting  until  he  thinks  he  is  up  against  a  stone 
wall.  If  a  way  through  or  around  can  be  found  he  will  make  another 
effort.  Social  case  work  seeks  to  help  the  discouraged  client  to  find  a 
way  to  overcome  his  immediate  difficulties  in  such  a  way  as  to  pro- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


726 

mote  the  development  of  his  personality.  It  is  vastly  better  to  provide 
opportunity  and  incentive  for  the  client  to  do  things  for  himself  than 
to  do  things  for  him,  and,  indeed,  most  of  the  things  worth  while  can¬ 
not  be  done  for  others.  If  a  man  is  sick  he  may  be  given  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  and  incentive  to  get  well  but  usually  he  and  he  only  can  do  the 
things  necessary  in  order  to  recover  his  health.  Likewise;  if  a  man 
is  overweight  he  may  be  given  the  opportunity  and  incentive  to  reduce, 
but  no  one  else  can  either  diet  or  exercise  for  him.  The  social  case 
worker  should  keep  constantly  in  mind  that  his  aim  is  to  promote  the 
development  of  personality.  Petty  details  must  be  kept  subordinate 
to  that  end.  The  client  must  be  led  to  assume  responsibility  rather 
than  be  released  from  it.  His  native  intelligence  and  physical  re¬ 
sources  must  be  conserved  and  developed,  his  experience  known,  and 
his  ideals  and  motives  understood,  in  order  that  opportunity  and 
incentive  may  be  provided  which  will  promote  the  development  of  his 
best  capacity  in  relation  to  his  family  and  his  community. 

The  following  case  story  shows  how  a  social  worker,  understanding 
the  personality  of  her  client,  helped  him  to  regain  his  ideals  and  to 
strengthen  them  until  they  were  able  to  win  the  struggle  against 
selfish  desires : 

When  the  family  first  came  to  the  attention  of  the  worker  the  man  was 
drinking  and  failing  to  support  his  wife  and  four  small  children.  The  wife 
was  ill,  the  children  undernourished,  and  the  older  ones  out  of  school  for  lack 
of  clothes.  The  worker  secured  the  usual  information  from  the  wife  and  fol¬ 
lowed  up  a  number  of  outside  clues.  It  was  soon  established  that  the  intem¬ 
perance  of  the  man  was  one  of  the  big  factors  to  be  dealt  with.  Apparently 
of  good  intelligence  and  physical  capacity,  he  had,  in  the  early  days  of  his 
married  life,  shown  pride  in  and  affection  for  his  family,  but,  being  thrown 
into  the  companionship  of  drinking  men,  he  had  allowed  the  habit  to  get 
the  better  of  him.  Persistence  was  required  in  order  to  arrange  for  a  talk 
with  him.  This,  however,  was  finally  accomplished  and  the  worker  led  him 
gradually  to  face  the  facts.  She  showed  him  how  his  conduct  was  affecting 
his  wife  and  children  and  appealed  to  his  pride  and  to  his  affection  for  his 
family.  The  man  talked  but  little,  and  the  worker  was  not  sure  what  had 
been  accomplished  by  the  interview.  The  next  day,  however,  he  sought 
her  at  the  office  and  talked  unreservedly  with  her.  He  said  that  the  night 
before,  after  the  interview  with  the  worker,  he  had  gone  home  and  had  seen 
the  facts  in  their  true  light  for  the  first  time  in  several  years.  He  understood 
how  his  conduct  was  affecting  his  wife  and  children.  He  could  see  himself 
almost  as  a  murderer,  for  he  realized  that  his  wife’s  physical  condition  was 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 


727 


the  result  of  his  neglect.  He  saw,  too,  that  he  was  to  blame  for  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  children  and  for  the  older  ones  being  kept  out  of  school.  He 
acknowledged  that  drink  was  the  real  cause  of  the  difficulty,  but  declared 
that  from  that  time  on  he  intended  to  do  his  part  by  his  wife  and  children 
and  that  he  was  ready  to  prove  by  his  conduct  that  he  cared  for  them. 
Having  faced  the  facts  squarely,  the  man  was  ready  to  do  what  he  could  to 
remedy  the  situation.  The  family  lived  in  a  license  community  but  in  a 
local  option  state.  The  social  worker  and  the  man  finally  agreed  that  the 
best  plan  would  be  for  him  to  find  work  at  his  regular  employment  in  a  no¬ 
license  community.  This  would  take  him  away  from  his  present  compan¬ 
ionships  and  from  the  constant  temptation  to  drink.  He  agreed  to  send 
all  his  wages  home  except  the  part  absolutely  necessary  for  his  expenses, 
and  the  social  worker  promised  to  see  to  it  that  the  wife  and  children 
had  the  medical  care  they  required,  and  the  help  and  encouragement 
they  needed  in  making  a  new  start.  The  wife  entered  enthusiastically 
into  the  plan.  She  had  faith  that  it  would  work  and  was  willing  to  do  her 
part.  Through  the  help  of  the  family  agency  in  a  no-license  town  the  man 
found  a  good  job,  and  sent  the  major  part  of  his  wages  home  to  his  family. 
After  three  months,  during  which  the  man  kept  straight  and  the  condition 
of  the  wife  and  children  was  greatly  improved,  the  family  was  reunited  in 
the  community  where  he  was  working.  The  social  worker  still  hears  from 
both  the  man  and  woman,  who  are  now  respected  members  of  the  com¬ 
munity  in  which  they  live.  The  experiment  was  no  doubt  a  dangerous  one, 
but  the  worker  counted  upon  the  man’s  intelligence,  upon  his  real  affection 
for  his  family,  and  upon  his  being  away  from  the  temptations  and  associa¬ 
tions  which  had  caused  his  downfall.  In  this  case  it  was  possible  to  pro¬ 
vide  opportunity  and  to  arouse  motives  which  were  sufficient  to  bring  about 
determined  effort  to  overcome  difficulties. 

In  the  individualization  of  the  parent,  then,  the  social  worker  must 
make  sure  to  know  him  as  well  as  about  him.  To  individualize  re¬ 
quires  a  knowledge  of  heredity  and  past  experience,  but  it  is  equally 
important  to  understand  his  ideals  and  motives.  Only  as  the  social 
worker  individualizes  the  inner  man,  in  the  light  of  an  understanding 
of  his  mental  and  physical  capacity,  past  experiences,  ideals,  and  mo¬ 
tives,  is  it  possible  effectively  to  provide  opportunity  and  incentive 
for  the  promotion  of  his  best  capacity  in  relation  to  his  family  and 
community. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS  AND  CONTEMPORARY  POLICY 

FOR  CONTROL 

99.  Malnutrition  among  School  Children1 

Statement  oj  the  problem.  The  proper  physiological,  mental,  and 
moral  development  of  children  is  one  of  the  most  vital  concerns  of  the 
nation.  Stunted  physical  growth  retards  the  normal  unfolding  of 
facultative  functions  and  is  a  danger  signal  to  the  body  politic.  Mal¬ 
nutrition  is  one  of  the  most  potent  factors  hindering  the  normal  course 
of  a  child’s  development.  Although  distinctly  a  pathological  entity, 
malnutrition  is  not  a  disease  but  a  morbid  physical  condition.  It  may 
be  symptomatic  of  definite  systemic  disease  such  as  tuberculosis, 
cardiovascular  or  digestive  disturbances  or  it  may  be  the  only  evidence 
or  result  of  defective  metabolism  or  of  complex  and  divers  physiologi¬ 
cal  and  environmental  conditions. 

Insanitary  surroundings,  improper  habits  of  life,  lack  of  sleep,  and 
unsuitable  food,  all  oftentimes  due  solely  to  ignorance,  may  be  respon¬ 
sible  for  just  as  much  malnutrition  as  is  caused  by  poverty  and  disease. 
Whatever  its  causes,  malnutrition  is  a  social  menace  as  it  hampers  the 
natural  development  of  the  functions  of  mind  and  body  and  predis¬ 
poses  its  victims  to  permanent  life  handicap.  Insofar  as  malnutrition 
is  due  to  environmental  causes  it  invariably  lends  itself  to  successful 
treatment.  Every  effort  should  be  made  to  combat  it  among  children. 
The  prevention  of  malnutrition  is  a  distinct  public  health  function. 

Statistics  of  malnutrition.  Various  studies  have  been  made  in  an 
endeavor  to  gauge  the  prevalence  of  malnutrition.  Some  w£re  based 
on  the  relation  of  weight  and  height  of  the  children  without  reference 
to  age ;  others  took  the  age  factor  into  consideration ;  and  still  other 

1By  the  Public  Health  Committee  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Medi¬ 
cine.  From  the  Medical  Record ,  February  23,  1918.  Copyright,  William  Wood 
and  Company,  New  York.  The  report  was  prepared  by  E.  H.  Lewinski- 
Corwin,  Ph.  D. 


728 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


729 


estimates  are  based  on  purely  symptomatic  evidence  without  relation 
to  weight.  The  various  studies  made  in  this  country  and  in  England 
indicate  that  on  the  average  at  least  10  per  cent  of  our  boys  and  girls 
in  the  elementary  and  grammar  schools  show  the  well-recognized 
symptoms  of  malnutrition. 

The  results1  of  physical  examinations  of  twenty-one  hundred  and 
sixty-nine  children  of  England,  outside  of  the  City  of  London,  show 
that  16.3  per  cent  of  the  children  examined  were  found  to  be  sub¬ 
normal  with  regard  to  the  state  of  their  nutrition.  The  high  percent¬ 
age  of  malnutrition  is  the  more  striking  since  the  larger  proportion 
of  the  children  examined  came  from  rural  districts  where  the  standard 
'  of  nutrition  among  children  is,  on  the  average,  higher  than  in  cities. 

The  problem  of  malnutrition  among  school  children  has  received 
very  serious  consideration  on  the  part  of  the  school  medical  authori¬ 
ties  of  England.  Since  1907  the  school  medical  inspection  in  England 
has  been  carried  on  in  a  systematic  way.  The  procedure  as  well  as 
the  reports  is  uniform,  in  this  way  facilitating  comparative  studies. 
A  summary  of  the  physical  examinations  is  given  annually  in  the 
report  of  the  Medical  Officer  of  the  Board  of  Education. 

Many  cities  in  Great  Britain  also  have  made  intensive  studies  of 
the  problem  of  malnutrition  in  its  various  bearings.  Dunfermline, 
Scotland,  was  the  pioneer  in  the  movement  and  the  practice  of  record¬ 
ing  the  nutritional  condition  of  each  child  upon  examination  has  been 
followed  throughout  England.  The  classification  adopted  is  rather 
arbitrary  and  lacks  precision.  It  segregates  the  children  into  four 
groups  and  designates  their  nutritional  state  as :  ( 1 )  Excellent, 
(2)  Normal,  (3)  Below  Normal,  and  (4)  Very  Bad.2  The  application 
of  this  scale,  imperfect  though  it  be,  has  helped  to  bring  out  certain 
important  aspects  of  the  problem  and  to  center  the  attention  of  the 
medical  inspectors  on  the  nutrition  of  the  school  children. 

In  his  comprehensive  analytical  study  of  the  Health  and  Physique 
of  School  Children ,  which  comprises  eight  hundred  thousand  English 
children,  Arthur  Greenwood,  of  the  School  of  Economics  of  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  London,  points  out  that  the  estimated  10  per  cent  of  the 
school  children  of  England  suffering  from  malnutrition  is  undoubtedly 
a  very  conservative  figure.  From  one-sixth  to  one-fifth  of  the  children 

1  Report  for  1915  of  Chief  Medical  Officer,  Board  of  Education,  London,  1916. 

2 14.8  per  cent  were  "below  normal”  and  1.5  per  cent  "very  bad.”  —  Ed. 


730 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


would  probably  be  found  to  be  suffering  from  some  degree  of  malnutri¬ 
tion  if  a  uniform  standard  of  gauging  the  condition  were  established. 

Where  the  percentage  of  ill-nourished  scholars  is  very  low,  it  seems 
that  the  standard  of  nutrition  adopted  has  been  somewhat  low,  and  that, 
taking  the  country  as  a  whole,  not  merely  io  per  cent,  but  probably  a 
number  approaching  20  per  cent  show  perceptible  signs  of  malnutrition. 

Conditions  in  New  York  City.  The  condition  of  malnutrition  among 
the  school  children  of  New  York  City  is  not  different  from  that  pre¬ 
vailing  in  England  as  far  as  the  available  data  indicate.  The  pro¬ 
portion  of  children  discovered  to  be  suffering  from  malnutrition  has 
increased  as  the  attention  given  to  that  condition  by  the  medical  in¬ 
spectors  has  become  more  pronounced. 

Beginning  in  December,  1915,  the  Dunfermline  classification  was 
applied  to  New  York  City  and  the  nutritional  condition  of  each  child 
was  recorded  upon  physical  examination.  Immediately  the  percent¬ 
age  of  cases  falling  into  groups  3  and  4  of  the  Dunfermline  scale 
increased  almost  threefold.  About  16  per  cent  of  the  children  were 
found  to  need  either  supervision  or  medical  treatment.  For  the  first 
nine  months  of  the  present  year  the  per  cent  of  malnourished  was  put 
down  as  10.  On  the  basis  of  this  lower  figure  there  are,  in  New  York 
City,  over  a  hundred  thousand  elementary  school  children  in  need  of 
attention  on  the  score  of  under-nourishment. 

Both  the  Health  Department  and  the  Association  for  Improving  the 
Condition  of  the  Poor  of  New  York  City  consider  10  per  cent  an 
underestimated  and  very  conservative  figure  by  which  to  be  guided. 
Here,  as  in  England,  it  is  a  common  practice  among  school  physicians 
to  consider  malnutrition  as  a  relative  condition.  That  is  to  say,  in 
examining  children  of  a  certain  school  the  physicians  consciously  or 
unconsciously  take  the  average  of  the  school  as  a  standard  and  ac¬ 
cordingly  divide  the  children  into  four  groups.  In  the  schools  located 
in  the  poorer  districts  of  the  city  it  may  happen  that  virtually  all  the 
children  suffer  from  some  degree  of  malnutrition.  Yet  grades  1  and  2 
show  relatively  the  same  percentage  as  in  the  schools  in  the  better 
sections  of  the  city  where  the  majority  of  the  children  are  fairly  robust 
and  well  nourished. 

The  diagnosis  of  malnutrition  in  the  New  York  public  schools  is 
made  entirely  without  reference  to  the  relation  of  weight  to  age 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


731 


of  the  children.  The  rules  of  the  Bureau  of  Child  Hygiene  specify 
that  in  recording  health  conditions  of  school  children  weight  should 
be  taken  into  account,  but  with  few  exceptions  our  public  schools  are 
not  equipped  with  scales.  The  only  schools  supplied  with  scales  are 
those  which  maintain  fresh-air  classes.  The  scales  are  invariably 
located  in  the  open  air  classrooms  and  are  not  readily  accessible. 
Moreover,  they  have  not  been  adjusted  for  many  years  and  are  not 
used  in  conjunction  with  the  routine  physical  examinations.  All  mal¬ 
nutrition  records,  therefore,  must  of  necessity  be  based  exclusively 
on  the  well  recognizable  clinical  symptoms.  In  this  connection  it  may 
be  of  interest  to  quote  from  a  recent  article  by  Mr.  Frank  A.  Manny  of 
the  Association  for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor,  relating  to  a 
series  of  examinations  of  the  same  group  of  children  made  independ¬ 
ently  by  three  physicians.  He  says  that  although  "ordinarily  nutrition 
is  one  of  the  least  agreed  upon  of  defects,  the  results  showed  greater 
agreement  than  in  the  case  of  bad  teeth  even,  and  much  greater  una¬ 
nimity  than  was  given  to  tonsil  and  nasal  breathing  defects.”  As  was 
to  have  been  expected,  the  agreement  was  more  pronounced  in  the 
cases  of  defective  nutrition  than  in  the  superior  nutrition  group. 

It  is  a  pity  that  the  lack  of  equipment  prevents  the  school  medical 
inspectors  from  registering  the  weight  and  height  of  the  school 
children.  These  measurements,  when  properly  and  scientifically  cor¬ 
related  with  age,  nutritional  and  other  conditions,  would  supply  us 
with  a  vast  amount  of  instructive  and  valuable  knowledge.  The  exist¬ 
ing  tables  of  the  relation  of  weight  and  height  to  age  are  either 
obsolete,  as  is  the  Bowditch  scale,  or  based  on  measurements  of  chil¬ 
dren  of  certain  social  groups,  such  as  Baldwin's  study  of  pupils  in 
private  schools.  The  Boas  scale  is,  for  the  time  being,  the  most 
serviceable  as  it  is  a  combination  of  several  scales.  It  is  based  on  a 
larger  number  of  measurements  than  any  other  scale  and  is  more 
adapted  to  a  cosmopolitan  community  like  New  York  City,  for  it 
takes  account  of  various  racial  stocks. 

Causes  of  malnutrition.  The  causes  of  the  large  prevalence  of 
malnutrition  among  school  children  can  be  divided  into  two  groups : 
external  and  intrinsic.  In  the  first  group  would  come  unpropitious 
environment,  poverty,  ignorance,  and  bad  domestic  management;  in 
the  second  would  fall  digestive,  respiratory,  and  circulatory  disable¬ 
ments  and  also  those  arising  from  bad  heredity. 


f A,  p  0^>UaM  ^  . , 


732 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Environmental  causes.  The  unhygienic  mode  of  living  in  many 
of  the  families  among  the  uneducated  classes,  together  with  an  utter 
ignorance  of  proper  dietetics,  are  in  a  large  measure  responsible  for 
the  devitalization  of  the  children.  In  many  homes  the  children  are 
given  tea,  coffee,  and  beer  and  the  general  diet  is  not  properly  bal¬ 
anced.  They  eat  at  irregular  hours  and  do  not  masticate  the  food 
properly.  They  do  not  have  proper  supervision,  getting  to  bed  late 
and  sleeping  in  ill-ventilated  rooms.  In  the  1916  Report  the  General 
Medical  Officer  of  the  Board  of  Education  of  England  draws  attention 


to  "the  ill  effect  of  too  little  sleep  on  the  nutrition  of  the  child,”  and 


states  that  some  school  doctors  consider  that  "the  Daylight  Saving 
Act  has  operated  injuriously  in  this  respect  by  reducing  the  sleep  of 
children  in  some  places  by  approximately  one  hour.” 

Usually,  but  by  no  means  always,  these  conditions  are  associated 
with  poverty  which  is  thus  alone  held  responsible  for  the  phenomenon 
of  malnutrition,  while  in  reality  malnutrition  has  many  more  than 
this  one  origin.  It  is  undoubtedly  true,  however,  as  the  various  care¬ 
ful  studies  of  workingmen’s  budgets  and  standards  of  living  show,  that 
the  average  earnings  in  the  large  majority  of  these  families  are  in¬ 
sufficient  to  insure  a  proper  standard  of  life.  Robert  Coit  Chapin’s 
study  of  two  hundred  and  eighty-seven  typical  New  York  working¬ 
men’s  families  with  from  two  to  four  children  under  sixteen  years  of 
age,  the  earning  capacity  of  which  varied  from  $600  to  $1000  per 
annum,  showed  that  24  per  cent  of  these  families  were  underfed, 
53  per  cent  were  overcrowded,  and  15  per  cent  were  both  underfed 
and  overcrowded.  A  recent  and  comprehensive  study  by  Streighthoff 
showed  that  only  30  per  cent  of  the  male  workers  over  sixteen  years 
of  age,  employed  in  manufacturing,  mining,  trade,  and  transportation, 
were  earning  between  $626  and  $1044,  while  60  per  cent  fell  below 
it  and  10  per  cent  rose  above  it.  Assuming  that  the  nutritional  condi¬ 
tions  in  families  with  an  income  of  less  than  $626  are  not  worse  than 
those  found  in  the  Chapin  group  earning  from  $600  to  $1000,  the 
number  of  children  who,  because  of  economic  conditions,  fall  below 
the  normal  nutrition  standard  must  be  very  considerable.  Wages  have 
risen  since  the  data  for  the  above  studies  were  gathered,  but  the  rate 
of  increase  of  the  cost  of  food  and  other  necessities  has  measurably 
outrun  the  rise  of  the  wage  schedule.  However  plausible  the  connec¬ 
tion  between  low  economic  status  and  undernourishment  may  be, 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


733 

scientifically  established  proof  is  lacking  of  the  casual  relation  be¬ 
tween  the  two. 

Several  years  ago  at  the  International  Congress  on  School  Hygiene, 
Dr.  I.  O.  Woodruff  presented  the  results  of  a  careful  study  of  the 
problem  in  connection  with  the  children  in  the  fresh-air  classes  of 
New  York  City,  which  was  undertaken  in  co-operation  with  the  Com¬ 
mittee  on  the  Prevention  of  Tuberculosis  of  the  Charity  Organization 
Society.  "The  study  of  the  home  conditions,”  to  quote  the  report, 
"has  failed  to  show  that  either  poor  economic  or  hygienic  conditions 
are  a  potent  factor  in  determining  either  the  degree  of  malnutrition 
and  anemia  or  the  progress  of  the  child  in  the  fresh-air  class.”1  The 
conclusion  of  the  study  was  that  Until  more  scientific  evidence  has 
been  established  malnutrition  will  have  to  be  considered  "as  due  either 
to  individual  susceptibility  or  to  some  other  factor  not  yet  deter¬ 
mined.”  Families  having  the  same  income  and  the  same  number  of 
children  vary  greatly  in  their  nutritional  state.  Ignorance  and  bad 
domestic  management,  which  frequently  prevail  among  those  having 
low  incomes,  as  well  as  bad  habits  of  living,  have  indubitably  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  the  existing  nutritional  debilities. 

Within  the  last  few  years  England  has  shown  an  appreciable  im¬ 
provement  in  the  degree  of  nutrition  of  the  children,  as  indicated  in 
the  diminished  need  of  school  feeding,  which  is  accounted  for  by  the 
improvement  in  the  economic  status  of  the  wage-earning  population. 
The  Chief  Medical  Officer  of  the  Board  of  Education  of  England  and 
Wales  attributes  this  decline  to  the  fact  that  "there  was  a  great  in¬ 
crease  in  wages  associated  with  the  rapid  increase  in  employment. 
In  due  time  this  pronounced  social  change  reflected  itself  in  the  homes 
of  the  people  and  in  the  feeding  and  clothing  of  the  children.  The 
evidence  from  school  doctors  and  the  Board’s  medical  inspectors  in 
all  parts  of  the  country  is  to  the  effect  that  in  1916  the  children  were, 
on  the  whole,  better  fed  and  better  clothed  than  at  any  time  since 
medical  inspection  was  introduced.”  This  would  argue  that  poverty 
has  a  very  distinct  and  direct  bearing  upon  the  malnutrition  of  chil¬ 
dren.  The  good  showing  for  the  last  two  years  in  England  is  still  more 
striking  when  one  considers  that  there  has  been  a  shortage  of  food- 

Fresh-air  Schools  in  New  York  City.  A  Comparative  Study,”  Trans¬ 
actions  of  the  Fourth  International  Congress  on  School  Hygiene ,  Vol.  II,  1913, 
pp.  88-89. 


734 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


stuffs  in  the  country,  and  also  that  a  very  large  number  of  mothers 
have  been  engaged  in  industrial  and  other  pursuits.  Jointly  with  the 
possibilities  of  education  in  hygiene,  it  holds  out  great  hopes  for  future 
successful  results  in  combatting  the  evils  of  malnutrition  among 
school  children. 

Housing.  Housing  is  another  physical  element  which  is  frequently 
spoken  of  as  having  a  bearing  on  the  growth  of  children.  It  is  ex¬ 
ceedingly  difficult  to  establish  a  direct  correlation  between  housing 
and  malnutrition,  as  the  housing  influence  cannot  easily  be  separated 
from  the  other  conditions  which  accompany  it.  Congestion  is  usually 
associated  with  a  number  of  other  unpropitious  circumstances.  Simi¬ 
larly,  spaciousness  of  home  usually  means  higher  economic  and  other 
standards.  The  factor  of  housing  cannot  be  dissociated  from  the 
accompanying  conditions  and  it  is  therefore  impossible  tb  gauge  its 
single  influence  accurately. 

Dr.  William  Leslie  Mackenzie  and  Captain  A.  Foster,  in  their  study 
of  the  physical  condition  of  72,857  children  attending  the  public 
schools  of  Glasgow,  Scotland,  made  a  number  of  interesting  observa¬ 
tions  regarding  the  effect  of  housing  on  the  physique  of  the  children, 
which  throws  a  light  on  the  possible  relationship.  They  found,  for 
instance,  that  the  average  weight  and  height  of  children  between  the 
ages  of  five  and  eighteen  years  varied  with  the  spaciousness  of  the 
home,  as  can  be  seen  from  the  following  table:1 


Number  of 

Rooms 
in  House 

Boys 

Girls 

Weight,  Lbs. 

Height,  In. 

Weight,  Lbs. 

Height,  In. 

i  room 

52.6 

46.6 

Si-S 

46.3 

2  rooms 

56.1 

48.I 

54-8 

47.8 

3  rooms 

60.6 

50.0 

59-4 

49.6 

4  rooms 

64-3 

Si-3 

65-5 

57-6 

Intrinsic  causes.  The  second  group  of  causes — intrinsic — are 
either  entirely  unrelated  to  or  only  partially  dependent  upon  the  ex¬ 
ternal  causes.  Some  of  the  debilitating  factors,  such  as  chronic  ab¬ 
sorption  from  diseased  tonsils,  decayed  teeth,  or  obstructed  nasal 

iOne  must  beware  of  argument  post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc.  Karl  Pearson  has 
ably  criticized  these  figures  in  Social  Problems:  Their  Treatment,  Past,  Present, 
and  Future.  Dulau  and  Co.,  London,  1912. —  Ed. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


735 

breathing,  can  easily  be  remedied,  as  can  also  some  respiratory  or 
digestive  disturbances. 

There  is  however  another  group  of  factors  arising  from  some  obscure 
disease  or  physical  defect  which  cannot  readily  be  alleviated.  Then, 
too,  the  influence  of  heredity  must  be  considered  in  making  provisions 
and  plans  for  meeting  the  malnutrition  problem  in  a  medical  way. 

Agencies  dealing  with  the  problem  of  malnutrition.  Clinics  for 
malnourished  children.  The  group  of  children  who  suffer  from  mal¬ 
nutrition  as  a  result  of  bad  habits  of  living  or  a  deficiency  of  proper 
food  is  of  considerable  size.  The  children  in  this  group  present  all 
the  symptoms  of  malnutrition  and  yet  suffer  from  no  definite  clinically 
recognized  disease.  With  them  diet  is  the  main  thing  at  fault.  Several 
of  the  clinics  in  New  York  have  recognized  this  fact  and  endeavored  to 
deal  with  these  children  in  the  way  best  fitted  to  meet  their  condition, 
namely,  through  the  education  of  the  parents  or  guardians  as  to 
their  needs.  The  results  of  the  educational  efforts  have  been  very 
encouraging. 

The  group  method  of  handling  these  cases  seems  to  be  the  most 
successful  and  economical,  and  by  a  more  general  extension  of  it  in 
the  dispensaries  of  the  city  beneficial  results  can  be  obtained  in  a  very 
large  number  of  cases.  By  exhibits  and  spoken  word  the  parents  are 
instructed  in  the  proper  care  of  children  and  in  their  dietary  needs  and 
the  response  is  gratifying  in  the  majority  of  instances.  This  suggests 
the  desirability  of  having  parents  present  at  the  schools  when  the 
school  medical  inspectors  make  the  physical  examinations  of  the 
children.  The  educational  value  of  the  physicians’  instructions  can¬ 
not  be  overestimated  and  the  success  of  such  a  procedure  has  been 
fully  demonstrated  in  England  in  connection  with  medical  school  in¬ 
spection.  In  England,  where  from  70  to  80  per  cent  of  the  parents 
attend  the  physical  examinations,  this  practice  has  been  one  of  the 
most  effective  means  of  health  education  and  has  brought  the  desired 
results  in  many  instances.  A  similar  practice  of  insisting  upon  the 
parent’s  presence  during  the  examination  by  the  school  doctor  would 
be  very  desirable  in  our  school  medical  system. 

Fresh-air  classes.  The  fresh-air  classes  have  been  going  through 
the  experimental  stage  for  a  number  of  years  and  received  special 
impetus  in  1915.  While  there  were  726  children  receiving  instruction 
in  these  classes  in  1914- 1915,  the  number  increased  to  1830  in  the 


736 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


following  year,  1915-1916.  In  view  of  the  fact,  however,  that  there 
are  only  about  seventy-five  of  these  classes  in  the  greater  city,  the 
number  of  children  receiving  treatment  at  the  present  time  constitute 
only  a  small  percentage  of  those  whose  condition  would  warrant 
instruction  in  such  classes. 

The  cases  of  malnutrition  in  the  fresh-air  classes  constitute  a  very 
large  percentage  of  the  total  number  of  children  thus  being  cared  for. 
In  1914-1915  there  were  312  malnutrites  out  of  a  total  of  726  chil¬ 
dren  ;  the  following  year 1  the  percentage  was  still  larger  as  there  were 
819  out  of  an  enrollment  of  1830.  In  view  of  the  large  prevalence  of 
malnutrition  in  our  school  population  it  is  evident  that  the  number 
of  fresh-air  classes  should  be  multiplied  a  hundred  fold  and  should  be 
established  in  connection  with  every  public  and  parochial  school. 

Tuberculosis  preventorium.  A  very  efficient  means  of  upbuilding 
the  vitality  of  children  coming  from  families  in  which  there  is  tuber¬ 
culosis  has  been  established  through  the  agency  of  the  Tuberculosis 
Preventorium  for  Children.  Hundreds  of  debilitated  children  with 
tuberculous  diathesis  are  cared  for  annually  in  the  preventorium 
situated  at  Farmingdale,  New  Jersey,  where  they  are  kept  for  about 
six  months  on  the  average,  and  where  they  are  given  medical,  educa¬ 
tional,  and  nutritional  care  of  a  very  high  order.  There  are  a  few 
other  minor  institutions  of  that  character,  mainly  denominational. 
There  is  undoubtedly  a  need  for  further  extension  of  this  movement 
either  in  connection  with  Farmingdale  or  independently. 

School  lunches.  Another  remedial  measure  of  established  useful¬ 
ness  is  the  lunch  service  in  the  public  schools.  The  " school  lunch” 
has  its  interesting  history  and  philosophy  and  its  own  administrative 
problems.  The  practice  of  feeding  children  at  school  is  not  a  new 
venture  in  the  educational  world.  It  has  been  known  in  Germany 
since  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  it  was  introduced  in 
France  in  1849  and  in  England  in  1866. 2  The  difficulty  of  instructing 
children  who  suffer  from  inanition  has  been  recognized  by  school¬ 
masters,  and  arrangements  have  been  made  to  provide  gratuitous 
meals  at  school,  paid  for  from  public  funds. 

1  Eighteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  New  York  City  Superintendent  of  Schools 
on  Special  Classes,  1915-1916,  p.  21. 

2  Louise  S.  Bryant,  School  Feeding,  pp.  14-16.  J.  B.  Lippincott  Company, 
Philadelphia,  1913. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


737 


From  the  very  start  the  American  practice  has  been  different  in 
principle.  Emphasis  has  been  laid  on  the  fact  that  the  school  lunch 
service  should  not  smack  of  charity.  Many  children,  even  those  of 
the  very  poor,  bring  several  coppers  with  them  to  spend  during  the 
lunch  recess.  In  the  absence  of  a  lunch  service  at  the  school,  they 
spend  their  pennies  in  purchasing  candies  and  other  eatables  of  the 
pushcart  vendors  outside  the  schools.  The  same  coppers  can  buy 
wholesome  and  nutritious  food  at  the  school  if  the  service  is  properly 
organized.  From  the  very  outset  it  was  planned  that  the  service 
should  not  be  limited  to  indigent  children,  but  should  be  open  to  all 
on  equal  terms.  The  malnourished,  indigent  children  receive  meal 
tickets ‘from  the  teachers,  the  cost  of  the  gratuitous  meals  being 
covered  by  a  special  fund. 

The  theoretical  one-hour  lunch  recess,  which  in  practice  amounts 
probably  to  not  more  than  forty-five  minutes,  in  view  of  the  time  lost 
in  leaving  school  and  waiting  in  line  on  return,  is  too  short  to  enable 
many  children  to  go  home  for  lunch,  and  eat  it  without  injurious  haste. 
In  many  homes  the  mothers  are  engaged  in  outside  work,  and  the 
children  stay  around  the  school  building  during  the  lunch  recess. 
Frequently  inclement  weather  keeps  children  from  going  home.  All 
these  causes  combined  create  a  demand  for  lunches  at  school  on  the 
part  of  a  large  number  of  children.  In  a  recent  investigation  made  by 
the  Department  of  Superintendence  in  one  section  of  Philadelphia,  it 
was  found  that  8  per  cent  of  the  children  came  to  school  with  no 
breakfast  and  60  per  cent  with  insufficient  breakfast. 

Baby  welfare  stations.  Realizing  that  a  great  deal  of  malnutrition 
is  due  to  ignorance,  early  in  1917  the  Health  Department  of  New 
York  City  determined  to  furnish  the  mothers  registered  in  the  Baby 
Welfare  Stations  with  practical  instructions  in  cooking  cereals  and 
other  foods  and  with  advice  as  to  how  best  to  utilize  a  dollar’s  worth 
in  buying  wholesome  and  nutritious  food.  The  nurses  of  the  Baby 
Welfare  Stations  were  given  preliminary  instruction  by  dietitians,  and 
afternoon  classes  were  started  in  the  Milk  Stations.  The  women  come 
regularly,  and  contribute  small  amounts  to  a  fund  for  the  purchase  of 
the  materials.  The  cooked  foods  are  divided  among  them  and  taken 
home.  Through  these  classes  many  women  learned  for  the  first  time 
the  taste  of  cereals,  as  well  as  the  method  of  preparing  these  foods. 
The  demonstration  cooking  classes  in  other  cities  are  reported  to  have 


738 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


gained  similar  success  in  enlarging  the  dietary  of  the  people  by  in- 
troducing  cereals. 

Diet  kitchens.  To  meet  the  demand  for  cheap  cooked  food  in  the 
poorer  districts  of  the  city,  kitchens  have  been  opened  in  connection 
with  settlements  and  other  organizations.  Many  women  employed 
during  the  day  purchase  the  food  for  their  households  at  these  kitchens. 

Fresh-air  funds.  Another  important  agency  which  aims  at  upbuild¬ 
ing  the  children  is  the  fresh-air  funds  and  camps.  Thousands  of  chil¬ 
dren  are  taken  to  the  country  or  seashore  during  the  summer  for  short 
periods,  usually  about  twelve  days.  This  excellent  charity  is  doing 
very  effective  work  in  giving  the  children  an  opportunity  to  enjoy  the 
benefits  of  fresh  air  and  good  food.  The  period  of  stay,  however,  is 
very  short,  especially  for  the  children  who  are  very  much  run  down. 
It  seems  desirable  that  arrangements  should  be  made  for  a  longer 
stay  for  those  children  whose  condition  is  considerably  below  normal. 
In  addition  to  the  extension  of  time  at  these  camps,  more  control 
should  be  exercised  over  the  diet  and  hours  of  sleep  of  the  children 
than  is  being  done  in  some  of  the  camps. 

Education.  The  importance  of  proper  instruction  in  personal 
hygiene  and  right  living  as  a  powerful  counterforce  to  malnutrition 
has  been  well  recognized,  and  educational  campaigns  have  been  car¬ 
ried  on  along  these  lines  by  public  and  private  agencies.  Their  efforts 
have  thus  far  failed  of  tangible  accomplishment  in  view  of  the  inertia 
and  strongly  intrenched  habits  of  the  various  groups  composing  our 
population.  A  great  deal  remains  to  be  done  in  the  educational  field. 

A  study  made  by  Mr.  Frank  A.  Manny  of  a  number  of  malnutrition 
cases  in  the  Gramercy  District  revealed  the  fact  that  malnutrition  is 
more  prevalent  among  children  of  native  than  among  children  of 
foreign-born  parents.  It  might  be  worth  while  to  follow  up  these 
findings  with  a  more  extensive  study  and  ascertain  the  reasons  for  the 
condition  if  it  obtain  generally. 

Need  of  coordination.  If  the  various  efforts  which  have  been  put 
forth  to  remedy  the  malnutrition  condition  among  school  children  were 
properly  correlated  and  directed,  and  if  the  cases  were  segregated  ac¬ 
cording  to  a  well-devised  plan  and  the  children  of  the  wasting  type 
eliminated  for  treatment  in  hospitals,  a  maximum  of  result  could 
be  accomplished  with  a  minimum  of  expenditure.  At  present  the  vari¬ 
ous  efforts  being  put  forth  lack  a  proper  measure  of  coordination. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


739 


A  representative  committee  of  the  most  important  organizations  in¬ 
terested  in  the  problem  could  probably  undertake  such  a  task  to 
advantage. 

100.  Desertion — its  Treatment  and  Prevention1 

Family  desertion  is  a  problem  of  our  society  of  sufficient  importance 
to  warrant  the  most  serious  consideration.  The  consideration  which  it 
has  received  in  the  past  has  not  been  commensurate  with  that  im¬ 
portance.  At  least  one-tenth  of  the  poverty  which  compels  the  atten¬ 
tion  of  organized  charity  is  traceable  directly  to  this  cause.  No 
measure  is  available  of  its  cost  in  terms  of  broken  homes,  disintegrated 
family  life,  loss  of  character,  and  deficient  development  of  children. 
That  desertion  has  come  to  our  attention  so  tardily  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  recognition  of  the  home  as  an  institution  has  been  belated. 
That  it  is  being  studied  now  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  has  come  to 
impose  a  heavy  economic  burden  upon  the  relief  agencies  of  the  coun¬ 
try  which  is  in  great  measure  preventable,  one  which  they  cannot  con¬ 
tinue  to  bear  without  protest. 

Desertion  seems  to  grow  out  of  human  nature  and  the  family 
situation  itself,  for  it  is  apparently  common  to  all  mankind.  It  is 
found  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  has  been  known  in  all  periods  of 
history.  No  religion  nor  race  is  exempt  from  it.  But  that  it  flourishes 
in  environments  which  especially  make  for  instability  of  the  family  is 
undoubtedly  true.  Conditions  particularly  favorable  to  domestic  dis¬ 
turbance  are  found  in  cities :  the  restraint  of  the  mores  is  less  there, 
because  of  the  absence  of  primary  group  attachments ;  the  size  and 
mobility  of  the  population  makes  for  anonymity  of  the  individual, 
who  finds  in  the  fact  a  greater  freedom  to  do  as  he  pleases;  in  the 
city  the  economic  basis  of  family  unity  tends  to  disappear  and  life 
becomes  intensely  individualistic ;  and  a  general  spirit  of  restlessness 
and  discontent  is  prevalent.  Family  disintegration  on  an  extensive 
scale  is  the  result,  and  among  the  poorer  classes  especially  this  dis¬ 
integration  takes  the  form  of  desertion  of  families.  In  this  the  man 
is  more  commonly  the  offender,  since  tradition  and  children  bind  the 
wife  to  the  home. 

1  From  A  Study  of  Family  Desertion  (pp.  64-67),  by  Earle  Edward  Eubank, 
Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Social  Science  in  the  University  of  Cincinnati.  Department 
of  Public  Welfare,  City  of  Chicago.  Copyright,  1916,  by  Earle  Edward  Eubank. 


740 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Society’s  interest  is  more  direct  in  cases  where  the  man  deserts, 
since  non-support  is  usually  an  accompaniment  and  the  community 
must  assume  the  burden  of  his  dependents.  Measures  for  dealing 
with  desertion  are  still  in  the  experimental  stage.  Even  yet  compara¬ 
tively  few  communities  have  worked  out  a  thorough-going  policy  of 
treatment.  For  those  which  have  not  done  so  a  policy  is  suggested: 

A  record  of  desertion  cases.  The  first  step  for  every  agency  to 
which  desertion  cases  come  is  to  make  provision  for  recording  deserted 
wives  as  a  distinct  class  of  applicants.  The  extent  of  the  problem 
cannot  be  known  otherwise,  nor  can  proper  treatment  be  applied. 
The  peculiar  character  of  desertion  makes  it  important  to  have  a 
knowledge  of  other  matters  than  those  needful  for  the  files  in  usual 
cases  of  destitution.  The  ordinary  record  blanks  of  the  relief  society 
are  not  suitable  for  recording  this  additional  information.  It  is  sug¬ 
gested  that  a  special  schedule  be  prepared  for  use  in  desertion  cases 
in  addition  to  the  regular  forms,  upon  which  information  pertaining 
particularly  to  the  desertion  can  be  tabulated.  Some  of  the  items 
especially  valuable  to  record  would  be:  date  of  present  desertion ;  date 
and  length  of  previous  desertions ;  circumstances  under  which  deser¬ 
tions  occurred;  circumstances  under  which  the  deserter  returned  each 
time  previously ;  how  the  deserter  spent  the  intervals  of  absence ;  how 
the  family  maintained  itself  during  those  intervals,  etc.  Such  records, 
if  carefully  prepared  would  constitute  a  helpful  collection,  of  material 
for  the  office  to  use  in  dealing  with  future  cases,  and  a  valuable  body 
of  information  for  further  study  and  analysis  of  the  problem. 

The  training  of  a  desertion  specialist.  It  would  be  well  for  every 
relief  agency  which  handles  desertion  cases  to  turn  all  such  cases  in 
to  the  same  investigator  so  far  as  possible.  If  the  amount  of  work 
from  this  particular  type  of  dependency  is  sufficient  to  justify  it  one 
of  the  regular  staff  could  be  detailed  as  the  desertion  official  for  the 
office.  The  experience  gained  through  repeated  handling  of  cases  of 
this  character,  and  the  continual  concentration  of  thought  upon  them 
by  the  same  person,  would  increasingly  qualify  him  for  this  type  of 
work  and  make  him  better  able  to  deal  with  the  question  discriminat¬ 
ingly  and  effectively.1 

*A  plan  similar  to  this  was  instituted  in  1914  by  the  New  York  Association 
for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor.  See  the  editorial  in  the  Survey  for 
December  19,  1914. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


741 


Separation  of  spurious  from  genuine  cases.  Is  the  case  a  bona  fide 
desertion?  This  should  be  determined  first  of  all.  For  its  own  pro¬ 
tection  the  relief  agency  must  be  severely  critical  in  cases  of  this  sort. 
The  desertion  specialist  of  the  office  is  the  one  to  conduct  all  investi¬ 
gation  ;  his  experience  and  training  will  make  him  more  able  than 
anyone  else  to  determine  the  authenticity  of  the  claim. 

Efforts  to  locate  the  man.  If  this  is  the  man’s  first  desertion,  or  if 
the  situation  in  general  seems  to  indicate  a  likelihood  of  reconciliation, 
it  is  preferable  that  the  organization  undertake  to  locate  him  first 
rather  than  immediately  to  turn  the  case  over  to  the  authorities.  This 
does  not  mean  that  private  societies  should  seek  to  take  the  place  of 
the  police.  Whenever  they  undertake  to  locate  men  who  have  deserted 
it  should  be  clearly  understood  that  they  are  doing  so  gratuitously 
and  simply  because  it  seems  in  that  particular  case  that  reconciliation 
is  more  likely  to  be  effected  by  a  private  agency  than  by  the  police. 
Naturally  the  society  can  ill  afford  to  add  detective  work  to  its  other 
pressing  duties ;  and  it  should  not  seek  to  relieve  the  police  depart¬ 
ment  of  its  proper  responsibility. 

When  the  deserter  is  found  the  society  should  employ  all  its  powers 
of  kindly  persuasion  to  heal  domestic  differences  and  to  effect  recon¬ 
ciliation,  provided,  in  view  of  all  the  circumstances,  reconciliation 
rather  than  divorce  seems  more  desirable,  as  ordinarily  the  great 
objective  of  the  treatment  of  desertion  is  to  re-establish  the  home. 
The  deserter  may  be  more  kindly  disposed  toward  his  family  and 
responsive  to  counsel  if  he  is  approached  at  first  in  a  sympathetic  and 
friendly  way,  rather  than  with  threat  of  arrest  and  prosecution.  If, 
for  any  reason,  reconciliation  between  the  deserter  and  his  family  is 
impossible  or  inadvisable — and  sometimes  that  is  the  case — he  may 
still  be  persuaded  to  contribute  to  its  support  without  the  law  being- 
invoked  to  compel  him  to  do  so.1 

" Interim  relief .”  While  efforts  to  locate  the  husband  are  going 
forward  in  the  society  temporary  relief  may  be  given  the  wife  until 
the  possibility  of  the  husband’s  return  shall  be  determined.  This,  it 
has  been  suggested,  should  be  more  sparingly  given  during  the  interim 
than  in  the  case  of  widows,  in  the  hope  that  when  the  condition  of  his 

!This,  as  Dr.  Thomas  J.  Riley  of  the  Brooklyn  Bureau  of  Charities  remarks, 
may  be  effective  for  short  periods  of  time,  but  is  not  likely  to  prove  successful 
in  the  long  run  because  the  local  organization  has  no  legal  hold  on  the  man. 


742 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


family  becomes  known  to  the  husband  it  may  induce  him  to  return 
with  less  delay.  It  is  desirable  that  the  status  of  the  family  with  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  deserter  be  determined  quickly  and  to  that  end  the  organi¬ 
zation  should  work  with  what  despatch  it  may  in  the  effort  to  locate 
the  man,  so  that  the  interim  may  be  no  longer  than  need  be.  This 
" interim  relief”  is  for  the  sole  purpose  of  maintaining  the  family 
until  the  progress  of  events  may  determine  a  permanent  policy ;  but 
even  this  should  be  granted  the  wife  solely  on  the  condition  that  she 
shall  consent  to  the  issuance  of  a  warrant  for  his  arrest  in  case  it  is 
found  impossible  to  secure  his  acknowledgment  of  the  domestic  obliga¬ 
tion  in  any  other  way  than  by  prosecution.  This  does  not  mean 
necessarily  that  the  law  will  be  invoked,  but  that  she  is  willing  that  it 
shall  be  when  every  other  means  fails.1 

Legal  proceedings  against  the  man  as  a  last  resort.  If  the  efforts 
of  the  society  to  locate  the  man  are  of  no  avail,  or  if  when  found  he 
cannot  be  persuaded  to  return,  or  if  the  character  of  the  man  is  such 
that  he  cannot  be  depended  upon  to  keep  any  agreement  he  may  make 
as  to  caring  for  his  family,  his  case  should  be  turned  over  to  the 
courts,  there  to  be  dealt  with  in  a  more  compelling  way.  At  this 
point  it  is  of  vital  importance  that  the  co-operation  between  public 
and  private  agencies  shall  be  complete.  It  is  extremely  discouraging 
to  the  charities  to  push  a  case  this  far  only  to  have  an  effectual  solu¬ 
tion  fail  to  develop  through  inadequacy  or  indifference  of  the  courts, 
the  law,  or  their  administrators.  Warrants  should  be  issued  as  freely 
for  deserters  as  for  other  criminals,  and  not  be  withheld  because  a 
man’s  address  is  unknown. 

Establishment  of  a  municipal  desertion  bureau.  The  local  ma¬ 
chinery  for  locating,  apprehending,  and  returning  deserters  to  jurisdic¬ 
tion,  as  it  is  at  present  operated,  is  highly  defective.  In  communities 
where  desertion  is  of  an  extent  to  justify  it  a  Desertion  Bureau,  with 
full  legal  powers,  should  be  established  as  an  adjunct  of  the  court,  with 
an  expert  in  charge  and  an  adequate  staff  of  carefully  selected  com- 

1  If  the  warrant  is  taken  out  by  the  relief  society  or  its  agent,  and  there  is 
danger  that  the  wife  will  not  keep  her  agreement  to  testify  to  her  husband’s 
delinquency  should  it  become  necessary,  the  society  may  secure  from  her  before¬ 
hand  an  affidavit  to  his  neglect  or  abuse,  or  a  written  agreement  to  appear 
against  him.  This  would  probably  not  be  acceptable  as  testimony  in  court,  as 
over  against  her  refusal  to  testify,  but  it  would  at  least  serve  to  put  her  in  a 
position  where  she  could  less  gracefully  refuse  to  testify. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


743 


petent  workers,  for  the  purpose  of  doing  this  work  effectively.  A 
bureau  is  particularly  desirable  where  courts  of  domestic  relations  are 
already  established.  Their  reinforcement  of  each  other  would  increase 
the  effectiveness  of  both.  The  Jewish  National  Desertion  Bureau 
affords  a  working  model  as  well  as  an  inspiration  for  the  activities  of 
such  a  municipal  bureau.  This  department  should  be  financed  from 
public  funds,  with  ample  appropriation  made  for  returning  men  who 
have  fled  to  distant  points  and  for  carrying  on  all  other  work  essential 
to  its  success.  In  the  long  run  a  generous  appropriation  for  such  a 
department  would  be  justified  as  a  public  economy.  The  records  of 
the  Chicago  Court  of  Domestic  Relations  and  of  the  National  Deser¬ 
tion  Bureau  are  sufficient  evidence  upon  this  point. 

The  deserted  wife  who  is  virtually  a  widow.  On  the  books  of  prac¬ 
tically  all  charitable  societies  there  are  cases  of  deserted  women  who 
are  virtually  widows.  The  desertion  has  taken  place  years  ago  and 
all  hope  of  the  husband’s  return  has  long  since  been  abandoned.  These 
are  the  "vanished  husbands”  whom  it  seems  likely  no  effort  will  locate. 
For  these  cases  there  seems  no  reason  why  treatment  should  differ 
from  that  accorded  widows.  Treatment  of  them  must  be  in  accord 
with  the  needs  of  the  individual  case,  relief  being  given  in  the  form 
of  a  mother’s  pension,  institutional  care,  or  regular  outdoor  relief, 
whichever  the  situation  warrants. 

Prevention  of  desertion.  A  far  deeper  question  than  that  of  the 
treatment  of  desertion  is  that  of  its  prevention.  The  social  objective 
must  be  not  merely  one  of  rehabilitation  of  families  which  have  been 
broken  up,  but  the  larger  one  of  saving  them  from  disintegration  be¬ 
fore  it  actually  sets  in.  Except  insofar  as  it  may  discourage  other 
desertions  any  treatment  of  those  which  have  already  taken  place  is 
of  necessity  chiefly  palliative ;  it  leaves  the  roots  of  the  infection  still 
within  the  social  system.  The  family  today,  as  never  before,  is  being 
subjected  to  influences  which  are  modifying  it  in  vital  ways.  As  a 
living  organism  it  must  change  in  order  to  adapt  itself  to  the  demands 
of  the  day  and  generation.  Unfortunately  various  elements  are  enter¬ 
ing  into  its  readjustment  which  are  causing  it  to  fall  as  an  object  of 
esteem  as  an  institution  in  the  eyes  of  many  persons.  Because  they 
hold  it  of  such  low  value  they  treat  its  obligations  lightly,  and  lay 
them  aside  almost  at  will.  The  problem,  then,  is  one  of  raising  the 
value  of  family  and  home  in  the  estimation  of  those  who  have  taken 


744 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


upon  themselves  the  responsibilities  which  they  involve.  It  is  not 
enough  to  try  to  arouse  in  men  a  sense  of  duty  which  will  hold  them 
to  homes  which  they  would  prefer  to  leave.  It  is  not  enough  to  perfect 
machinery  which  will  compel  men  to  shoulder  domestic  responsibilities 
which  they  wish  to  evade.  Those  things  are  important,  but  they  are 
not  solutions.  The  big  undertaking  is  to  implant  in  men  and  women 
a  new  scale  of  social  values  in  which  the  home  shall  have  first  place. 

Such  an  undertaking  involves  education,  character  building,  the  in¬ 
culcation  of  high  ideals  of  home  life,  and  of  family  importance  in  the 
individual.  It  also  involves,  in  most  cases,  a  raising  of  family  stand¬ 
ards  and  improvement  of  home  conditions  which  surround  the  individ¬ 
ual  ;  and  this  in  turn  many  times  involves  an  improvement  of  economic 
conditions  which  shall  make  such  improvement  possible.  If  men  and 
women  are  to  regard  the  home  as  worth  while  it  must  be  made  worth 
while.  We  must  not  suppose  that  domestic  unrest  and  this  lowering 
of  domestic  values  can  be  isolated  and  considered  in  their  individual 
aspects  alone.  They  are  but  symptoms  of  a  deep-lying  and  funda¬ 
mental  disorganization  which  must  be  readjusted  before  they  will 
disappear.  A  community,  therefore,  must  not  depend  upon  its  legal 
and  charitable  agencies,  however  efficient  they  may  be,  for  a  solution 
of  its  desertion  problem.  It  must  go  behind  the  concrete  outcroppings 
with  which  these  specialized  agencies  deal,  to  the  lives  and  homes  of 
the  people  who  compose  it.  Definite  programs  must  be  thoughtfully 
worked  out,  having  as  their  objective  the  conservation  of  the  home. 


101.  Mothers’  Pension  Legislation  in  the  United 

States1 

The  earliest  of  the  laws  providing  for  the  care  of  dependent  children 
in  their  own  homes  out  of  public  funds  was  that  of  Missouri,  ap¬ 
proved  April  7,  1911,  which  provided  for  an  allowance  to  mothers 
"whose  husbands  are  dead  or  prisoners,  when  such  mothers  are  poor 
and  have  a  child  or  children  under  the  age  of  fourteen  years.”  This 
law  went  into  effect  in  June,  1911. 

iFrom  "Laws  Relating  to  'Mothers’  Pensions’  in  the  United  States,  Den¬ 
mark,  and  New  Zealand,”  United  States  Department  of  Labor,  Children’s  Bu¬ 
reau,  Publication  No.  7,  pp.  7-1 1.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1914. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


745 


In  1913,  of  the  forty-two  State  legislatures  in  session,  twenty-seven 
had  before  them  bills  providing  for  the  support  of  dependent  children 
in  their  own  homes  out  of  public  funds.  Illinois  completely  revised  its 
law  of  1911.  Missouri  extended  the  provisions  of  its  law  to  include 
women  whose  husbands  were  in  insane  asylums  or  State  colony  for 
the  feeble-minded.  California,  Idaho,  Iowa,  Massachusetts,  Michi¬ 
gan,  Minnesota,  Nebraska,  Nevada,  New  Hampshire,  New  Jersey, 
Ohio,  Oregon,  Pennsylvania,  South  Dakota,  Utah,  Washington,  and 
Wisconsin  enacted  new  laws.  Massachusetts  in  1912  appointed  a 
commission  on  the  support  of  dependent  children  of  widowed  mothers. 

The  purpose  underlying  all  these  laws  is  that  of  preventing  the 
breaking  up  of  the  home  when  on  account  of  death  or  disability  the 
support  of  the  natural  breadwinner  of  the  family  is  removed.  But 
the  methods  adopted  to  secure  this  end  vary  widely  in  the  different 
States,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  following  summary  of  the  laws: 

Persons  to  whom  aid  may  be  given.  The  law  applies  to  any  parent  who 
on  account  of  poverty  is  unable  to  care  properly  for  a  dependent  or  neg¬ 
lected  child  but  is  otherwise  a  proper  guardian,  in  Colorado  and  Nebraska; 
to  any  parent  or  grandparent  in  Nevada  ;  to  any  parent  or  guardian  in  Wis¬ 
consin.  In  the  other  States  it  applies  only  to  mothers.  In  California,  New 
Jersey,  Oklahoma  (and  also  in  St.  Louis),  the  mother  must  be  a  widow  to 
receive  the  benefits  of  the  act.  In  the  remaining  States  not  only  widows  but 
the  following  other  classes  of  mothers  with  dependent  children  are  included  : 
mothers  whose  husbands  are  in  prison  in  Idaho,  Iowa,  Minnesota,  Missouri, 
Ohio,  Oregon,  South  Dakota,  and  Washington  ;  mothers  whose  husbands  are 
in  State  insane  asylums  in  Iowa,  Minnesota,  Missouri,  Oregon,  and  Wash¬ 
ington;  mothers  whose  husbands  are  totally  incapacitated,  physically  or 
mentally,  in  Illinois,  Minnesota,  Ohio,  Oregon,  South  Dakota,  and  Washing¬ 
ton;  deserted  wives  in  Michigan,  Ohio  (if  deserted  for  three  years),  Penn¬ 
sylvania,  and  Washington  (if  deserted  for  one  year).  In  Michigan  are 
included  also  unmarried  and  divorced  mothers.  In  Colorado,  Oregon,  and 
Wisconsin,  if  the  person  having  custody  of  the  child  is  not  regarded  as  ca¬ 
pable  of  expending  the  aid  wisely,  the  court  may  order  it  to  be  paid  to  some 
other  person  for  the  benefit  of  the  child. 

Conditions  on  which  aid  is  given.  (1)  Degree  of  poverty.  The  con¬ 
dition  of  receiving  aid  under  these  laws  is  uniformly  that  of  poverty,  with 
certain  definitions  added  in  some  of  the  laws.  In  Washington  the  mother 
must  be  destitute ;  in  New  Hampshire  and  Utah  she  must  be  dependent 
entirely  on  her  own  efforts  for  support;  in  Oregon,  wholly  or  partly  de¬ 
pendent  ;  in  Illinois  she  may  not  own  real  property  or  personal  property 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


746 

other  than  household  effects.  In  Idaho,  Illinois,  Missouri,  New  Hampshire, 
Ohio,  South  Dakota,  and  Utah  the  aid  must  in  the  judgment  of  the  court 
be  necessary  to  save  the  child  from  neglect;  in  New  Jersey,  from  becom¬ 
ing  a  public  charge. 

(2)  Home  conditions.  In  most  of  the  laws  the  requirement  is  made  that 
the  mother  is  a  fit  person,  morally  and  physically,  to  bring  up  her  children 
and  that  it  is  for  the  welfare  of  the  child  to  remain  at  home.  In  Idaho, 
Illinois,  Missouri,  New  Hampshire,  Ohio,  South  Dakota,  and  Utah  it  is 
made  conditional  that  the  child  or  children  be  living  with  the  mother  and 
that  the  mother  shall  not  work  regularly  away  from  home.  In  South  Da¬ 
kota  she  may  not  be  absent  for  work  more  than  one  day  a  week ;  in  Illinois 
and  Ohio  the  amount  of  time  is  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  court. 

(3)  Residence.  In  Washington  and  Minnesota  one  year’s  residence  in 
the  county  is  required ;  in  Idaho,  Missouri,  New  Hampshire,  Ohio,  and 
Utah  two  years’  residence ;  in  Illinois  and  Pennsylvania  three  years’  resi¬ 
dence.  Some  of  the  States  require  "legal  residence”  in  the  State ;  Minne¬ 
sota,  two  years’  residence ;  California  and  Massachusetts,  three  years ; 
California  and  Illinois  require,  in  addition,  that  applicant  be  a  citizen  of 
the  United  States. 

Age  of  child.  The  maximum  age  of  a  child  on  whose  account  an  allow¬ 
ance  may  be  made  is  fourteen  years  in  California,  Illinois  (may  be  extended 
to  sixteen  years  if  child  is  ill  or  incapacitated  for  work),  Iowa,  Massa¬ 
chusetts,  Minnesota,  Missouri,  South  Dakota,  and  Wisconsin;  fifteen  in 
Idaho,  Utah,  and  Washington;  sixteen  in  Colorado,  New  Hampshire,  New 
Jersey,  Oklahoma,  and  Oregon;  seventeen  in  Michigan;  and  eighteen  in 
Nebraska  and  Nevada.  The  legal  working  age  is  the  limit  in  Ohio  and 
Pennsylvania. 

Amount  of  allowance.  The  maximum  allowance  for  one  child  is  $2  a 
week  in  Iowa,  $3  a  week  in  Michigan.  It  is  $9  a  month  for  one  child,  $14 
for  two  children,  and  $4  for  each  additional  child  in  New  Jersey ;  $10  a 
month  for  each  child  in  Minnesota  and  Nebraska;  $10  a  month  for  one 
child  and  $5  for  each  additional  child  in  Idaho,  Missouri  (i.  e.,  Jackson 
County),  New  Hampshire,  and  Utah  ;  $10  for  one  child  and  $7.50  for  each 
additional  child  in  Oregon;  $12  for  one  child  and  $4  for  each  additional 
child  in  Wisconsin  (amount  may,  however,  be  temporarily  increased  in 
case  of  sickness  or  unusual  conditions)  ;  $12  for  one  child,  $20  for  two 
children,  $26  for  three  children,  and  $5  for  each  additional  child  in  Penn¬ 
sylvania;  $12.50  for  each  child  in  California  ($6.25  a  month  by  the  State 
and  a  like  amount  by  the  city  or  county)  ;  $15  for  one  child  and  $5  for 
each  additional  child  in  Washington;  $15  for  one  child  and  $7  for  each 
additional  child  in  Ohio  and  South  Dakota;  $15  for  one  child  and 
$10  for  each  additional  child  in  Illinois  (not  to  exceed  in  all  $50  for  any 
one  family).  In  Colorado,  Massachusetts,  and  Nevada  no  maximum  is 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


747 


set,  but  the  amount  must  be  sufficient  to  care  properly  for  the  child,  with 
the  restriction  in  Nevada  that  it  may  not  exceed  what  it  would  cost  to 
maintain  and  educate  the  child  in  a  county  or  State  home.  In  Oklahoma 
the  "school  scholarship”  is  the  equivalent  of  the  wages  of  the  child.  In 
the  city  of  St.  Louis  the  maximum  is  $3.50  a  week,  which  may  be  increased 
temporarily  on  account  of  sickness  or  other  exceptional  conditions. 

Administration.  The  law  is  administered  by  the  juvenile  court  or  some 
other  county  court  with  similar  functions  in  Colorado,  Illinois,  Idaho 
(probate  court),  Iowa,  Michigan,  Minnesota,  Missouri,  Nebraska,  Nevada, 
New  Jersey  (common  pleas),  Ohio,  Oregon,  South  Dakota,  Utah,  Washing¬ 
ton,  and  Wisconsin ;  by  the  county  commissioners,  upon  advice  of  the 
school  board,  in  New  Hampshire ;  by  the  city  or  town  overseers  of  the 
poor  in  Massachusetts ;  and  by  an  unpaid  board  of  five  to  seven  women 
residents  of  each  county,  appointed  by  the  governor,  in  Pennsylvania.  In 
Ohio,  Nebraska,  and  South  Dakota  the  order  granting  aid  is  good  only  for 
six  months  unless  renewed.  In  Idaho,  Illinois,  Minnesota,  Missouri, 
Nevada,  New  Hampshire,  Ohio,  Utah,  and  Washington  the  court  may  at 
any  time  modify  or  discontinue  the  allowance.  In  California  supervisory 
powers  are  given  to  the  State  board  of  control,  which  can  appoint  three 
State  children’s  agents,  with  an  unpaid  advisory  committee  of  three  per¬ 
sons  in  each  county ;  in  New  Jersey  all  cases  granted  aid  are  under  the 
supervision  of  the  State  board  of  children’s  guardians.  In  Massachusetts 
certain  supervisory  powers  are  given  to  the  State  board  of  charity ;  in 
Wisconsin  to  the  State  board  of  control.  In  Illinois  and  Ohio  the  law  re¬ 
quires  that  visits  shall  be  made  to  the  homes  from  time  to  time  by  the 
probation  officers ;  in  Massachusetts  that  the  overseers  of  the  poor  shall 
visit  the  families  at  least  once  in  every  three  months  and  reconsider  each 
case  at  least  once  a  year. 

Source  of  funds.  In  all  the  States  except  California,  Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania,  and  Wisconsin  the  funds  for  carrying  out  the  provisions  of 
these  laws  come  out  of  the  county  treasury.  In  Illinois  these  are  raised 
by  a  special  tax  of  not  exceeding  three-tenths  of  a  mill  on  the  dollar  of  the 
taxable  property  of  the  county,  and  in  Ohio  by  a  tax  not  exceeding  one- 
tenth  of  a  mill.  In  California  reimbursement  to  the  extent  of  $75  a  year  is 
made  to  the  local  authorities  by  the  State ;  in  Massachusetts  one-third  of 
the  amount  in  settled  cases  and  the  whole  amount  in  unsettled  cases.  In 
Pennsylvania  and  Wisconsin  the  State  bears  one-half  of  the  expense  within 
the  limits  of  the  appropriation,  which  is  apportioned  according  to  the 
population  of  the  counties. 

Penalty  for  fraud.  Penalties  are  provided  for  procuring  or  attempting 
to  procure  an  allowance  fraudulently  in  Idaho,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Nevada, 
Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  South  Dakota,  Utah,  and  Washington. 


748  THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 

102.  Federal  Aid  for  the  Protection  of  Maternity 

and  Infancy1 

The  Children’s  Bureau  was  created  by  act  of  Congress  in  1912. 
Heading  a  long  list  of  subjects  which  it  is  directed  by  its  organic  act 
to  investigate  is  that  of  infant  mortality.  Because  it  was  considered 
of  fundamental  importance,  this  subject  was  the  first  one  to  be  inves¬ 
tigated  by  the  Children’s  Bureau.  The  initial  study  made  in  an  in¬ 
dustrial  town  in  1913  was,  at  the  special  direction  of  Congress, 
repeated  in  nine  other  industrial  towns  and  cities  including  Baltimore, 
Md.,  and  Gary,  Ind.  Studies  of  the  care  available  to  mothers  and 
infants  in  typical  rural  communities  of  twelve  states  of  the  South, 
Middle  West,  and  West  were  also  made. 

The  coincidence  of  a  high  infant  mortality  rate  with  low  earnings, 
poor  housing,  the  employment  of  the  mother  outside  the  home,  and 
large  families  was  indicated  in  all  these  studies.  They  also  showed 
that  there  is  great  variation  in  the  infant  mortality  rates,  not  only  in 
different  parts  of  the  United  States,  but  in  different  parts  of  the  same 
state  and  the  same  city  or  town.  These  differences  were  found  to  be 
caused  by  different  population  elements,  widely  varying  social  and 
economic  conditions,  difference  in  appreciation  of  good  prenatal  and 
infant  care,  and  the  facilities  available  for  such  care. 

Evidence  of  the  methods  used  in  successful  efforts  to  reduce  infant 
mortality  was  also  assembled.  The  instruction  of  mothers  through 
infant-welfare  centers,  public-health  nurses,  and  popular  bulletins  as 
to  the  proper  care  of  children,  the  value  of  breast-feeding,  the  impor¬ 
tance  of  consulting  a  doctor  upon  the  first  evidence  of  disease,  every¬ 
where  brought  substantial  decreases  in  deaths,  especially  from  causes 
classified  in  the  gastrointestinal  and  respiratory  groups.  But  little 
progress  was  made  or  has  since  been  made  in  reducing  the  deaths  in 
early  infancy,  including  deaths  caused  by  premature  birth,  congenital 
debility,  and  injuries  at  birth.  Thus,  in  the  year  1915  the  number  of 
infant  deaths  during  the  first  month  of  life  in  the  Registration  Area 
of  the  United  States  was  more  than  five  times  that  of  the  tenth, 
eleventh,  and  twelfth  months,  and  in  1920  it  was  still  five  times  as 
great.  Similarly,  in  the  year  1915  the  number  of  infant  deaths  during 

1By  Grace  Abbott,  Chief  of  the  Children’s  Bureau,  Washington,  D.C.  From 
the  American  Journal  of  Public  Health ,  Vol.  XII,  No.  9  (1922),  pp.  737-742. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


749 


the  first  week  of  life  was  eight  times  that  in  the  fourth  week,  and  in 
1920  it  was  nine  times  as  great.  Consideration  of  the  causes  of  infant 
mortality  inevitably  leads,  therefore,  to  the  question  of  the  care 
mothers  are  receiving  before,  during,  and  after  childbirth. 

An  analysis  of  the  available  statistical  information  with  reference  to 
deaths  among  mothers  was  published  by  the  Bureau  in  191 7  and  was  the 
subject  of  much  discussion.  In  a  few  places  the  possibility  of  reducing 
this  death-rate  about  one-half  through  prenatal  supervision  in  connec¬ 
tion  with  prenatal  clinics  or  maternity  centers  had  been  demonstrated. 

With  the  evidence  that,  as  Dr.  Howard  has  pointed  out,  "the  pre¬ 
vention  and  control  of  illness  and  death  of  mother  and  child  are  among 
the  most  neglected  and  potentially  the  most  fruitful  domains  of 
public-health  administration,”  some  means  for  extending  on  a  national 
scale  the  successful  local  work  for  better  care  for  mothers  and  infants 
was  obviously  necessary. 

In  her  annual  report  for  1917,  Miss  Julia  Lathrop,  in  reporting  on 
the  Bureau’s  investigation  of  infant  and  maternal  mortality,  called 
attention  to  the  method  of  cooperation  between  national  and  local 
government  adopted  by  Great  Britain  in  the  so-called  grants-in-aid 
for  maternity  and  infant-welfare  work  and  suggested  that  the  United 
States  should  use  the  well-established  principle  of  federal  aid  as  a 
basis  of  national  and  state  cooperation  in  reducing  the  unnecessary 
high  death-rate  among  mothers  and  babies  in  this  country.  The  best- 
known  previously  enacted  laws  of  this  general  type  were :  the  Morrill 
Act  of  1862  providing  for  land-grant  colleges;  the  Hatch  Act  of  1887 
establishing  agricultural  experiment  stations ;  the  Smith-Lever  Act  of 
1914  creating  the  agricultural  extension  service;  the  Good  Roads  Act 
of  1916  (extended  in  1919,  1921,  and  1922)  ;  and  the  Vocational 
Education  Act  of  1917. 1  For  an  almost  innumerable  number  of  ob¬ 
jects  Congress  had  granted  to  the  states  temporary  subsidies  from 
time  to  time.  In  view,  then,  of  the  overwhelming  evidence  of  the  need 
of  promoting  on  a  national  scale  the  health  of  mothers  and  babies 
and  the  successful  demonstration  by  a  number  of  both  public  and 
private  agencies  in  different  parts  of  the  country  of  what  could  be 
done  through  maternity  and  well-baby  centers,  it  was  but  logical  to 
resort  to  the  method  of  state  and  federal  cooperation  which  had  been 
so  frequently  used  for  less  important  ends. 

aThe  Industrial  Rehabilitation  Act  has  since  been  passed  (1920). 


750 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  Sheppard-Towner  Act  for  the  Promotion  of  the  Welfare  and 
Hygiene  of  Maternity  and  Infancy,  which  became  a  law  November  23, 
1921,  is  in  all  essentials  the  same  as  the  plan  for  the  "public  protec¬ 
tion  of  maternity  and  infancy”  submitted  by  Miss  Lathrop  in  her 
annual  report  for  1917.  Briefly  summarized,  its  most  important 
provisions  are  as  follows:  (1)  Appropriation.  It  authorizes  an  ap¬ 
propriation  of  $1,240,000  for  a  five-year  period,  of  which  not  to 
exceed  $50,000  may  be  expended  by  the  Children’s  Bureau  for  ad¬ 
ministrative  purposes  and  for  the  investigation  of  maternal  and  infant 
mortality ;  the  balance  to  be  divided  among  the  states  accepting  the 
Act  as  follows:  $5000  unmatched  to  each  state,  and  an  additional 
$5000  to  each  state  if  matched ;  the  balance  to  be  allotted  among  the 
several  states  on  the  basis  of  population,  and  granted  if  matched. 
(2)  Administration.  National  administration  of  the  Act  is  lodged 
with  the  Children’s  Bureau  of  the  Department  of  Labor;  local  ad¬ 
ministration  in  the  states  is  in  the  Child  Hygiene  or  Child  Welfare 
Division  of  the  state  agency  of  health,  or  where  such  a  division  does 
not  exist,  the  agency  designated  by  the  state.  (3)  Plan  oj  work.  The 
Act  intends  that  the  plan  of  work  shall  originate  in  the  state  and  be 
carried  out  by  the  state.  A  Federal  Board  of  Maternity  and  Infant 
Hygiene,  composed  of  the  chief  of  the  Children’s  Bureau,  the  Surgeon 
General  of  the  United  States  Public  Health  Service,  and  the  United 
States  Commissioner  of  Education,  may  approve  or  disapprove  state 
plans,  but  the  Act  provides  that  the  plans  must  be  approved  by  the 
Federal  Board  if  "reasonably  appropriate  and  adequate  to  carry  out 
its  purposes.” 

As  originally  introduced,  the  Act  provided  that  the  funds  were  to 
be  expended  by  the  states  for  "provision  of  instruction  in  the  hygiene 
of  maternity  and  infancy  through  public-health  nursing,  consultation 
centers,  and  other  suitable  methods ;  and  the  provision  of  medical  and 
nursing  care  for  mothers  and  infants  at  home  or  at  a  hospital  when 
necessary,  especially  in  remote  areas.”  These  specific  provisions  do 
not  appear  in  the  Act  as  passed,  and  the  only  prohibitions  are  that 
no  part  of  the  funds  is  to  be  expended  for  the  purchase,  erection,  or 
repair  of  any  building  or  equipment,  or  for  the  purchase  or  rental  of 
any  buildings  or  lands,  or  for  any  maternity  or  infancy  stipend, 
gratuity,  or  pension.  While  the  Act  was  passed  November  23,  1921, 
the  money  was  not  made  available  until  the  following  April.  The 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


751 


second  Deficiency  Act,  passed  March  20,  1922,  carried  an  appropria¬ 
tion  of  $490,000  for  the  balance  of  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30, 
1922,  and  the  Appropriation  Act  for  the  Departments  of  Com¬ 
merce  and  Labor  for  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30,  1923,  provides 
$1,240,000  for  the  purposes  of  the  Maternity  and  Infant  Hygiene  Act. 
Some  preliminary  decisions  and  approval  forms  by  the  comptroller  of 
the  Treasury  were  necessary  so  that  the  first  money  was  not  paid  to 
the  states  until  May  of  1922. 

Up  to  date  forty-two  states  have  accepted  the  terms  of  the  Act — 
all  except  Maine,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  New  York,  Louisiana, 
and  Washington.  Eleven  of  these  acceptances  (New  Hampshire, 
Delaware,  New  Jersey,  Maryland,  Virginia,  South  Carolina,  Ken¬ 
tucky,  Mississippi,  Minnesota,  Oregon,  and  New  Mexico)  are  by 
state  legislatures  and  the  remaining  thirty-one  by  governors  pending 
the  next  regular  session  of  the  legislature. 

The  amounts  available  to  the  states  for  the  fiscal  year  ending 
June  30,  1923,  are  as  follows : 


Maximum  Amount  available  to  the  States  for  the  Fiscal  Year 

ending  June  30,  1923 


Appok- 

State 

TIONED  ON 

Basis  of 
Population 

Granted  if 
Matched  1 

Grand 

Total- 

Total . 

.  $710,000.00 

$950,000.00 

$1,190,000.00 

Alabama . 

•  15,836.95 

20,836.95 

25,836.95 

Arizona . 

2,253.71 

7,253-71 

12,253.71 

Arkansas . 

.  11,817.51 

16,817.51 

21,817.51 

California . 

23,112.01 

28,112.01 

33,H2.0I 

Colorado . 

6,337.20 

11,337.20 

16,337.20 

Connecticut . 

9,311.48 

14,311.48 

19,31148 

Delaware . 

1,504.01 

6,504.01 

11,504.01 

Florida . 

6,531.72 

II,53I.72 

16,531.72 

Georgia . 

•  10,530-55 

24,530.55 

29,530.55 

Idaho  . 

2,912.66 

7,912.66 

12,912.66 

Illinois . 

•  43,739-10 

48,739.10 

53,739-10 

Indiana . 

.  19,763.62 

24,763.62 

29,763.62 

Iowa . 

16,213.60 

21,213.60 

26,213.60 

Kansas . 

•  ii,932.52 

16,932.52 

21,932.52 

1  Includes  $240,000  granted  if  matched  ($5000  to  each  state). 

2Includes  $240,000  granted  outright  ($5000  to  each  state)  in  addition  to 
amounts  granted  if  matched. 


752 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Maximum  Amount  available  to  the  States  for  the  Fiscal  Year 

ending  June  30,  1923  (Continued) 


State 

• 

Appor¬ 
tioned  on 

Basis  of 
Population 

Total 
Granted  if 
Matched1 

Grand 

Total2 

Kentucky  . 

21,298.64 

26,298.64 

Louisiana  . 

. 12,129.80 

17,129.80 

22,129.80 

Maine  .... 

. S,i79-77 

10,179.77 

15479-77 

Maryland  . 

.  9,777-05 

14,777-05 

19,777-05 

Massachusetts 

. 25,981.70 

30,981.70 

35,981.70 

Michigan  . 

. 24,741.11 

29,741.11 

34,741-11 

Minnesota 

. 16,099.65 

21,099.65 

26,099.65 

Mississippi 

. 12,076.58 

17,076.58 

22,076.58 

Missouri 

. 22,958.19 

27,958.19 

32,958.19 

Montana  . 

. 3,701.91 

8,701.91 

13,701.91 

Nebraska  . 

. 8,743.21 

13,743-21 

i8,743-2i 

Nevada 

.  522.06 

5,522.06 

10,522.06 

New  Hampshire  . 

. 2,988.31 

7,988.31 

12,988.31 

New  Jersey  . 

. 21,284.55 

26,284.55 

31,284.55 

New  Mexico  . 

. 2,430.33 

7,430.33 

12,430.33 

New  York 

. 70,041.78 

75,041.78 

80,041.78 

North  Carolina  . 

.  17,259-66 

22,259.66 

27,259.66 

North  Dakota 

. 4,362.74 

9,362.74 

14,362.74 

Ohio  .... 

. 38,84346 

43,84346 

48,843.46 

Oklahoma 

.  13,67948 

18,679.48 

23,67948 

Oregon 

. 5,28346 

10,283 .46 

15,283.46 

Pennsylvania  . 

.  .....  58,810.99 

63,810.99 

68,810.99 

Rhode  Island 

. 4,076.28 

9,076.28 

14,076.28 

South  Carolina  . 

. ii,355-65 

16,355-65 

21,355.65 

South  Dakota 

.  .....  4,293-n 

9,293.11 

14,293.11 

Tennessee  . 

. i5,767-55 

20,767.55 

25,767.55 

Texas  .... 

. 3U450.52 

36,450.52 

4U450.52 

Utah  .... 

. 3,030.89 

8,030.89 

13,030.89 

Vermont  . 

. 2,376.90 

7,376.90 

12,376.90 

Virginia 

. i5,574-oo 

20,574.00 

25,574.00 

Washington 

. 9449-55 

14449-55 

19449.55 

West  Virginia 

. 9,871-74 

14,871.74 

19,871.74 

Wisconsin 

. i7,75i-62 

22,751.62 

27,751.62 

Wyoming  . 

. 1,31112 

6,311.12 

11,311.12 

Payments  have  been  made  to  38  states  from  1922  funds  and  to  27 
states  from  1923  funds.  Of  the  38  states  that  have  received  payments 
from  1922  funds,  22  matched  their  full  allotment,  4  matched  part  of 

1  Includes  $240,000  granted  if  matched  ($5000  to  each  state). 

2  Includes  $240,000  granted  outright  ($5000  to  each  state)  in  addition  to 
amounts  granted  if  matched. 


SPECIAL  PROBLEMS 


753 


their  allotment,  and  12  accepted  the  $5000  granted  outright  without 
matching.  Of  the  27  states  that  have  received  payments  from  1923 
funds,  12  matched  their  full  allotment,  6  matched  part  of  their  allot¬ 
ment,  and  9  accepted  the  $5000  granted  outright  without  matching. 

The  Federal  Board  of  Maternity  and  Infant  Hygiene  met  on 
April  18,  1922,  elected  the  chief  of  the  Children’s  Bureau  chairman 
of  the  Board,  and  proceeded  to  consider  the  plans  submitted  by  states 
accepting  the  Act.  The  Board  has  laid  down  no  plan  of  work  which 
a  state  must  follow  nor  has  it  made  approval  of  plans  contingent  on 
complying  with  certain  conditions,  each  plan  being  considered  on  its 
merits. 

The  plans  submitted  by  the  states  and%pproved  by  the  Board  vary 
greatly.  The  best  planning  for  a  state  requires  a  correlation  of  the 
money  available  with  the  number  and  causes  of  deaths  among  mothers 
and  babies  in  the  different  parts  of  the  state  and  the  available  local 
facilities.  Unfortunately,  eighteen  of  the  states  accepting  the  Act 
have  not  as  yet  sufficiently  complete  registration  of  births  to  be 
counted  in  the  Birth  Registration  Area  and  twelve  are  not  in  the  Death 
Registration  Area.  Obviously  their  plans  cannot  have  the  fact  basis 
which  is  so  desirable.  Practically  all  these  states  are  making  the 
Sheppard-Towner  Act  the  basis  for  a  new  effort  to  secure  a  new  law 
or  the  enforcement  of  the  one  already  enacted. 

In  some  states  the  infant-welfare  program  is  well  started  and  the 
federal  money  can  be  used  in  the  development  of  plans  already  tested 
by  local  experience,  but  in  a  far  fewer  number  is  the  program  for 
maternity  care  anything  like  so  well  developed ;  hence  preliminary 
educational  work  in  this  field  is  generally  necessary.  Examples  of 
plans  on  which  the  states  are  starting  their  work  will  make  the  value 
of  the  law  clear. 

One  state,  whose  budget  for  fifteen  months  with  the  federal  funds 
amounts  to  $62,269.02,  has  selected  two  counties  as  training  and 
demonstration  centers  in  maternity  and  infant  care,  where  special 
attention  will  be  given  to  the  development  and  standardization  of 
plans  of  work.  These  training  bases  offer  the  following  variety  of 
problems:  (1)  Strictly  city  problems.  (2)  Small  town  problems. 
(3)  Problems  connected  with  mining  camps  and  industrial  communi¬ 
ties.  (4)  Rural  problems  associated  with  agricultural  pursuits  and 
involving  isolation,  poverty,  and  ignorance  to  a  marked  degree.  In 


754 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


this  state,  inauguration  of  a  maternity  and  infancy  program  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  already  established  county  health  units  will  be  pos¬ 
sible  in  at  least  five  additional  counties.  Efforts  will  be  made  to  secure 
the  adoption  of  a  maternity  and  infancy  program  in  the  remaining 
fifteen  counties  having  organized  county  health  units.  In  counties 
having  no  full-time  health  service,  a  general  study  of  the  racial  ele¬ 
ments  of  the  population  and  the  possibilities  of  local  cooperation  will 
be  made,  and  campaigns  to  secure  registration  of  all  births,  use  of 
"drops”  in  the  eyes  of  new-born  babies,  and  reporting  of  cases  of 
ophthalmia  neonatorum  will  be  made. 

Another  state,  which  will  have  available  $61,567.22  for  a  fifteen 
months’  program,  has  a  fairfy  well-developed  county  organization  for 
public-health  work,  and  there  is  general  local  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  work  for  mothers  and  babies.  In  this  state  nurses  are  to  be  placed 
in  counties  already  organized,  who  will  devote  themselves  to  maternity 
and  infancy.  Supervision  of  midwives,  the  number  of  whom  is  esti¬ 
mated  at  some  six  thousand,  inspection  of  maternity  hospitals,  as 
well  as  conducting  prenatal  and  child-hygiene  centers,  are  included 
in  the  plans. 

Any  public-health  work  is,  shall  we  say,  at  least  three-fourths  edu¬ 
cational.  The  widespread  discussion  of  the  Sheppard-Towner  Act 
has  already  done  much  to  acquaint  women  and  legislators  with  the 
importance  of  scientific  care  for  themselves  and  their  babies.  Thus 
New  York,  Massachusetts,  and  Maine,  although  not  accepting  fed¬ 
eral  assistance,  have  made  their  first  appropriations  for  the  promotion 
of  the  hygiene  of  maternity,  as  a  result  of  discussion  of  the  Sheppard- 
Towner  Act.  Whether  considered  separately  or  in  relation  to  other 
states  or  nations,  every  state  must  face  the  fact  that  there  is  a  general 
demand  that  whatever  the  source  or  character  of  the  opposition,  the 
large  and  preventable  loss  of  life  among  mothers  and  babies  must  be 
reduced.  But  the  value  of  the  work  is  not  limited  to  the  saving  of  life. 

All  the  examinations  of  cross-sections  of  the  population  made  in 
connection  with  pre-school  clinics,  school  medical  inspection,  medical 
certification  of  children  for  work  permits,  examinations  of  all  the 
men  in  connection  with  the  draft,  show  substantially  the  same  high 
percentage  of  physical  subnormality.  Care  of  the  mother  and  the 
child  from  birth  are  the  foundation  on  which  a  national  program  must 
be  built.  Subsequent  work  is  remedial,  not  preventive. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 


CHILD  PROTECTION 
103.  Child-Placing1 

Dr.  Barnardo’s  homes  and  child- placing.  One  of  the  most  striking 
developments  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  the 
National  Incorporated  Association  for  the  Reclamation  of  Destitute 
Waif  Children,  otherwise  known  as  Dr.  Barnardo’s  Homes,  operating 
in  England  and  the  colonies  of  the  British  Empire.  This  philanthropic 
work  began  in  1866,  when  Dr.  Thomas  P.  Barnardo  aided  his  first 
homeless  boy  in  London,  and  gradually  extended  under  the  efforts  of 
its  founder,  until  in  1899,  it  had  assumed  proportions  of  widespread 
public  interest  and  advantage  and  was  duly  incorporated.  The  pur¬ 
pose  from  the  beginning  was  and  now  is:  "To  provide  a  home  and 
afford  a  start  in  life  to  destitute,  orphan,  waif,  stray,  maimed,  and 
sick  children  who  otherwise  have  no  helper.” 

Between  1866  and  the  close  of  the  year  1915,  a  total  of  82,126 
children  were  rescued  from  want,  distress,  and  homelessness  and  cared 
for  in  numerous  institutions  for  a  time.  Some  were  then  returned  to 
their  own  rehabilitated  homes,  but  the  vast  majority  were  placed  in 
selected  families,  first  in  England  only,  later  also  in  Canada  and  other 
British  colonies.  Up  to  the  close  of  1915  an  aggregate  of  25,779 
children  had  been  sent  across  the  Atlantic  for  distribution  in  Cana¬ 
dian  families,  294  of  them  during  1915.  Many  were  also  sent  to  other 
parts  of  the  British  Empire.2 

American  organizations.  Child-placing  in  families  by  incorporated 
societies,  using  paid  trained  workers  and  operating  by  systematized 
methods,  was  the  most  important  development  in  child  welfare  work 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  first  of  these 
modern  agencies  in  the  United  States  was  the  Children’s  Aid  Society 

1From  Child-Placing  in  Families  (pp.  35-36,  38-48,  161,  184-196),  by  W.  H. 
Slingerland,  A.M.,  D.  D.,  Department  of  Child-Helping,  Russell  Sage  Founda¬ 
tion.  Copyright,  1918,  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  New  York. 

2  Statistics  from  Fiftieth  Annual  Report  of  Dr.  Barnardo’s  Homes,  1915. 

755 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


756 

of  the  City  of  New  York,  founded  in  1853  by  Charles  Loring  Brace. 
Its  original  purpose  was  to  send  homeless  city  children  to  distant 
country  homes,  with  little  or  no  preliminary  institutional  care.  The 
organization  has  constantly  enlarged  its  scope  and  activities,  and  after 
more  than  half  a  century  of  service,  now  cares  annually  for  hundreds 
of  children  at  a  cost  of  over  half  a  million  dollars. 

In  1868  the  Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Charity  originated  the 
method  of  boarding-out  dependent  children  in  private  families  at 
public  expense.  The  plan  soon  became  popular  and  the  work  rapidly 
expanded.  Private  organizations  followed  the  example  of  the  state 
board  and  began  boarding-out  their  wards.  Nearly  twenty  institutions 
for  dependent  children  ultimately  closed  their  doors  and  retired  from 
the  work.  While  no  exact  figures  are  obtainable,  workers  in  the  child 
welfare  field  have  estimated  that  at  least  ten  thousand  dependent 
children  of  Massachusetts  are  now  provided  for  in  boarding  homes  by 
public  and  private  agencies,  and  that  the  annual  cost  of  such  work 
exceeds  a  million  dollars. 

Extent  and  variety  of  work.  The  extent  of  the  modern  movement 
for  child-placing  in  America  can  best  be  suggested  by  the  fact  that  in 
1910  Hastings  H.  Hart,  in  his  book,  Preventive  Treatment  of  Neg¬ 
lected  Children,  listed  one  hundred  and  seven  public  and  private  so¬ 
cieties  and  agencies  for  this  work.  By  1917  the  number  had  become 
very  much  larger,  it  being  estimated  that  in  that  year  there  were  over 
two  hundred  organized  child-placing  agencies  in  this  country  annually 
finding  homes  for  at  least  fifty  thousand  children.  Nearly  as  many 
more  children  are  annually  placed  in  families  by  child-caring  institu¬ 
tions.  Public  agencies  have  multiplied  in  recent  years,  and  now  com¬ 
pose  no  small  part  of  the  whole  number.  Examples  are  the  New 
Jersey  State  Board  of  Children’s  Guardians  and  the  Children’s  Wel¬ 
fare  Department  of  the  Ohio  Board  of  State  Charities. 

Child-placing  in  "free  homes,”  those  where  there  is  no  payment  of 
board,  is  used  mainly  for  children  requiring  permanent  care,  and  a 
large  per  cent  of  those  so  placed  are  given  full  membership  in  the 
families  by  legal  adoption.  The  boarding-out  plan,  use  of  which  has 
immensely  increased  in  recent  years,  applies  especially  to  children  for 
whom  only  temporary  care  must  be  provided,  although  in  Massachu¬ 
setts  and  Pennsylvania  children  are  kept  indefinitely  long  periods  on 
board  at  the  expense  of  public  and  private  agencies. 


CHILD  PROTECTION 


757 


Nearly  all  child-caring  institutions  do  more  or  less  child-placing  in 
families.  Many  retain  their  wards  only  a  limited  time,  until  they  are 
ten,  twelve,  or  fourteen  years  old,  and  then  find  them  places  in  selected 
private  families.  Other  institutions  give  somewhat  definite  vocational 
training,  and  then  locate  their  wards  in  family  homes  where  their 
services  at  once  make  them  self-supporting.  All  child-caring  institu¬ 
tions  must  at  some  age  dismiss  their  wards,  and  the  usual  method 
when  that  age  arrives  is  to  obtain  a  place  for  a  child  in  a  private 
home  as  an  accepted  inmate  or  paid  worker,  before  withdrawing  in¬ 
stitutional  care  and  support.  Considerable  child-placing  is  done  by 
directors  of  the  poor  and  the  juvenile  courts,  although  many  public 
officials  now  prefer  to  secure  the  aid  of  regularly  established  agencies 
for  such  work. 

A  vast  amount  of  child-placing  has  also  always  been  done  by  pri¬ 
vate  individuals,  such  as  physicians,  clergymen,  lawyers,  nurses,  mid¬ 
wives,  keepers  of  maternity  homes,  and  the  officers  of  hospitals  and 
other  institutions. 

Definitions.  It  is  not  an  easy  task  to  define  child-placing  in  families 
accurately  and  comprehensively  in  these  days.  The  term  no  longer 
means  the  " homefinding ”  of  past  generations;  the  simple  placing  of 
a  strange  child  in  a  foster  home.  It  now  implies  law,  method,  organi¬ 
zation,  investigation,  and  social  as  well  as  individual  betterment. 
Child-placing  is  so  widely  useful  and  so  vitally  important  that  its  defi¬ 
nition,  fundamental  principles,  organizations,  and  essential  methods, 
should  be  matters  of  common  knowledge  and  the  basis  of  com¬ 
munity  action. 

Legal  definition.  The  only  legal  definition  of  child-placing  in  fami- 
ilies  known  to  the  writer  is  to  be  found  in  Article  16,  Section  300,  of 
the  State  Charities  Law  of  the  State  of  New  York.  "The  term  'place- 
out’  .  .  .  means  the  placing  of  a  destitute  child  in  a  family,  other 
than  that  of  a  relative  within  the  second  degree,  for  the  purpose  of 
providing  a  home  for  such  child.” 

In  order  to  obtain  a  consensus  of  opinion  as  to  what  constituted  a 
satisfactory  definition  a  note  of  inquiry,  quoting  the  New  York  defini¬ 
tion,  was  sent  to  about  fifty  of  the  leading  child-placing  agencies  of  the 
United  States.  On  the  basis  of  the  replies  received,  the  writer  has 
constructed  a  working  definition  which  has  been  submitted  to  and 
found  satisfactory  by  a  number  of  social  workers : 


758 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


A  working  definition.  "Child-placing  in  families  is  placing  desti- 
JAfte  and  neglected  children,  temporarily  or  permanently,  in  families 
other  than  their  own,  for  the  purpose  of  providing  care  and  homes 
for  them.” 

The  definition  given  is  intended  to  cover  all  child-placing,  good  or 
bad,  standardized  or  unstandardized,  by  individuals,  societies,  or  in¬ 
stitutions.  But  certain  standards  have  come  to  be  generally  recog¬ 
nized  by  well-organized  child-placing  agencies  as  essential  to  the  right 
doing  of  the  work  outlined  in  the  definition. 

Corollaries.  The  most  important  of 'these  standards  are  indicated 
in  the  following  corollaries : 

1 .  The  work  is  highly  responsible  because  it  involves  the  most  sacred 
interests  of  the  family  and  the  entire  future  interests  of  the  child. 

2.  It  is  a  technical  branch  of  social  service,  requiring  expert  agents 
and  exact  methods,  and  should  be  done  only  by  public  officers  duly 
qualified  for  such  work,  or  by  trained  representatives  of  public  or 
private  organizations  that  have  been  approved  by  a  competent  state 
authority. 

3.  Nearly  all  institutions  for  dependent  and  delinquent  children 
are  engaged  in  child-placing.  An  institution  does  placing-out  work 
when  it  selects  homes,  or  secures  positions  including  homes,  for  any 
number  of  its  minor  wards,  and  by  authority  of  its  guardianship 
officially  arranges  for  their  location  in  such  homes,  either  as  paying 
boarders,  free  inmates,  or  paid  workers. 

4.  Children  may  be  placed-out  in  any  of  three  ways: 

a.  On  board,  the  board  being  paid  by  parents,  guardian,  agency, 
or  public  officer,  or  partly  by  one  and  partly  by  another. 

b.  In  "free  homes,”  without  payment  of  board,  the  expense  of 
care  being  supplied  by  the  foster  parents. 

c.  In  "working  homes,”  at  wages  which  may  or  may  not  leave  a 
surplus  beyond  the  child’s  board  and  clothes. 

5.  Children  placed  with  relatives  of  the  second  degree;  that  is,  in 
the  homes  of  grandparents,  brothers,  or  sisters,  should  not  be  reported 
as  "placed-out,”  but  as  "placed  with  kin.” 

6.  Children  remaining  in  homes  for  less  than  seven  days  should 
not  be  reported  as  placed-out.  This  rule,  adopted  by  the  United 
States  Census  Bureau  in  1910,  should  be  accepted  for  statistical 
purposes. 


CHILD  PROTECTION 


759 


7.  Careful  studies  of  the  causes  of  family  break-down,  of  juvenile 
dependency  and  delinquency,  and  of  the  results  of  child-placing  in 
families,  are  requisite  to  a  wise  and  progressive  educational  and 
preventive  program. 

Child-Placing  Organizations 

The  placing  of  dependent,  neglected,  or  delinquent  children  in 
family  homes  must  be  standardized  in  all  of  its  relations  and  work. 
The  haphazard  methods  of  other  days  can  no  longer  be  approved. 
They  too  often  defeated  the  very  object  they  were  intended  to  accom¬ 
plish,  and  supposedly  rescued  boys  and  girls  have  frequently  been  cast 
into  an  environment  that  injured  body  and  spirit,  and  sometimes 
destroyed  even  life  itself. 

The  minimum  requirements  of  a  child-placing  agency  should  be 
established  by  the  commonwealth.  Proper  state  authority  should  be 
exercised,  not  only  over  the  agencies  already  in  operation  but  also 
over  those  in  process  of  formation.  Many  states  have  very  little  legis¬ 
lation  covering  these  matters,  and  corporations  for  child  care  not 
classed  as  financial  enterprises  may  be  established  freely  and  con¬ 
tinued  indefinitely  without  examination  or  supervision.  The  time  has 
come  to  call  a  halt,  and  in  the  name  of  humanity  to  put  child-caring 
work  of  all  sorts  upon  a  higher  plane. 

Organization  elements  and  relations .  The  following  outline  gives 
the  proper  minimum  requirements  for  child-caring  organizations,  with 
especial  reference  to  child-placing  in  families. 

1.  At  least  five  reputable  and  responsible  citizens  of  the  common¬ 
wealth,  the  group  including  both  sexes,  associated  as  a  board  of  in¬ 
corporators  or  a  board  of  trustees  or  managers,  should  present  for 
approval  to  the  proper  state  authorities,  articles  of  association  or 
incorporation,  defining  the  proposed  child  welfare  work,  the  methods 
to  be  used,  and  the  objects  to  be  accomplished. 

2.  No  incorporation  should  be  allowed  or  charter  granted  until  the 
project  and  plans  shall  have  been  investigated  by  said  state  authority 
whose  approval  shall  be  based  upon  reasonable  and  satisfactory  assur¬ 
ance  on  the  following  points : 

a.  The  good  character  and  intentions  of  the  applicants. 

b.  The  present  and  prospective  need  for  the  service  intended  by  the 
proposed  organization. 


760 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


c.  The  employment  of  capable,  trained,  or  experienced  workers. 

d.  Sufficient  financial  backing  to  insure  effective  work. 

e.  The  probability  of  permanence  in  the  proposed  organization  or 
institution. 

/.  That  the  methods  used  and  the  disposition  made  of  the  children 
served  will  be  in  their  best  interests  and  in  that  of  society. 

g.  Wise  and  legally  drawn  articles  of  incorporation  or  institutional 
charter,  and  related  by-laws. 

h.  That  in  the  judgment  of  said  state  authority  the  establishment 
of  such  an  organization  is  desirable  and  for  the  public  welfare. 

3.  All  child-placing  in  families  should  be  done  by  approved  agencies 
and  institutions  that  have  satisfied  a  competent  state  authority  that 
they  are  reputable  and  properly  qualified  to  do  the  work,  and  that 
pledge  themselves  to : 

a.  Investigate  all  cases  of  children  offered  for  reception  carefully 
and  thoroughly.  This  implies  the  individual  and  family  "case  study” 
so  urgently  insisted  upon  and  described  elsewhere. 

b.  Examine  and  treat  children  according  to  their  needs.  Social, 
dietetic,  medical,  and  psychological  treatment  while  in  temporary 
care,  and  the  careful  fitting  of  children  into  new  homes  or  institutions 
are  here  implied. 

c.  Provide  sympathetically  and  considerately  for  the  happiness  and 
the  recreational  needs  of  the  children ;  first,  as  insuring  pleasant  and 
normal  living  conditions ;  second,  as  an  essential  part  of  their  develop¬ 
ment  and  education. 

d.  Personally  inspect  and  judiciously  select  all  family  homes  used. 
The  use  of  trained  paid  agents,  expert  in  child-placing  work,  is  always 
essential  to  high  class  service. 

e.  Give  all  placed-out  wards  adequate  supervision.  Each  agency 
or  institution  must  supervise  its  wards  after  placement,  and  proper 
state  supervision  of  all  organizations  and  their  work  is  also  a  social 
necessity. 

4.  Child-placing  in  families  by  .unauthorized  individuals,  such  as 
nurses,  midwives,  physicians,  and  clergymen,  should  be  prohibited  by 
law ;  and  placing-out  by  public  officers  should  be  done  only  by  those 
who  are  connected  with  proper  agencies  or  institutions,  or  who 
have  been  appointed  to  and  approved  for  such  work  by  competent 
authorities. 


CHILD  PROTECTION 


761 


5.  Commercial  lying-in  homes  and  maternity  hospitals  should  be 
allowed  to  operate  only  when  duly  licensed  after  thorough  examination 
and  approval  by  the  state  authorities  as  to  the  desirability  of  estab¬ 
lishing  such  institutions  and  as  to  buildings,  equipment,  facilities  for 
proper  service,  and  the  character  of  the  management  and  employes ; 
and  all  such  institutions  should  be  forbidden  by  law  to  place  out  children. 

6.  Certificates  of  approval  from  a  competent  state  authority,  re¬ 
newable  annually,  should  be  required  of  all  organizations  caring  for 
dependent,  delinquent,  or  defective  children,  including  both  child¬ 
placing  agencies  and  institutions  for  continued  care,  whether  or  not 
they  receive  support  from  public  funds. 

7.  The  appropriation  of  public  funds  to  private  agencies  or  institu¬ 
tions,  if  granted  at  all,  should  be  absolutely  limited  to  such  as  are 
approved  and  certified  by  a  proper  state  authority ;  and  all  such  funds 
should  be  granted  only  on  the  basis  of  specific  service  rendered  for 
children  found  to  be  proper  charges  upon  funds  raised  by  taxation. 
They  should  never  be  given  in  lump  sums  without  audit  or  definite 
application. 

8.  Every  child-caring  agency  or  institution  should  be  required  to 
keep  adequate  records  of  all  of  its  wards  and  of  all  its  work.  Definite 
forms  and  sets  of  records  should  be  provided  by  the  state,  to  secure 
both  efficiency  and  uniformity.1 

9.  There  should  be  in  each  commonwealth  a  central  state  super¬ 
visory  board  or  department,  with  authority  to  cover  all  matters  indi¬ 
cated  in  the  preceding  paragraphs.  This  supervisory  power  may  be 
vested  in  a  state  board  of  control,  a  state  board  of  charities,  or  in  a 
special  agency,  perhaps  called  the  board  of  children’s  guardians. 

Some  operating  essentials.  The  most  important  essentials  in  the 
operation  of  a  child-placing  organization  are  a  wise  board  of  adminis¬ 
tration,  a  competent  executive  officer,  and  a  capable  staff  of  workers. 

1.  The  Board.  The  society  or  association  should  have  an  intelli¬ 
gent  and  efficient  board  of  managers,  composed  of  both  men  and 
women,  preferably  not  more  than  fifteen  in  number.  They  should 
represent  all  sections  of  the  state  or  tributary  territory,  but  should  be 
so  located  as  to  make  it  possible  to  secure  a  quorum  at  business  meet¬ 
ings.  There  should  be  no  figureheads  on  the  board.  To  encumber 

1See  Elements  of  Record  Keeping  for  Child-Helping  Organizations ,  by  Georgia 
G. Ralph, Department  of  Child-Helping,  Russell  Sage  Foundation, New  York,  1915. 


762 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


the  list  with  the  names  of  prominent  people  who  have  no  special  in¬ 
terest  in  child  welfare  and  who  have  no  intention  of  doing  anything 
to  promote  it,  is  foolish  and  inexcusable.  In  order  to  make  the  or¬ 
ganization  a  success,  each  member  should  count  one  in  real  interest 
and  personal  service. 

2.  The  Executive.  The  board  should  secure,  as  the  active  and 
responsible  executive,  a  competent  superintendent,  who  can  be  en¬ 
trusted  with  broad  authority  to  plan  and  prosecute  the  work  of  the 
organization.  The  superintendent  should  be  a  person  of  tact  and 
adaptability,  so  as  to  work  for  and  with  the  board  of  managers,  and 
yet  of  initiative  and  independence,  so  as  to  meet  the  pressing  emer¬ 
gencies  of  this  position.  This  executive  may  be  of  either  sex,  but 
must  be  well  educated,  of  high  character,  and  should  have  had  some 
special  training  or  practical  experience  in  social  work.  He  or  she 
ought  to  have  at  least  the  ability  which  would  be  required  for  a  high 
school  principal  or  a  county  superintendent  of  schools ;  and  should 
receive  a  salary  at  least  as  large  as  would  be  paid  to  people  in  such 
positions.  The  work  is  strenuous  and  important.  Broken  down 
teachers  and  superannuated  ministers  are  unfitted  for  and  unequal  to 
the  task.  Only  men  and  women  strong  in  body,  gifted  in  mind,  saga¬ 
cious  in  judgment,  and  highly  conscientious,  should  be  selected  for 

_  "  — 

such  executive  positions. 

3.  The  Workers.  The  staff  of  workers,  headed  by  the  superintend¬ 
ent,  is  the  main  requisite  for  the  active  operation  of  a  child-placing 
society.  Even  in__a  children’s  home  or  an  orphanage  the  staff  of 
employes  has  been  called"**  the  soul  of  the  institution.”  Institutions 
for  the  continued  care  of  children  must  have  grounds,  buildings,  and 
much  general  physical  equipment  in  order  to  carry  on  their  work. 
But  in  child-placing  agencies,  where  the  physical  "  plant  ”  is  compara¬ 
tively  small  and  unimportant,  practically  all  of  the  emphasis  should 
be  placed  upon  the  workers.  Each  should  be  carefully  selected  on  ac¬ 
count  of  competency  for  and  adaptation  to  such  service.  Training  and 
experience  count,  and  should  have  due  recognition.  The  quality  of 
the  executive  will  be  clearly  shown  by  the  staff  of  workers  which  he 
collects  and  commands^-The  agents  of  such  societies  should  be  tech- 
nically^quidified  to  do  expert  "case  work”;  that  is,  to  study  compre- 

..hensively  any  child’s  family  history,  environment,  and  personality, 
and  in  a  general  way  its  physical,  mental,  and  moral  condition. 


CHILD  PROTECTION 


763 


Essentials  of  state  supervision.  .  .  .  State  supervision  of  private 
child-caring  institutions  is  a  necessity.  The  following  will  cover  the 
most  important  essentials  of  adequate  supervision : 

1.  There  must  be  proper  power  and  authority  vested  by  legislative 
action  in  a  suitable  state  board. 

2.  The  board  and  its  working  force  should  be  absolutely  non¬ 
partisan  and  nonsectarian. 

3.  Its  entire  service  should  be  impartially  administered. 

4.  Only  trained  or  experienced  agents  of  high  quality  should  be 
employed. 

5.  The  state  should  make  liberal  appropriations  for  its  support. 

6.  It  should  have  authority  over  all  sorts  of  institutions,  whether 
aided  by  public  funds  or  dependent  upon  private  benevolence. 

7.  It  should  have  power  to  compel  the  rectification  of  any  neglect 

or  abuses  of  children  in  institutions  and  proper  supervision  by  agencies 

$ 

of  children  placed-out  in  families ;  and  it  should  have  the  right  to 
transfer  any  children  improperly  placed. 

8.  It  should  establish  minimum  standards  of  child  care,  both  phys¬ 
ical  and  administrative,  and  require  the  keeping  of  systematic  rec¬ 
ords  of  all  children,  service,  and  finance.1 

9.,  It  should  grant  certificates  of  approval  annually  after  careful 
inspection  to  all  approved  agencies  and  institutions. 

10.  It  should  wisely  and  tactfully  enforce  all  laws,  but  this  work 
should  be  secondary  to  efforts  to  improve  the  service  rendered  to  the 
children  and  to  secure  their  welfare. 

11.  As  the  only  practical  way  to  solve  social  welfare  problems  is 
by  state-wide  action,  in  which  is  implied  occasional  resort  to  legisla¬ 
tion  and  sometimes  the  necessity  of  funds  produced  by  taxation,  one 
chief  duty  of  the  supervisory  board  should  be  so  to  study  the  situation 
that  it  may  create  a  State  Program  of  Child  Welfare  covering  both 
present  needs  and  the  probable  requirements  for  one  or  two  decades 
of  all  classes  of  dependent,  delinquent,  and  defective  children.2 

iSee  Child  Welfare  Work  in  California ,  by  W.  H.  Slingerland,  Ph.D.,  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Child-Helping,  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  1916,  p.  227. 

2 A  tentative  outline  of  a  state  program,  by  H.  H.  Hart,  LL.D.,  is  given 
on  pages  32-34  of  Child  Welfare  Work  in  Pennsylvania ,  by  W.  H.  Slingerland, 
Ph.D.,  Department  of  Child-Helping,  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  1915;  also,  in 
the  same  volume,  pp.  256-265,  a  discussion  of  state  supervision  of  children’s 
institutions. 


764 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


104.  Minimum  Standards  of  Child  Welfare 

Minimum  Standards  for  the  Protection  of  Children  in  Need  of 

Special  Care 1 

1.  General  statement.  Every  child  should  have  normal  home  life, 
an  opportunity  for  education,  recreation,  vocational  preparation  for 
life,  and  for  moral  and  spiritual  development  in  harmony  with  Ameri¬ 
can  ideals  and  the  educational  and  spiritual  agencies  by  which  these 
rights  of  the  child  are  normally  safeguarded.  The  Conference  recog¬ 
nizes  the  fundamental  role  of  home,  religion,  and  education  in  the 
development  of  childhood. 

Aside  from  the  general  fundamental  duty  of  the  State  toward  chil¬ 
dren  in  normal  social  conditions,  ultimate  responsibility  for  children 
who,  on  account  of  improper  home  conditions,  physical  handicap,  or 
delinquency,  are  in  need  of  special  care  devolves  upon  the  State. 
Particular  legislation  is  required  for  children  in  need  of  such  care,  the 
aim  of  which  should  be  the  nearest  approach  to  normal  development. 
Laws  enacted  by  the  several  States  for  these  purposes  should  be  co¬ 
ordinated  as  far  as  practicable  in  view  of  conditions  in  the  several 
States,  and  in  line  with  national  ideals. 

2.  Home  care.  The  aim  of  all  provision  for  children  in  need  of 
special  care  necessitating  removals  from  their  own  homes,  should  *be 
to  secure  for  each  child  home  life  as  nearly  normal  as  possible,  to 
safeguard  his  health,  and  provide  opportunities  for  education,  recrea¬ 
tion,  vocational  preparation,  and  moral  and  spiritual  development. 
To  a  much  larger  degree  than  at  present,  family  homes  may  be  used 
to  advantage  in  the  care  of  special  classes  of  children. 

ir  3.  Adequate  income.  Home  life,  which  is,  in  the  words  of  the 
Conclusions  of  the  White  House  Conference,  "the  highest  and  finest 
product  of  civilization,”  cannot  be  provided  except  upon  the  basis  of 
an  adequate  income  for  each  family,  and  hence  private  and  govern¬ 
mental  agencies  charged  with  the  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of 
children  in  need  of  special  care  should  be  urged  to  supplement  the 
resources  of  the  family  wherever  the  income  is  insufficient,  in  such 

1  Drawn  up  by  a  committee  of  the  Children’s  Bureau  Conference,  May  and 
June,  1919.  From  Standards  of  Child  Welfare,  United  States  Department  of 
Labor,  Children’s  Bureau  Publication  No.  60,  pp.  440-444.  Government  Print¬ 
ing  Office,  Washington,  1919. 


CHILD  PROTECTION  765 

measure  that  the  family  budget  conforms  to  the  average  standard  of 
the  community. 

4.  Incorporation ,  licensing ,  and  supervision.  A  State  board  of 
charities,  or  a  similar  supervisory  body,  should  be  held  responsible  for 
the  regular  inspection  and  licensing  of  every  institution,  agency,  or 
association,  public  or  private,  incorporated  or  otherwise,  that  receives 
or  cares  for  children  who  suffer  from  physical  handicaps,  or  who  are 
delinquent,  dependent,  or  without  suitable  parental  care.  This  super¬ 
vision  should  be  conceived  and  exercised  in  harmony  with  democratic 
ideals  which  invite  and  encourage  the  service  of  efficient,  altruistic 
forces  of  society  in  the  common  welfare.  The  incorporation  of  such 
institutions,  agencies,  and  associations  should  be  required,  and  should 
be  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  State  board  of  charities  or  similar  body. 

5.  Removal  of  children  from  their  homes.  Unless  unusual  condi¬ 
tions  exist,  the  child’s  welfare  is  best  promoted  by  keeping  him  in  his 
own  home.  No  child  should  be  removed  from  his  home  unless  it  is 
impossible  so  to  reconstruct  family  conditions  or  build  and  supple¬ 
ment  family  resources  as  to  make  the  home  safe  for  the  child,  or 
so  to  supervise  the  child  as  to  make  his  continued  presence  safe 
for  the  community. 

6.  Principles  governing  child-placing.  This  Conference  reaffirms  in 
all  essentials  the  resolutions  of  the  White  House  Conference  of  1909 
on  the  Care  of  Dependent  Children.  We  believe  they  have  been 
guides  for  communities  and  States  that  have  sought  to  reshape  their 
plans  for  children  in  need  of  special  care.  We  commend  them  for 
consideration  to  all  communities  whose  standards  do  not  as  yet  con¬ 
form  to  them,  so  that  such  standards  may  be  translated  into  practice 
in  the  various  States. 

Before  a  child  is  placed  in  other  than  a  temporary  foster  home  ade¬ 
quate  consideration  should  be  given  to  his  health,  mentality,  character, 
and  family  history  and  circumstances.  Remediable  physical  defects 
should  be  corrected.  Complete  records  of  every  child  under  care  are 
necessary  to  a  proper  understanding  of  the  child’s  heredity,  develop¬ 
ment,  and  progress  while  under  the  care  of  the  agency.  Careful  and 
wise  investigation  of  foster  homes  is  prerequisite  to  the  placing  of 
children.  Adequate  standards  should  be  required  of  the  foster  families 
as  to  character,  intelligence,  experience,  training,  ability,  income,  and 
environment. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


766 

A  complete  record  should  be  kept  of  each  foster  home,  giving  the 
information  on  which  approval  was  based.  The  records  should  also 
show  the  agency's  contacts  with  the  family  from  time  to  time  for  the 
purpose  of  indicating  the  care  it  gave  to  the  child  entrusted  to  it.  In 
this  way  special  abilities  in  the  families  will  be  developed  and  con¬ 
served  for  children.  Supervision  of  children  placed  in  foster  homes 
should  include  adequate  visits  by  properly  qualified  and  well-trained 
visitors  and  constant  watchfulness  over  the  child's  health,  education, 
and  moral  and  spiritual  developments  Supervision  of  children  in 
boarding  homes ’shouM-^lsu~inVdIvethe  careful  training  of  the  foster 
parents  in  their  task.  Supervision  is  not  a  substitute  for  the  responsi¬ 
bilities  which  properly  rest  with  the  foster  family. 

7.  Care  of  children  of  illegitimate  birth.  The  child  of  illegitimate 
birth  represents  a  very  serious  condition  of  neglect,  and  for  this  rea¬ 
son  special  safeguards  should  be  provided  for  these  children.  Save 
for  unusual  reasons  both  parents  should  be  responsible  for  the  child 
during  its  minority,  and  especially  should  the  responsibility  of  the 
father  be  emphasized.  Care  of  the  child  by  its  mother  during  the 
first  nursing  months  is  highly  desirable,  and  no  parents  of  a  child  of 
illegitimate  birth  should  be  permitted  to  surrender  the  child  outside 
of  its  own  family,  save  with  the  consent  of  a  properly  designated  State 
department  or  a  court  of  proper  jurisdiction.  More  adequate  and 
humane  treatment  of  such  cases  in  court  procedure  and  otherwise  will 
result  in  greater  willingness  to  have  them  considered,  which  is  in  line 
with  the  protection  needed.  The  whole  treatment  and  care  of  the 
unmarried  mother  and  her  child  should  include  the  best  medical  super¬ 
vision  and  the  widest  opportunity  for  education  under  wholesome, 
normal  conditions  in  the  community. 

8.  Rural  social  work.  Social  work  for  children  in  rural  parts  of  the 
country  has  been  neglected.  The  essential  principles  of  child-welfare 
work  should  be  applied  to  rural  needs,  and  agencies  for  rural  service 
encouraged. 

9.  Recreation.  The  desire  for  recreation  and  amusement  is  a  nor¬ 
mal  expression  of  every  child  and  an  important  avenue  for  moral 
education  and  for  the  prevention  of  delinquency.  It  should  be  the 
concern  of  the  State  that  wholesome  play,  recreation,  and  amusement 
be  provided  by  cities  and  towns  and  that  commercialized  recreation 
be  supervised  and  safeguarded. 


CHILD  PROTECTION 


767 


10.  Juvenile  court.  Every  locality  should  have  available  a  court 
organization  providing  for  separate  hearings  of  children’s  cases,  a 
special  method  of  detention  for  children,  adequate  investigation  for 
every  case,  provision  for  supervision  or  probation  by  trained  officers, 
and  a  system  for  recording  and  filing  social  as  well  as  legal  informa¬ 
tion.  In  dealing  with  children  the  procedure  should  be  under  chancery 
jurisdiction,  and  juvenile  records  should  not  stand  as  criminal  records 
against  the  children.  Whenever  possible  such  administrative  duties 
as  child-placing  and  relief  should  not  be  required  of  the  juvenile  court, 
but  should  be  administered  by  existing  agencies  provided  for  that 
purpose,  or  in  the  absence  of  such  agencies,  special  provision  should 
be  made  therefor;  nor  should  cases  of  dependency  or  destitution  in 
which  no  questions  of  improper  guardianship  or  final  and  conclusive 
surrender  of  guardianship  are  involved,  be  instituted  in  juvenile  courts. 

The  juvenile  victims  Gif  sex  offenses  are  without  adequate  protection 
against  unnecessary  publicity  and  further  corruption  in  our  courts.  To 
safeguard  them,  the  jurisdiction  of  the  juvenile  court  should  be  ex¬ 
tended  to  deal  with  adult  sex  offenders  against  children,  and  all  safe¬ 
guards  of  that  court  be  accorded  to  their  victims. 

In  all  cases  of  adoption  of  children,  the  court  should  make  a  full 
inquiry  into  all  the  facts  through  its  own  visitor  or  through  some  other 
unbiased  agency,  before  awarding  the  child’s  custody. 

11.  Mental  hygiene  and  care  oj  mentally  defective  children.  The 
value  of  the  first  seven  years  of  childhood  from  the  point  of  health, 
education  and  morals,  and  formative  habits  cannot  be  overestimated. 
Throughout  childhood  attention  should  be  given  to  the  mental  hygiene 
of  the  child — the  care  of  the  instincts,  emotions,  and  general  person¬ 
ality  of  the  child,  and  Qf  environmental  conditions.  Special  attention 
should  be  given  to  the  need  for  training  teachers  and  social  workers  in 
mental  hygiene  principles. 

Each  State  should  assume  the  responsibility  for  thorough  study  of 
the  school  and  general  population  for  the  purpose  of  securing  data 
concerning  the  extent  of  feeble-mindedness  and  subnormality,  and 
should  make  adequate  provision  for  such  mentally  defective  children 
as  require  institutional  care,  and  provide  special  schools  or  classes  with 
qualified  teachers  and  adequate  equipment  for  such  defective  children 
as  may  be  properly  cared  for  outside  of  institutions.  Custodial  care 
in  institutions  for  feeble-minded  children  should  not  be  resorted  to 


768 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


until  after  due  consideration  of  the  possibility  of  adjustment  within 
the  community. 

12.  Scientific  information.  There  is  urgent  need  of  a  more  ade¬ 
quate  body  of  scientific  literature  dealing  with  principles  and  practice 
in  the  children’s  field  of  social  work,  and  the  meeting  of  this  need  is  a 
responsibility  resting  on  those  so  engaged.  Careful  interpretation 
and  analysis  of  methods  and  results  of  care  and  the  publishing  of 
these  findings  must  precede  the  correcting  of  many  present  evils  in 
practice.  Boards  of  directors,  trustees,  and  managers  should  particu¬ 
larly  consider  participation  in  the  preparation  of  such  a  body  of  facts 
and  experience  as  being  a  vital  part  of  the  work  of  their  staff  members. 

13.  Child-welfare  legislation.  The  child-welfare  legislation  of  every 
State  requires  careful  reconsideration  as  a  whole  at  reasonable  in¬ 
tervals  in  order  that  necessary  revision  and  coordination  may  be  made, 
and  that  new  provisions  may  be  incorporated  in  harmony  with  the 
best  experience  of  the  day.  This  Conference  recommends  that  in 
States  where  children’s  laws  have  not  had  careful  revision  as  a  whole 
within  recent  years,  the  governor  be  requested  to  take  the  necessary 
steps  for  the  creation  of  a  child-welfare  committee  or  commission. 
It  is  also  urged  that  the  President  of  the  United  States  be  asked  to 
call  a  conference  in  conjunction  with  the  governors  of  the  various 
States,  to  consider  the  whole  question  of  the  child-welfare  legislation. 


1 


CHAPTER  XXIX 


FINANCIAL  FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS  OF  SOCIAL 

AGENCIES 

105.  Federation  of  Social  Agencies1 

The  great  and  growing  number  of  unrelated  private  social  agencies 
in  our  bigger  cities  is  creating  a  condition  that  demands  correction  for 
the  good  of  social  work.  Organizations  have  increased  in  one  large 
city  at  the  rate  of  three  a  year  for  the  last  fifteen  years  until  the  num¬ 
ber  that  raise  budgets  by  public  solicitation  is  one  hundred  and  one. 
This  license  to  establish  agencies  at  will  has  created  a  wide  diffusion 
of  administrative  responsibility  centering  on  fragments  of  the  social 
problem,  and  not  on  the  social  problem,  with  a  control  of  the  separate 
agencies  lodged  in  themselves  and  for  themselves,  instead  of  in  the 
community  and  for  the  community. 

Out  of  the  welter  of  competition  inevitably  bred  by  such  a  system 
has  come  great  financial  waste,  slatternly  standards  of  work,  and  a 
bewildered,  skeptical,  and  grudging  public. 

The  most  obvious  fault  that  springs  from  maintaining  so  many 
separate  and  independent  administrative  units  is  financial  waste. 
Before  any  efforts  at  correction  were  made  in  the  city  with  the  one 
hundred  agencies,  the  cost  of  solicitation  ranged  from  i  and  2  per 
cent  in  old  movements  to  as  high  as  66  per  cent  in  one  that  used 
peculiar  methods.  A  general  average  of  15  per  cent  prevailed  after 
eliminating  the  spectacular  wastrel.  When  we  realize  that  it  has 
already  been  demonstrated  that  money  can  be  raised  for  a  whole 
community  at  percentages  running  from  5  to  10,  one  reason  is  evi¬ 
dent  why  the  business  man  complains  of  overhead  expense. 

Waste  appears  again  in  purchases.  Buying  has  become  an  art  gov¬ 
erned  by  certain  methods  which  operate  for  lower  prices.  Standardi- 

1By  William  J.  Norton,  Secretary  of  the  Detroit  Community  Fund.  Adapted 
from  "City  Planning  in  Social  Work,”  the  Survey ,  Vol.  XXXVI,  No.  24  (1916), 

pp.  581-584- 


769 


770 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


zation  of  goods,  purchases  at  favorable  market  times,  lump-buying, 
and  competitive  bids  produce  low  prices.  Eleven  organizations  unit¬ 
ing  lately  on  a  year’s  contract  for  coal  saved  $650.  And  coal  is  only 
one  of  several  hundred  articles  to  which  the  same  practice  might 
be  applied. 

Another  waste  is  in  salaries.  Social  workers  fight  this  statement, 
and  when  it  is  advanced  against  the  cost  of  salaries  of  charity  agents 
and  workers  in  the  field  they  are  right.  We  need  more  and  better 
paid  workers  in  the  field  and  we  will  have  them,  although  their  work 
could  be  reorganized  so  as  to  secure  much  larger  humanitarian  results 
from  the  same  staff.  But  there  are  other  salaries  than  those  in  the 
field.  Up  at  the  top  we  are  supporting  duplicating  offices  which  could 
be  combined.  The  salaries  and  the  officers  thus  released  could  be  put 
to  new  uses.  Greater  efficiency  and  wider  human  service  would  flow 
from  the  combinations ;  and  the  cost  of  clerks,  accountants,  tele¬ 
phones,  equipment,  and  other  expenses  w'ould  be  freed. 

A  waste  that  runs  into  untold  dollars  is  to  be  found  in  the  stupid 
limitations  placed  on  many  endowments.  Enough  has  been  said  to 
point  out  some  of  the  most  apparent  ways  in  which  money  has  been 
wasted.  It  is  true  beyond  a  doubt  that  a  city  raising  a  million  dollars 
a  year  for  current  expenses  could  save  not  less  than  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars  by  placing  its  work  upon  an  efficient  basis.  And 
a  great  increase  in  human  service  would  automatically  come  about. 

But  waste  of  money  in  an  extravagant  nation  is  insufficient  proof 
to  stir  a  profession  into  reorganizing  itself.  That  greater  and  far 
more  important  wasted-inferior  human  services — which  we  are  surely 
getting,  ought  to  come-  nearer  to  doing  this!  Duplication  in  family 
work  has  been  an  open  sore  since  the  beginning  of  philanthropy  in 
spite  of  efforts  to  control  it.  Two  cities  have  prepared  statistics  this 
year  covering  their  central  registration  bureaus.  In  the  smaller  city 
duplication  occurs  in  one  case  in  every  seven  and  in  the  larger  city  in 
one  case  in  every  five.  Cases  in  which  two  or  three  agencies  work  are 
common,  and  cases  which  involve  many  organizations  are  not  infre¬ 
quent.  A  case  came  to  the  attention  of  one  of  these  bureaus  last 
winter  wherein  fifteen  organizations  and  several  individuals  had  par¬ 
ticipated  in  a  six  months’  period. 

There  are  not  many  nursing  organizations  in  any  city.  Yet  an  ex¬ 
amination  of  nursing  cases  not  long  ago  disclosed  single  families  visited 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS  771 

by  tuberculosis  nurses,  school  nurses,  quarantine  nurses,  maternity 
nurses,  infant  welfare  nurses,  and  visiting  nurses. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  rapid  establishment  of  the  numerous 
agencies  which  weave  this  web  of  duplication  has  brought  about  a 
great  lateral  expansion  of  service.  But  that  growth  looms  much  as 
some  city  government  might  in  which  every  citizen  had  been  given 
free  rein  to  create  and  conduct  independently  any  department  just 
as  the  whim  struck  him.  There  would  be  plenty  of  food  for  mirth  in 
watching  two  rival  street  cleaning  departments  at  work  in  such  a  city. 
But  this  very  condition  has  been  bred  in  community  service  by  its 
lack  of  plan.  Two  cities  in  the  middle  west  support  two  competing 
societies  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals,  the  second  organi¬ 
zation  having  been  started  in  both  places  because  of  personal  quarrels 
among  the  staff  and  board  members  of  the  parent  society.  In  a  city 
'of  the  north  two  day  nurseries  exist  within  ten  doors  of  one  another 
and  wrangle  over  the  territory  while  great  crowded  areas  beyond 
them  go  without. 

With  such  a  tangle  of  duplicating  lines  is  it  any  wonder  that 
standards  of  work  in  every  field  of  social  endeavor  range  all  the  way 
from  very  good  to  very  poor  with  a  too  frequent  emphasis  on  the  poor  ? 
It  could  scarcely  be  otherwise  when  over  half  of  the  agencies  in  the 
city  with  the  hundred  organizations  get  along  on  budgets  of  not  more 
than  four  thousand  dollars  each,  out  of  which  they  pay  rent,  equip¬ 
ment,  telephone  service,  supplies  and  postage,  hire  an  executive,  an 
extra  worker  or  two,  and  stenographic  service. 

Of  course  they  do  good  work;  just  as  good  as  the  handicaps  that 
master  them  will  permit.  But  it  is  not  fair  to  expect  a  broad  outlook 
or  high  standards  of  practice  from  a  little  organization  with  a  little 
budget,  a  hundred  or  two  supporters,  and  a  chief  worker  with  perhaps 
two  transient  helpers,  who  must  plan  the  work,  execute  the  plans, 
carry  on  educational  propaganda,  scheme  to  avoid  duplication,  take 
charge  of  raising  money  (for  after  the  first  two  years  the  task  of 
raising  money  falls  heavily  on  the  social  worker  in  two-thirds  of  the 
cases),  keep  a  committee  interested,  and  take  care  of  office  details. 

Nor  is  it  fair  to  expect  a  uniformity  of  high  standards  while  the 
lady  of  leisure,  the  gentleman  of  wealth,  and  the  worker  with  a  call 
to  service,  persist  in  regarding  separate  agencies  as  their  own  property, 
and  resent  the  public’s  right  to  ask  questions. 


772 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


A  third  weakness,  the  full  extent  of  which  only  a  few  know,  is  in- 
breeding  of  support  and  interest.  The  contributor  senses  this  better 
than  the  social  worker  because  its  unpleasant  offspring  are  thrust  upon 
him  every  day.  Social  work  will  not  accomplish  its  really  great  pur¬ 
poses  until  it  has  mastered  a  way  of  getting  the  intelligent  and  con¬ 
tented  support  of  a  steadily  expanding  group  of  citizens. 

This  is  just  what  it  has  not  done ;  for  the  task  of  educating  citizens 
only  partly  aware  of  what  it  is  after,  and  of  generating  interest  in 
widening  circles  of  new  people,  is  so  difficult  and  expensive  that  it 
calls  for  money,  a  highly  specialized  service,  an  intelligent,  coordinated 
steering  of  the  whole  field  of  educational  publicity  and  of  solicitation. 
At  present  each  agency,  being  too  weak  to  bear  the  burden  of  such  a 
service,  is  forced  along  paths  of  least  resistance,  limited  to  a  small 
sphere  of  operation,  and  thrown  back  upon  the  known  generous  for 
its  life  and  its  support.  Two  large  cities  found  that  the  ratio  of  sup¬ 
porters  of  philanthropy  to  the  population  was  one  in  fifty ;  and  this 
ratio  was  not  appreciably  diminishing.  Indeed  in  one  of  them  evi¬ 
dence  indicated  that  it  might  be  increasing. 

Raising  Money 

Thus  has  been  generated  a  centripetal  force  driving  the  great  bulk 
of  solicitation  back  within  the  limited  band  of  several  thousand  people 
in  any  city  who  have  become  known  as  givers.  Competition  grows 
increasingly  keen  as  agencies  multiply ;  the  getting  of  money  increas¬ 
ingly  hard ;  and  the  giver  increasingly  confused.  It  is  true  that  the 
largest  givers,  a  few  hundred  who  carry  40  per  cent  of  the  load,  are  not 
annoyed  at  the  appeals.  Being  deeply  interested  in  philanthropy,  they 
rather  enjoy  the  requests  because  they  get  emotional  exercise  from 
them  even  if  their  intelligence  is  not  enlivened. 

But  the  heavy  majority  of  givers,  who  carry  60  per  cent  of  the 
burden,  are  annoyed  beyond  measure  at  the  increasing  flood  of  beg¬ 
ging.  Many  of  them,  who  may  give  much  or  little  but  who  are  very 
important  because  of  their  energy  and  leadership,  are  in  business. 
And  being  good  at  business  they  realize  at  what  enormous  cost  the 
duplication  of  letters  and  calls  is  made.  They  resent  the  idea  that  so 
much  of  their  money  should  go  to  bolstering  a  cumbersome,  hydra¬ 
headed  machinery  of  philanthropy,  which  very  clearly,  to  them,  con- 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS  773 

sumes  within  itself  too  much  of  its  own  potential  efficiency  for 
actual  service. 

The  same  concentric  whirl  turns  up  again  in  attempts  to  educate 
the  general  public.  Most  people  are  single-minded  when  crossed  by 
circles  of  life  outside  their  own.  Their  interest  at  best  is  an  indifferent 
interest.  And  the  little  knowledge  they  have  of  social  work  is  badly 
befuddled  by  the  letter-heads  with  peculiar  titles,  by  the  annual  re¬ 
ports  that  tell  no  story,  and  by  the  other  reports  that  are  neither 
popular  nor  scientific.  Editors  misunderstand  the  agencies,  because 
the  agencies  misunderstand  the  editors.  Social  work  has  little  knowl¬ 
edge  of  what  the  public  thinks. 

Altogether  there  is  a  general  failure  of  organizations  to  deliver  their 
messages  and  to  receive  return  messages  from  the  man  outside  because 
skilled  interpreters  cannot  be  maintained  on  limited  budgets  planned 
for  other  ends.  No  one  should  be  surprised,  therefore,  that  many  of 
these  uneducated  givers  firmly  believe,  and  not  entirely  without 
justification,  that  some  social  workers  start  agencies  to  give  them¬ 
selves  jobs  and  that  some  unnecessary  agencies  are  kept  going  to 
maintain  those  jobs,  and  for  the  sake  of  the  honor  attached  to  being 
one  of  their  officers. 

Various  attempts  at  correction  have  been  made  in  the  past  which 
have  gathered  so  much  force  in  the  last  decade  that  their  tendencies 
are  now  clearly  defined.  These  may  be  summed  up  as  central  regis¬ 
tration  bureaus,  hospital  purchasing  bureaus,  endorsement  commit¬ 
tees,  councils  of  social  agencies,  federations  of  finance,  community 
trusts,  and  federations  of  federations. 

Before  examining  them  to  see  if  they  are  solvents  for  the  present 
chaos,  let  us  get  a  clear  understanding  of  what  experience  teaches 
must  be  the  minimum  requirements  for  any  successful  curative  scheme. 
Three  fundamental  things  must  be  injected  into  a  successful  plan: 
intelligent,  devoted  community  control ;  administrative  reorganiza¬ 
tion  ;  and  long-visioned  planning,  based  on  technical  knowledge,  to  be 
sure,  but  above  all  things  else  upon  human  understanding.  And  while 
these  are  being  secured,  and  afterwards,  absolute  freedom  of  thought 
on  political,  economic,  and  religious  subjects,  the  power  of  initiative 
and  the  capacity  for  growth  must  be  preserved.  The  right  to  differ¬ 
ences  on  matters  of  policy  by  the  separate  agencies  must  be  retained 
and  as  much  freedom  of  action  as  is  consistent  with  the  general  good. 


774 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  paramount  thing  is  control  in  the  interests  of  the  community. 
No  plan  that  does  not  bid  for  this  has  hope  within  it.  Now  social 
workers  as  a  rule  are  afraid  that  the  surrender  of  control  over  social 
work  will  destroy  what  they  call  the  individuality  of  their  organiza¬ 
tions,  their  own  initiative,  their  freedom  to  think,  and  the  great  senti¬ 
ments  and  passion  that  are  the  driving  power  in  social  work.  Hence 
they  have  been  inclined  to  balk  at  any  plan  carrying  real  control  and 
their  counter  plans  have  shown  evidences  of  being  denatured.  There¬ 
fore  we  must  reassure  ourselves  by  discovering  just  what  community 
control  means. 

To  begin  with  it  is  not  synonymous  with  government  control. 
Political  government  is  one  expression  in  some  departments  of  the 
life  of  a  community ;  but  it  is  not  the  only  one.  Indeed  at  this 
time  universal  dominance  by  the  political  power  is  the  expression  of 
democracy  in  only  a  few  parts  of  the  social  structure.  It  is  spreading 
slowly  through  many  parts,  but  the  ultimate  growth  is  a  thing  of 
generations  beyond  ours.  Neither  does  the  necessary  community  con¬ 
trol  involve  a  surrender  to  a  superimposed  body  of  the  determination 
of  policies,  or  of  the  ordinary  administrative  machinery  by  religious 
bodies  over  their  own  social  institutions,  or  by  boards  of  trustees  over 
their  separate  agencies. 

If  however  the  agencies,  their  staffs,  their  trustees,  and  their  donors, 
which  represent  now  about  the  extent  of  community  intelligence  and 
interest  in  social  work,  would  join  in  establishing  cooperative  adminis¬ 
trative  machinery  to  conduct  those  phases  of  work  where  waste  now 
prevails,  and  the  large  social  planning  and  steering ;  and  if  they  would 
continue  to  cooperate  in  running  that  machinery,  and  in  abiding  by 
the  decisions  of  the  majority  on  questions  of  organization,  adminis¬ 
tration,  placement  of  function,  and  standard  methods,  an  effective 
control  would  be  created.  If  the  same  group  would  lay  the  prime 
emphasis  of  their  planning  and  organization  upon  community  needs 
instead  of  separate  agency  needs  the  control  would  become  one  for  the 
community.  And  it  would  retain  and  strengthen  the  great  dynamic 
human  motives  which  set  social  work  upon  a  hill.1 

'For  further  discussion  see  W.  Frank  Persons,  Central  Financing  of  Social 
Agencies,  Columbus  Advisory  Council,  Columbus,  Ohio,  1922 ;  also  Francis  H. 
McLean,  The  Centred  Council  of  Social  Agencies ,  American  Association  for  Or¬ 
ganizing  Family  Social  Work,  New  York,  1921. — Ed. 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS 


775 


Administrative  Reorganization 

Let  us  reassure  ourselves  once  more  over  the  needed  administrative 
reorganization.  There  should  be  a  gradual  pooling  of,  not  a  surrender 
of,  common  functions,  such  as  collections  of  contributions,  accounting, 
buying,  direction  of  educational  publicity,  the  collection,  analysis  and 
interpretation  of  statistics,  the  keeping  of  records  and  the  planning  of 
new  work.  There  should  be  a  better  segregation  of  the  duties  of  sepa¬ 
rate  agencies  which  would  lead  eventually  to  some  consolidations. 
And  we  should  not  be  afraid  to  face  them.  There  should  be  a  reorgani¬ 
zation  of  field  work  based  upon  a  segregation  of  function  and  a  dis¬ 
tricting  of  the  city.  And  in  all  this  there  need  be  no  surrender  of 
freedom  of  the  individuality  of  organizations  that  survive  the  con¬ 
solidating  process,  or  of  control  of  policies  or  methods  by  denomina¬ 
tional  and  national  bodies  over  their  branches. 

How  have  the  attempts  at  correction  already  afield  met  these  aims  ? 
It  is  plain  that  central  registration,  hospital  purchasing,  and  endorse¬ 
ment  bureaus  are  fragments  of  a  complete  plan.  Registration  and 
purchasing  bureaus  have  hit  at  case  duplication  and  waste  in  buying, 
which  are  single  results  of  the  greater  evil.  They  were  never  pro¬ 
claimed  for  anything  more  ambitious.  They  should  be  expanded  as 
departments  of  the  new  cooperative  central  administration. 

Endorsement  committees  have  been  limited  in  their  sphere  of  work 
also,  although  they  have  been  louder  in  their  claims  for  a  place  in  the 
sun.  Being  superimposed  on  philanthropy  without  real  control  and 
not  too  much  understanding,  they  have  confined  themselves  to  weed¬ 
ing  out  dishonesty,  preventing  some  new  agencies,  and  raising  stand¬ 
ards,  with  a  general  emphasis  on  business  instead  of  service  standards. 
Because  of  the  slow  growth  of  centralization  they  should  be  taken  into 
the  cooperative  machinery  as  a  department  to  perform  their  present 
functions.  Possibly  for  reasons  to  be  explained  later  centralization 
will  never  be  a  fully  completed  circle  in  which  event  endorsement 
departments  might  continue  indefinitely  for  out-of-town  solicitations 
which  are  legion,  for  the  few  outstanding  societies  and  to  act  as 
efficiency  engineers  for  the  internal  group. 

At  the  other  extreme  from  these  three  movements  lie  federations  of 
federations  such  as  the  St.  Louis  Conference  of  Federations  and  the 
Cleveland  Social  Welfare  Council.  Plainly  a  group  submitting  to  co- 


776 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


operative  control  must  win  cohesion  through  homogeneity  of  ideals 
and  purposes.  The  federation  of  federations  contains  divergent,  not 
homogeneous,  forces.  It  tries  to  join  all  the  active  forces  of  a  city, 
government,  social  and  civic  work,  religion,  women,  commerce,  and 
labor. 

The  forces  of  disintegration  here  are  so  powerful,  and  will  continue 
to  be  so  powerful  while  the  war  between  capital  and  labor  and  between 
good  government  and  spoils  government  lasts,  that  such  an  alignment 
can  hope  to  be  little  more  at  this  time  than  a  very  loose  committee  with 
casual  suggestive  functions.  Even  so  it  will  be  of  great  help  in  com¬ 
munity  planning  although  its  chief  assistance  must  be  in  plans  upon 
which  there  is  little  difference  of  opinion  and  not  in  creating  or  con¬ 
ducting  them. 

Three  Means  of  Reorganization 

Three  movements  remain  with  better  promise  of  reorganizing  social 
work,  councils  of  social  agencies,  federations  of  finance,  and  com¬ 
munity  trusts.  The  first  two  aspire  after  a  real  city  union  of  existing 
agencies,  while  the  third  although  not  directly  affiliating  itself  yet 
with  today’s  societies,  has  within  its  potentialities  a  power  to  force 
its  will  upon  them  at  some  time  in  the  future. 

With  one  exception  the  cities  having  councils  of  social  agencies 
have  approached  the  common  task  quite  differently  from  the  cities 
having  federations  of  finance.  These  differences  are  important  be¬ 
cause  social  workers  are  inclined  to  adhere  to  the  council  idea  while 
the  federations  in  most  places  receive  their  impetus  from  business 
men.  Two  main  differences  separate  the  movements.  One  lies  in  the 
scheme  of  organization ;  the  other  in  a  conception  of  things  to  be  done 
and  the  means  of  approach.  Councils  of  social  agencies  are  actual 
associations  of  organizations  governed  by  delegates  selected  by  the 
organizations.  An  executive  committee  and  officers  chosen  by  the 
delegates  furnish  guidance.  The  movement  therefore  is  essentially 
cooperative. 

Federations  of  finance  are  not  so  clearly  cooperative.  Certain  func¬ 
tions  clustering  about  the  collection  of  current  revenues  have  been 
pooled  and  turned  over  to  a  separate  board  of  trustees,  of  whom  only 
one-third  are  selected  by  the  agencies,  one-third  by  the  donors,  and 
one-third  by  a  public  official,  or  some  self-anointed  public  official, 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS  777 

usually  the  president  of  a  chamber  of  commerce.  This  last  third  is 
supposed  to  represent  the  community. 

In  their  conception  of  things  to  be  done  councils,  differing  again 
from  federations,  have  centered  attention  on  correcting  low  service 
standards ;  on  establishing  devices  for  removal  of  duplication,  such  as 
central  registration  bureaus  where  they  did  not  exist ;  on  promoting 
surveys  and  new  work,  and  on  cooperating  with  endorsement  commit¬ 
tees  for  improving  business  methods.  Financial  waste,  inbreeding  of 
support,  public  annoyance,  and  poor  planning  have  not  been  at¬ 
tacked.  Councils  have  created  the  safest  organization  to  which  con¬ 
trol  of  the  muddled  situation  can  be  entrusted,  but  so  far  they  have 
been  hollow  organizations  to  which  control  has  been  denied. 

Federations,  on  the  other  hand,  through  the  centralization  of  cur¬ 
rent  revenues,  have  taken  the  direct  path  to  community  control,  and 
as  a  result  have  been  able  to  strike  effectively  and  at  once  at  financial 
waste,  inbreeding  of  support,  and  public  bewilderment.  Furthermore 
they  have  placed  themselves  in  position  to  proceed  progressively 
against  all  the  other  evils  of  bad  planning. 

The  attitude  of  the  public  towards  the  two  sets  of  undertakings  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  federations  have  been  able  to  support  capable 
administrative  staffs  with  segregated  functions  while  councils  have 
been  obliged  to  go  without  staffs  and*  to  do  their  work  through 
voluntary  committees. 

One  last  form  of  organization,  the  community  trust,  remains  to  be 
discussed.  In  brief,  it  is  an  attempt  to  free  endowments  from  destruc¬ 
tive  limitations  imposed  by  donors  and  to  mobilize  them  in  a  central 
fund  under  central  direction  for  intelligent  community  use.  The 
movement  is  chiefly  important  for  its  possible  effect  upon  the  future 
because  none  of  the  trusts  have  much  money  on  hand.  One  great 
contribution  has  come  out  of  this  movement,  the  big  survey  launched 
in  Cleveland,  which  is  to  furnish  knowledge  of  social  conditions  neces¬ 
sary  for  real  planning. 

Aside  from  their  undertaking  this  function,  which  we  will  recall  is 
the  third  essential  for  any  plan  that  succeeds,  the  two  things  to  note 
about  trusts  are  a  peculiarity  of  organization  and  the  fact  that  they 
shouldn’t  exist.  The  standard  scheme  of  organization  provides  for  a 
minority  representation  on  the  board  of  trustees  from  a  single  com¬ 
mercial  trust  company  with  the  fiduciary  administration  in  the  hands 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


778 

of  the  same  corporation.  The  jealousy  that  would  be  bred  among  other 
banks  possibly  resulting  in  several  rival  trusts  in  the  same  city  is  the 
most  obvious  of  several  dangers  raised  by  such  a  plan  in  any  city 
except  the  city  of  its  origin.  Moreover,  freeing  endowments  for  com¬ 
munity  use  as  much  as  they  can  and  should  be  freed,  is  simply  one 
function  for  a  community  organization  and  should  not  be  permitted 
to  stand  out  alone.  Such  permission  is  a  blanket  permission  for  all 
kinds  of  disintegration  before  community  planning  has  struck  its  stride. 

The  experience  then  of  twenty  odd  cities  experimenting  with  some 
form  of  community  union  would  indicate  the  following  plan  as  the 
most  promising  of  large  results.  The  main  organization  should  be 
that  generally  in  vogue  in  councils  of  social  agencies.  Unlike  federa¬ 
tions,  councils  are  truly  cooperative.  Ample  provision  has  been  made 
for  participation  of  contributors  through  trustee  delegates.  Delegates 
from  church  federations,  commercial  clubs,  women’s  bodies,  and  public 
departments,  represent  the  interested  public.  Social  workers  have  a 
prominent  place  on  the  guiding  committee  which  enables  the  leavening 
of  the  ideas  of  contributors  by  actual  debate  with  professional  workers, 
and  the  tempering  of  the  ideas  of  workers  by  talk  across  the  table  with 
contributors.  The  selection  of  the  delegates  and  of  the  guiding  com¬ 
mittee  is  so  diffuse  and  safeguarded  that  it  would  be  very  difficult  for 
any  self-centered  group  to  capture  it.  This  is  not  true  of  any  other 
plan  that  has  been  devised. 

But  while  such  a  body  is  safe  from  raids,  it  has  the  capacity  within 
it  to  become  just  as  sensitive  to  just  public  criticism  and  popular  cur¬ 
rents  as  has  the  federation.  Moreover  the  central  organization  is  big 
enough,  flexible  enough,  and  democratic  enough  in  conception  to  per¬ 
mit  the  undertaking  of  varied  kinds  of  cooperative  service  by  entirely 
different  groups.  Thus  a  limited  circle  might  demonstrate  central 
purchasing,  while  quite  another  group  proved  the  practicability  of 
central  collecting,  and  still  a  third  group  worked  upon  the  solution  of 
a  race  problem.  This  is  less  easy  in  federations  because  everything 
revolves  about  centralization  of  funds,  and  those  not  sharing  in  it  are 
automatically  debarred  from  any  federation  activity.  A  disintegrat¬ 
ing  force  is  injected,  as  evidenced  already  in  one  city  by  the  formation 
of  a  hospital  association  outside  the  federation. 

When  it  comes  to  a  winning  of  control,  federations  should  be  copied, 
not  councils.  Much  as  we  may  dislike  it,  the  road  to  control  lies 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS 


779 


through  revenues,  because  no  control  can  be  had  without  capturing 
the  public  mind  in  behalf  of  community  union,  a  feat  which  must  be 
coincident  to  centralizing  subscriptions  and  establishing  the  depart¬ 
ments  that  are  necessary  for  that  process.  It  is  also  true  that  the 
necessary  administrative  departments  for  the  whole  plan  cannot  be 
continuously  maintained  without  central  collection. 

There  are  many  bogies  about  central  collection  as  well  as  many  real 
difficulties ;  and  both  can  be  overcome  only  by  demonstration  and 
time.  In  the  average  city  all  eligible  agencies  will  not  join  in  it  at 
once.  Consequently  it  should  not  be  forced.  Neither  should  it  be 
delayed.  The  main  body  can  grant  permission  for  the  establishment 
of  such  a  department  by  those  that  have  the  vision  to  make  the  ven¬ 
ture.  This  department  should  be  cooperatively  conducted  by  a  joint 
committee  of  those  participating.  More  money,  more  givers,  and  a 
better  understanding  of  the  public,  the  inevitable  fruit  of  such  a  col¬ 
lecting  group,  will  bring  the  other  agencies  into  it  in  time  and  secure 
a  gradual  widening  of  control. 

Similar  departments  for  accounting,  buying,  and  publicity  can  be 
established  for  those  willing  to  begin.  Any  agency  may  share  in  one 
and  not  another.  Central  registration  and  endorsement  are  logical 
bureaus  of  the  main  organization.  So  are  bureaus  for  securing  desig¬ 
nated  and  undesignated  endowments.  (Endowments  already  given 
or  future  endowments  given  direct  to  agencies  must  not  be  controlled 
by  the  central  body.)  Standardization  committees  fit  easily  into  such 
a  plan  and  the  necessary  moral  support  is  gradually  acquired  by  the 
whole  body  to  put  the  standards  into  effect. 

The  third  main  requirement  for  good  planning,  a  community  eye  to 
see  social  facts  and  a  community  brain  to  analyze  them,  would  come 
in  the  course  of  time  from  the  establishment  of  a  survey  department, 
a  venture  so  big  and  so  lacking  in  popularity  that  only  a  great  com¬ 
munity  body,  a  heavy  endowment,  or  the  government  itself  can  hope 
to  maintain  it  permanently.  Not  the  variety  of  survey  now  so  com¬ 
mon,  but  a  statistical  bureau,  plus  a  photographic  gallery,  plus  an¬ 
alysts,  plus  public  interpreters,  all  going  the  whole  year  round  and 
every  year.  It  is  only  by  such  means  that  new  social  needs  and  the 
changes  brought  about  by  the  agencies  and  the  other  forces  of  a  city, 
can  be  intelligently  gauged.1 

1  Exemplified  in  the  surveys  conducted  by  the  Cleveland  Foundation. —  Ed. 


780 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


The  forces  of  particularism  are  still  dominant  in  city  social  service. 
Social  workers  must  not  be  blamed  for  this  because  it  is  the  tradition 
of  the  country.  These  forces  are  giving  way  very  slowly.  So  the 
building  of  a  community  union  is  the  task  of  years  of  patient  effort 
and  not  of  a  single  year.  It  is  probable  that  no  complete  union  will 
come  about  in  this  generation.  There  are  stagnant  agencies  doing  ex¬ 
cellent  bits  of  ameliorative  work  which  will  stand  out  against  it  for  a 
long  time  to  come.  But  that  is  no  reason  for  delaying  the  under¬ 
taking.  And  its  steady  growth  in  any  city  will  open  new  avenues  to 
human  service  and  the  coming  brotherhood  that  will  amaze  the  plod¬ 
ding  worker  of  today. 

After  all,  it  is  not  the  curing  of  waste  and  the  faults  looming  so  large 
just  now  that  gives  its  promise  to  united  effort,  but  the  freeing  of  the 
body  of  social  work  so  that  it  may  stand  erect  and  stride  forth  boldly 
.and  more  certainly  in  its  quest  for  a  soul  for  men. 

106.  History  of  the  Federation  and  Council 

in  Cleveland1 

The  Federation  plan  in  social  work,  as  finally  consummated  in 
Cleveland  in  1920  and  as  reflected  in  the  Community  Fund  campaign 
of  last  November,  is  the  result  of  a  studied  evolution  covering  fifteen 
years.  The  beginning  of  this  development  was  made  in  1907  when 
the  Chamber  of  Commerce  began  a  study  of  charitable  and  philan¬ 
thropic  agencies  in  Cleveland.  This  undertaking  enumerated  all  the 
philanthropic  agencies  which  had  come  into  existence  in  the  city  be¬ 
ginning  from  the  earliest  day  when  neighborly  assistance  by  the  early 
settlers  required  the  addition  of  institutional  provision  to  care  for  sick¬ 
ness  and  destitution.  Cleveland  had  shared  with  other  cities  in  the 
movements  and  waves  of  development  which  gave  rescue  missions, 
church  charities,  children’s  agencies,  relief  societies,  Y.M.C.A.  and 
Y.W.C.A.,  Associated  Charities,  and  kindred  organizations  to  our 
American  communities. 

The  study  by  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  with  the  co-operation  of 
executives  of  charitable  organizations  and  members  of  their  boards, 

1By  Sherman  C.  Kingsley,  Executive  Secretary  of  the  Welfare  Federation  of 
Philadelphia.  Adapted  from  the  Cleveland  Year  Book ,  pp.  204-217.  Copyright, 
1921,  by  the  Cleveland  Foundation. 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS 


781 


afforded  the  city  an  inventory  of  its  divers  good  causes — their  num¬ 
ber,  objects,  management,  amount  of  property,  the  number  of  their 
subscribers.  This  step  was  followed  by  the  creation  of  a  Committee 
on  Benevolent  Associations.  Through  this  committee, -the  Chamber 
undertook  the  work  of  endorsement  of  agencies  which  solicited  funds 
in  the  city.  This  practice  resulted  in  a  set  of  sanctions  and  standards, 
since  then  widely  copied,  to  be  observed  by  agencies  which  expected 
to  merit  the  interest  and  support  of  the  community.  The  activities  of 
each  body  wishing  endorsement  were  reviewed  annually  and  if  found 
satisfactory  an  endorsement  card  was  issued. 

The  Federation  idea  followed  .logically  from  experiences  in  this 
work.  With  the  question  of  the  efficiency  and  value  of  the  several 
agencies  favorably  determined,  the  question  of  joint  financing  and 
closer  co-operation  generally  quite  naturally  suggested  itself.  Through 
responsibility  for  endorsement  work,  the  committee  became  more  and 
more  familiar  with  money-raising  efforts  and  was  impressed  by  the 
multiplicity  of  machinery,  financial  agents,  appeal  letters,  and  other 
efforts  incident  to  gathering  funds  for  the  growing  number  of  organi¬ 
zations.  The  idea  was  further  stimulated  by  the  Federation  of  Jewish 
Charities  which  was  taking  place  in  other  cities  and  which  had  already 
been  successfully  effected  in  Cleveland  and  stood  forth  as  a  compell¬ 
ing  example  of  what  unity  of  purpose  in  a  common  field  can  do. 

In  January,  1913,  the  Federation  for  Charity  and  Philanthropy 
was  organized  for  the  purpose  of  collective  financing  and  more  effec¬ 
tive  co-operation  in  the  work  of  carrying  on  social  service  in  the  city. 
The  people  responsible  for  the  movement  recognized  that  most  of  the 
agencies  engaged  in  social  service  in  Cleveland  had  a  valuable  in¬ 
dividuality.  Each  was  conducting  a  localized  campaign  on  its  par¬ 
ticular  sector  of  the  social  betterment  field.  The  Federation  plan  was 
formed  to  strengthen  this  individuality.  It  was  to  help  the  agencies 
in  the  most  crucial  part  of  their  work,  campaign-planning  and  money¬ 
raising,  to  save  them  from  going  many  times  over  the  same  ground 
and  to  give  each  agency,  and  Clevelanders  in  general,  a  view  of  the 
city’s  social  service  field  and  problems  as  a  whole. 

The  first  concern  of  the  Federation  for  Charity  and  Philanthropy 
was  the  problem  of  money-raising  and  distribution.  As  time  went  on, 
the  executives  of  agencies  and  members  of  their  boards  as  well  as  the 
Federation  itself  became  more  and  more  conscious  that  the  problems 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


782 

with  which  they  were  dealing,  questions  of  standards  of  work,  co¬ 
operation,  the  relationship  to  national  agencies,  and  other  problems 
needed  collective  attention. 

In  1914  it  became  clear  that  there  was  further  need  of  relating  such 
work  in  the  Federation  to  agencies  not  primarily  philanthropic  but 
undoubtedly  welfare  agents  in  Community  development.  The  Wel¬ 
fare  Council  was  formed,  a  voluntary  combination  of  social  and  civic 
bodies,  to  co-operate  also  with  the  newly  created  Department  of  Public 
Welfare.  The  particular  function  of  the  Council  was  to  furnish  a 
co-operative  medium  through  which  all  the  agencies  could  consider 
problems  and  general  administrative  questions  of  joint  concern.  It 
had  no  budget  or  executive  staff.  The  body  itself  was  made  up  of 
delegate  representation  from  the  agencies.  It  was  soon  seen  that  with¬ 
out  staffing  the  Welfare  Council  could  not  function  effectively  and 
that  if  it  put  in  people  competent  for  efficient  leadership,  there  would 
be  duplication,  the  lack  of  essential  common  leadership,  and  possibly 
conflicting  authority. 

The  next  step  in  the  evolutionary  process  in  Cleveland  was  taken 
in  1917  in  the  formation  of  the  Welfare  Federation  of  Cleveland.  This 
was  a  consolidation  of  the  Federation  for  Charity  and  Philanthropy 
and  the  Welfare  Council.  The  newly  created  Board  was  made  up  of 
representatives  of  both  bodies.  The  incorporation  of  the  Welfare 
Federation,  under  the  laws  of  Ohio,  provides  for  a  membership  made 
up  of  delegates  chosen  by  the  constituent  bodies ;  two  members  from 
each.  This  gave  representation  to  the  agencies  having  membership 
in  the  Welfare  Federation.  Usually,  one  of  these  representatives  is  a 
paid  worker  and  the  other  a  Board  member.  The  body  thus  created 
is  called  the  General  Board  of  the  Federation.  It  holds  quarterly 
meetings  and  one  of  its  functions  is  to  elect  the  Trustees  who  are  the 
governing  body  of  the  Federation.  This  is  a  Board  of  twenty-four 
persons  who  are  elected  for  terms  of  three  years  each.  In  addition  to 
this,  the  Board  of  Trustees,  thus  elected,  is  empowered  to  choose  six 
persons  at  large  for  terms  of  one  year  each.  From  the  beginning,  only 
those  agencies  which  meet  the  sanction  and  standards  evolved  by  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  Endorsement  Committee  have  been  admitted 
to  membership  in  the  Federation. 

The  next  and  greatest  step  in  this  evolution  in  Cleveland  was 
brought  about  by  the  war.  With  its  traditions  and  Federation  ex- 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS 


783 


periences  behind  it  and  in  accord  with  the  community  spirit  which 
prevails  in  the  city,  Cleveland,  quite  naturally,  applied  the  community 
action  idea  to  its  war  relief  problems.  The  War  Chest  Board  was 
created  to  raise  the  city’s  war  relief  funds  and  the  successive  war  need 
campaigns  were  conducted  under  its  management.  This  body  was 
created  by  the  Red  Cross  War  Council,  in  co-operation  with  the 
Mayor’s  War  Board,  the  Welfare  Federation,  and  other  civic  bodies. 
Not  only  did  the  city  exceed  its  quota  for  all  war  relief  purposes  in 
each  successive  campaign,  but  during  the  last  two  years  of  the  war, 
the  moneys  raised  included  balances  needed  for  local  philanthropic 
agencies.  The  War  Chest  Board  was  composed  of  thirty  men  who 
built  up  the  strongest  and  most  effective  money-raising  organization 
that  ever  existed  in  the  city. 

In  addition  to  the  success  in  money-raising,  there  was  developed 
a. community  solidarity  and  spirit  through  common  service  which 
everyone  felt  should  not  be  lost.  Accordingly,  after  the  signing  of  the 
armistice,  the  War  Chest  body  offered  its  services  for  perpetuating 
this  effective  community  method  and  to  raise  money  for  the  local 
agencies  and  for  the  share  of  foreign  relief  that  might  be  expected 
from  Cleveland  in  diminishing  amounts,  for  one  or  more  years.  The 
articles  of  association  under  which  this  re-organized  Community  Fund 
Council  operates,  provides  for  a  Board  made  up  as  follows:  twenty 
members,  chosen  by  the  original  War  Chest  group  and  their  succes¬ 
sors  ;  sixteen  chosen  by  the  federated  agencies ;  two  by  the  Chamber 
of  Commerce,  with  the  Mayor  and  Director  of  Public  Welfare  as 
ex-officio  members. 

The  mutual  relationship  between  the  Community  Fund  Council 
and  Federations,  the  latter,  as  stated  above,  made  up  of  representa¬ 
tives  chosen  by  the  various  social  service  boards,  is  provided  for 
through  this  representative  membership  on  the  Board  of  the  Council, 
through  the  common  secretaryship  of  the  Community  Fund  and  the 
Welfare  Federation,  and  through  community  of  personnel  of  commit¬ 
tee  memberships  and  staff.  General  scheme  of  organization  is  indi¬ 
cated  in  the  Diagram  on  page  786. 

More  than  8900  persons  worked  actively  in  the  Community  Fund 
Campaign  in  November,  1920.  Over  164,000  persons  signed  as  con¬ 
tributors  as  compared  to  20,000  who  previously  contributed  to  the 
support  of  the  Welfare  Federation.  Committees  are  already  at  work 


784 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


effecting  an  organization,  building  the  personnel,  and  getting  ready  for 
the  next  campaign.  Plans  for  year-round  publicity  through  the  press, 
speakers’  bureaus,  and  the  movies  are  being  studied  and  perfected  by 
the  Community  Fund  Committee.  This  committee  attempts  to  so 
present  the  social  problems  to  the  community  that  the  money  sub¬ 
scribed  to  the  Community  Fund  is  considered  a  "  voluntary  tax.” 
The  proportion  of  social  work  financed  through  this  "voluntary  tax” 
is  far  greater  than  that  supported  by  the  taxes  assessed  by  law. 

The  Budget  Committee  holds  the  key  responsibility  for  procedure 
in  the  expenditure  of  the  Community  Fund.  It  concerns  itself  not 
only  with  fiscal  data  but  with  service  rendered  and  quality  of  work. 
This  body  is  appointed  by  the  President  of  the  Welfare  Federation 
through  the  aid  of  nominations  and  suggestions  of  members  of  the 
General  Board.  It  is  composed  of  about  fifty  people  chosen  because 
of  their  interest,  sympathy,  and  their  knowledge  of  charitable  and 
philanthropic  activities  of  the  community  and  the  problems  with 
which  they  deal.  For  the  purposes  of  convenience  and  effective  work 
the  organization  is  divided  into  seven  subdivisions  according  to  their 
functional  activities :  hospitals,  children’s  agencies,  neighborhood 
work,  family  service,  nursing  and  health  activities,  recreational  and 
educational  agencies,  homes  for  the  aged.  The  Budget  Commission 
thus  appointed  is  divided  into  seven  corresponding  sub-committees. 
Budgets  are  first  acted  upon  by  the  respective  agencies.  The  Welfare 
Federation  office  submits  to  them,  two  or  three  months  previous  to 
the  close  of  their  fiscal  year,  budget  schedules  calling  for  an  analysis 
of  receipts  and  expenditure  under  their  proper  heads.  The  items  for 
the  two  previous  years  under  their  respective  headings  are  filled  in  by 
the  Federation  office  so  that  each  organization  has  before  it  the  figures 
for  two  previous  years  as  a  basis  for  judgment  in  estimating  the  next 
year’s  needs.  After  each  agency  has  deliberated,  through  its  officers 
and  committees,  and  has  considered,  in  the  light  of  previous  experi¬ 
ence,  needs  met  and  unmet,  current  prices  and  trends  of  expense,  the 
budget  request  is  sent  to  the  Federation  office.  After  it  has  been 
considered  by  the  Federation  office  it  is  ready  for  reference  to  the 
Budget  Committee.  Hearings  are  held  with  each  of  the  agencies  and 
problems  are  considered.  After  this  process  has  been  completed  and 
each  of  the  agencies  heard,  the  various  sub-committees  make  their 
recommendations  and  the  budgets  as  thus  recommended  are  referred 


FEDERATIONS  AND  COUNCILS 


785 


to  the  entire  Budget  Committee  and  the  various  sub-committees  which 
meet  as  a  committee  of  the  whole.  This  entire  Budget  Committee 
then  sends  its  recommendations  to  the  Trustees  of  the  Welfare  Federa¬ 
tion  and  they,  in  turn,  go  to  the  people  through  the  Community  Fund. 
This  budget-study  and  work-planning  process  constitutes  an  annual 
review  of  the  forces  in  the  social  service  field  and  problems  with  which 
they  severally  deal.  In  addition  to  this  comprehensive  and  special 
planning  and  study,  monthly  financial  and  service  reports  are  made  to 
the  Federation  office.  This  affords  the  basis  on  which  the  monthly 
distribution  of  funds  is  made  to  the  respective  agencies.  Thus,  a 
central  body  representing  the  organizations  themselves  is  in  constant 
touch  with  the  work  in  the  whole  field  and  is  possessed  at  all  times 
with  a  knowledge  of  conditions  and  needs  and  expenditures.  The 
central  office  interprets  these  data  and  by  means  of  graphic  charts  and 
other  visual  representations  seeks  to  promote  standards  and  most 
effectively  to  match  resources  against  needs.  These  data  concern 
themselves  with  the  trend  of  prices  of  commodities,  per  capita  costs 
in  different  institutions,  and  percentage  use  of  capacity  in  hospitals, 
children’s  and  other  agencies. 

The  calls  for  information  by  the  Budget  Committee  are  more  search¬ 
ing  and  fundamental  each  year.  As  a  result  of  this  growing  demand 
for  information,  more  intensive  studies  of  special  problems  are  made. 
The  three  important  studies  made  in  1920  were  the  Hospital  and 
Health  Survey ;  a  study  of  institutions  and  agencies  caring  for  children, 
conducted  under  the  auspices  of  the  Welfare  Federation  and  directed 
by  Henry  W.  Thurston  of  New  York,  assisted  by  Joel  D.  Hunter  and 
W.  S.  Reynolds  of  Chicago,  and  others,  which  has  resulted  in  the 
establishment  of  a  Children’s  Bureau  in  the  Welfare  Federation ;  and 
a  study  of  outing  camps,  made  under  the  auspices  of  the  Federation 
and  directed  by  C.  E.  Gehlke.  As  an  outcome  of  the  camp  study, 
steps  are  being  taken  toward  organizing  camp  work  so  as  to  utilize 
continuously  the  entire  capacity  of  the  camps  and  to  co-ordinate  their 
work  in  a  much  more  efficient  manner  than  has  been  done  in  the  past. 
A  study  of  salaries  of  those  engaged  in  social  work  was  also  made  at 
the  request  of  the  Budget  Committee,  by  a  committee  of  the  Welfare 
Federation.  The  recommendations  resulting  from  these  studies  are 
usually  divided  into  two  main  divisions,  sent  exclusively  to  the  execu¬ 
tives  and  boards  of  the  different  institutions,  and  those  of  a  general 


786 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


nature  which  concern  not  only  the  respective  agencies  but  philan¬ 
thropic  institutions  in  general  and  the  community  itself.  Thus  it  has 
come  about  that  a  responsible  body  representative  of  the  community 
and  the  interests  concerned  gives  sustained  attention  and  study  to 
the  whole  social  service  field.  As  a  consequence,  it  has  come  to  pass 
in  Cleveland  that  there  are  brought  to  this  body  projects  relating  to 
proposed  extensions  on  the  part  of  existing  organizations  as  well  as 
new  enterprises  in  the  social  service  field.  Those  who  wish  to  be  co¬ 
operative  and  to  be  assured  that  their  projects  are  in  accord  with 
sound  policy ;  who  wish  to  avoid  duplicating  or  embarrassing  pieces  of 
work,  already  adequately  occupying  a  given  field,  or  which  could  be 
made  more  effective  than  a  newly  organized  work,  quite  naturally 
seek  the  advice  and  help  that  come  from  these  sources.  On  the  other 
hand,  individuals  and  groups  who  wish  to  go  ahead  quite  regardless 
of  such  considerations  are  certain  to  be  challenged  effectively  by  those 
whom  they  ask  to  back  them  with  questions  concerning  endorsement 
by  this  co-ordinating  body. 

The  raising  of  standards  is  aided  materially  through  the  co-operation 
of  functional  groups  which  have  been  promoted  by  the  Federation, 
such  as  the  Children’s  Conference  which  has  been  meeting  regularly 
for  several  years  to  study  problems  of  child  caring  and  which  was  of 
great  assistance  in  making  the  study  of  institutions  and  agencies  car¬ 
ing  for  children. 


FUNCTIONAL  CHART  OF  THE  PRIVATE  SOCIAL  AGENCIES  OF  CLEVELAND 


CHAPTER  XXX 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 

107.  Summary  of  the  Present  State  Systems  for  the 
Organization  and  Administration  of  Public  Welfare1 

In  attempting  to  present  a  summary  of  the  state  systems  in  the  field 
of  public  welfare,  the  question  asked  by  Lord  Haldane’s  great  Com¬ 
mittee  on  the  Machinery  of  Government2  suggests  itself:  "On  what 
principle  should  the  functions  of  departments  be  determined  and 
allocated?”  The  reply  of  the  committee  is  that  there  are  two  prin¬ 
ciples  between  which  at  any  one  time  choice  must  be  made,  namely : 
"Distribution  according  to  persons  or  classes;  and  distribution  ac¬ 
cording  to  service  to  be  performed.”  The  opinion  of  the  committee 
is  positive  to  the  effect  that  the  second  of  these  two  is  the  ultimately 
sound  principle.3  The  most  superficial  examination  of  the  organiza¬ 
tion  in  the  various  states  in  the  field  of  public  welfare  shows  the  need 
of  asking  the  same  question,  the  lack  of  any  agreement  on  this  subject, 
and  a  consequent  chaotic  variety  of  experiments  in  which  attempts 
are  made  to  apply  one  or  the  other  principle  without  conscious  ap¬ 
preciation  of  the  issues  at  stake.  There  are,  in  fact,  few  points  on 
which  there  is  anything  like  universal  agreement  among  the  states 
except  perhaps  on  the  point  that  the  field  of  service  is  one  to  be  recog¬ 
nized  as  a  branch  of  the  state  organization,  and  even  on  that  point 
three  states  have  not  acquiesced  and  have  not  yet  created  a  state 
agency  for  such  service.4 

4By  Sophonisba  P.  Breckinridge,  Ph.D.,  Assistant  Professor  of  Social  Econ¬ 
omy  in  The  University  of  Chicago.  From  " Public  Welfare  in  the  United  States,” 
in  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science ,  Vol.  CV,  No. 
194  (January,  1923),  pp.  93-103. 

2  Great  Britain  Ministry  of  Reconstruction,  Report  of  Committee  on  Machin¬ 
ery  of  Government ,  1918  (Cd.  9230),  p.  7. 

3 As  the  result  of  selecting  the  former  is  the  tendency  to  "Lilliputian  adminis¬ 
tration”  and  a  delay  in  the  development  of  technical  and  professional  standards 
of  service. 

4 Mississippi,  Nevada,  and  Utah. 


787 


788 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


Because  of  this  great  variety  of  practice,  an  adequate  and  accurate 
summary  of  the  situation  prevailing  in  the  states  is  very  difficult. 
Such  a  summary  should  cover  at  least  the  following  points :  ( i )  the 
structure  and  organization  of  the  central  authority  as  to  (a)  number 
of  members,  ( b )  method  of  selection,  (c)  qualification,  ( d )  tenure  of 
office,  ( e )  remuneration,  (/)  proportion  of  time  given;  (2)  the  num¬ 
ber  and  character  of  central,  i.e.,  state  institutions  for  various  groups 
of  wards;  (3)  the  relation  of  the  central  authority  to  these  institu¬ 
tions  ;  (4)  the  character  of  the  public  local  organizations  in  the  field ; 

(5)  the  relation  of  the  central  authority  to  the  local  authorities; 

(6)  the  relation  of  the  central  authority  to  private  agencies  in  the 
field ;  ( 7 )  the  relation  of  the  authority  in  public  welfare  to  other 

.  state  services,  i.e.,  that  in  the  fields  of  health,  education,  labor,  and 
especially  finance;  (8)  beside  these  relationships  within  the  executive 
branch,  there  arises,  in  states  taking  a  strict  view  of  the  doctrine  of 
separation  of  powers,1  the  question  of  appropriate  and  possible  con¬ 
tacts  between  these  executive  agencies  and  the  judicial  agencies  in 
the  field  of  probation. 

Obviously  so  comprehensive  a  statement  is  impossible  within  the 
range  of  an  article  such  as  this.  Nor  is  it  necessary  that  all  points  be 
covered  here  when  certain  matter  is  easily  available  to  the  interested 
student.  The  great  field  in  child  welfare  development  will  therefore 
be  largely  ignored  here,  and  reference  is  made  to  the  comprehensive 
publications  of  the  United  States  Children’s  Bureau.2 

Moreover,  while  it  is  impossible  entirely  to  divorce  this  subject 
from  the  general  movement  toward  rendering  the  state  governments 
more  efficient  and  particularly  from  the  effort  to  introduce  more  effec¬ 
tive  methods  of  fiscal  control  and  to  extend  the  practice  of  the  budget, 
it  is  possible  here  only  to  call  attention  to  the  effect  of  the  one  or  the 
other  development  and  to  say  that  a  failure  to  include  both  move¬ 
ments3  in  one’s  consideration  is  to  be  faced  with  inexplicable  contra- 

1As  in  Illinois,  see  Witter  v.  Cook  County  Commissioners ,  256  Ill.  616. 

2 See,  especially,  Publications  No.  63,  Laws  relating  to  Mothers’  Pensions ; 
No.  70,  Summary  of  Juvenile  Court  Legislation  in  the  United  States ;  No.  71, 
State  Commissions  for  the  Study  and  Revision  of  Child  Welfare  Laws ;  and  No. 
107,  County  Organization  for  Child  Care  and  Probation. 

3  See,  for  example,  Thomas,  Principles  of  Government  Purchasing ;  Wright, 
Report  on  Fiscal  Control ;  Haines,  The  Movement  for  the  Reorganization  of 
State  Administrations,  University  of  Texas  Bulletin  No.  1848  (August  25,  1918). 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 


789 


dictions  and  confusions.  Other  subjects  of  vital  interest,  such  as  the 
application  of  the  principles  of  civil  service  to  the  selection  of  person¬ 
nel  in  this  field,  must  also  be  laid  to  one  side  as  requiring  too  wide  a 
detour  into  the  field  of  general  governmental  organization.1 

Historical  sketch.  Subject  to  such  limitations,  however,  certain 
general  points  can  be  made.2  The  creation  by  the  Massachusetts 
legislature  in  1863  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  with  powers  of 
supervision  and  recommendation  in  relation  to  the  charitable  and 
correctional  institutions  already  established  and  with  administrative 
powers  in  the  matter  of  admittance,  transfer,  and  discharge  of  pauper 
lunatics,  is  generally  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  a  movement3  in  the 
direction  of  creating  central  or  state  agencies  for  standardizing  the 
care,  custody,  and  treatment  of  persons  in  distress  and  recognized  as 
appropriate  subjects  for  public  service.  Massachusetts  was  followed 
by  Ohio  and  New  York  in  1867*;  Illinois,  North  Carolina,  Rhode 
Island,  and  Pennsylvania  in  1869 ;  Wisconsin  and  Michigan  in  1871 ; 
and  Connecticut  and  Kansas  in  1873.  It  is  not  profitable  to  list  the 
authorities  in  the  order  of  their  creation.4  The  United  States  Census 
Summary  of  Laws  relating  to  Dependent  Classes  makes  possible  a 
statement  with  reference  to  the  situation  in  1913  sufficiently  com¬ 
plete  for  the  purposes  of  this  article. . 

The  names  of  the  authority  created  vary  from  state  to  state  and 
from  time  to  time  in  the  same  state,  and  differences  in  name  indicate 
a  wider  or  a  narrower  scope  of  work  entrusted  to  the  newly  created 

iSee  for  striking  illustration  of  the  need  of  sound  practice  in  this  field  the 
controversy,  1914-1916,  between  the  New  York  State  Board  of  Charities,  the 
New  York  City  Department  of  Charities,  the  New  York  State  and  New  York 
City  Civil  Service  Commissions. 

2  The  interested  student  is  referred  to  comprehensive  and  authoritative  com¬ 
pilations  either  now  or  shortly  to  be  available  from  the  United  States  Bureau  of 
the  Census  (see  Benevolent  Institutions,  1910;  Summary  of  Laws  relating  to 
Dependent  Classes ,  1913)  or  the  Children’s  Bureau. 

3 Massachusetts  Acts  of  1863,  chap.  240.  A  more  correct  view  would  probably 
regard  the  creation  in  1847  of  the  New  York  State  Emigration  Commission,  fol¬ 
lowed  in  1851  by  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Alien  Passengers  and  State  Paupers, 
as  the  initial  step  in  the  field  (see  E.  Abbott,  "  Restrictive  Immigration  Legisla¬ 
tion,”  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Social  Work,  49th  Annual 
Meeting  (1922)). 

4  Nor  is  it  implied  that  all  these  authorities  have  had  continuous  effective  exist¬ 
ence.  In  some  states  there  have  been  intervals  when  the  law  was  repealed;  in 
others,  failure  to  appropriate  have  for  the  time  rendered  the  legislation  nugatory. 


790 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


body  as  well  as  the  nature  of  the  power  given.  The  Board  of  Public 
Welfare  created  in  1919  in  Georgia1  exercises  powers  that  are  '"strictly 
visitorial  and  advisory.”  The  Illinois2  department  is  one  of  nine 
executive  departments  of  the  state.  The  Board  of  State  Charities  *of 
Massachusetts,3  for  example,  created,  in  1863,  to  deal  with  the  state 
institutions  and  with  the  state  "poor”  who  had  no  "settlement,”  be¬ 
came  in  1879  the  State  Board  of  Health,  Lunacy,  .and  Charity,  was 
revived  in  1886  as  the  State  Board  of*  Lunacy  and  Charity,4  relieved 
of  certain  tasks  connected  with  lunatics  and  settled  paupers  in  1898, 5 6 
when  it  became  the  State  Board  of  Charity,  which  it  remained  until 
erected,  in  1919,  into  a  Department  of  Public  Welfare.0  As  to  struc¬ 
ture,  it  may  be  noted  that  in  1913,  when  all  the  states  except  ten7  had 
created  these  authorities,  thirty-five  of  the  thirty-eight  established8 
were  in  the  forms  of  boards  varying  in  number  from  three  to  twelve. 
Of  these  thirty-five  boards,  twenty-one  were  state  boards  of  charities 
or  of  charities  and  corrections,9  nine  were  boards  of  control,10  while 
in  five  states11  there  had  been  adopted  the  plan  of  two  boards,  one 
salaried  and  executive  known  as  the  Board  of  Administration,  the 
other  unsalaried  and  supervisory  known  as  a  Charities  Commission. 

I  Georgia  Acts  of  1919,  No.  186,  sect.  6. 

2 Illinois  Revised  Statutes,  chap.  2 %%,  sect.  3. 

3 Massachusetts  Acts  of  1879,  chap.  291. 

4  Acts  of  1886,  chap.  1 01. 

5Acts  of  1898,  chap.  433. 

6Acts  of  1919,  chap.  350.  Among  the  fifteen  departments  created  there  were 
Departments  of  Mental  Diseases,  Corrections,  Public  Health,  and  Education. 

7  Alabama,  Delaware,  Georgia,  Idaho,  Mississippi,  Nevada,  New  Mexico,  South 
Carolina,  Texas,  and  Utah.  Delaware  had  a  Tuberculosis  and  a  Blind  Commis¬ 
sion,  and  Texas  had  a  State  Bureau  of  Child  and  Animal  Protection. 

8 Oklahoma  provided  in  its  constitution  for  a  commissioner  of  state  charities; 
New  Jersey  had  a  commission  of  charities  and  correction;  Alabama  had  an  in¬ 
spector  of  jails,  almshouses,  and  cotton  mills;  Kentucky  had  an  inspector  of  insti¬ 
tutions  in  addition  to  a  state  board  and  is  not  counted. 

9  Arkansas,  Colorado,  Connecticut,  Florida  (board  of  commissioners  state  in¬ 
stitutions)  ;  Indiana,  Louisiana,  Maine,  Maryland  (state  aid  and  charities) ; 
Massachusetts,  Michigan,  Missouri,  Montana  (charities  and  reform)  ;  New 
Hampshire,  New  York,  North  Carolina,  Pennsylvania,  Rhode  Island,  South 
Dakota,  Tennessee,  Virginia,  Wyoming.  See  Census  Summary  State  Laws  relating 
to  Dependent  Classes,  p.  316  fol. 

10 Arizona,  Iowa,  Kansas,  Kentucky,  New  Hampshire,  Washington,  and  West 
Virginia. 

II  California,  Illinois,  Minnesota,  Nebraska,  Ohio. 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 


791 


Objects  oj  the  legislation.  These  authorities  were  created  to  meet 
two  great  groups  of  problems:  (1)  the  diversity  of  practice,  inade¬ 
quacy  of  equipment,  competitive  relationships  and  often  wasteful 
njethods  characteristic  of  the  care  of  wards  for  whom  institutions, 
.whether  state  or  local,  had  been  established;1  and  (2)  the  same  lack 
of  uniformity,  the  same  inadequacy  of  service,  the  same  wastefulness 
characteristic  of  the  "outdoor”  care  of  persons  in  distress  given  by 
the  local  authorities.  The  object  sought  was  declared  to  be  "to  secure 
the  economical  and  efficient  administration”  of  the  public  charitable 
and  correctional  institutions  and  agencies2  for  the  purpose  of  reduc¬ 
ing  suffering,  preventing  needless  misery,  and  lessening  the  burden 
of  the  taxpayer. 

The  movement  was  a  natural  and  inevitable  one  based,  in  general, 
on  sound  governmental  principles.  Its  progress  was,  however,  im¬ 
peded  by  two  sets  of  influence.  One  influence  was  that  of  inertia, 
inexorably  resulting  from  the  number  of  state  legislatures  and  from 
the  historical  and  accidental  character  of  the  organization  in  the  vari¬ 
ous  states.  The  other  was  an  influence  growing  out  of  the  nature  of 
the  problem  involved ;  those  who  were  peculiarly  moved  to  improve 
the  service  of  the  poor,  sick,  mentally  feeble,  and  delinquent  were  also 
often  especially  concerned  to  keep  that  service  free  from  the  weak¬ 
nesses  of  ordinary  governmental  standards  and  recognized  the  peculiar 
opportunity  for  graft  and  mismanagement  in  the  very  nature  of  the 
tasks  undertaken. 

The  necessity  of  obtaining  the  acquiescence  of  forty-eight  legisla¬ 
tures  in  a  program  of  regard  and  treatment  for  the  least  influential 
members  of  the  community  has  placed  a  heavy  burden  on  those  urging 
the  advance.  The  fear  of  giving  over  the  poor  to  new  forms  of  ex¬ 
ploitation  has  led  sometimes  either  to  acquiescence  in  continued  in¬ 
capacity  or  to  the  proposal  of  complicated  arrangements  not  only  for 
securing  governmental  action,  but  also  for  keeping  that  action  con¬ 
stantly  under  a  critical  and  supervisory  scrutiny. 

Mn  Massachusetts,  for  example,  in  1863,  beside  the  local  almshouses  and  local 
prisons  there  were  three  state  almshouses,  a  state  hospital  on  Rainsford  Island, 
three  state  lunatic  asylums,  a  state  prison,  a  state  reform  school,  a  state  industrial 
school  for  girls,  and  a  School  Ship  (Massachusetts),  and,  partially  controlled  by 
the  state,  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  the  Massachusetts  School  for  the 
Blind,  and  the  Massachusetts  School  for  Idiots. 

2  To  quote  from  the  act  cheating  the  first  Massachusetts  board. 


792 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


" Supervision ”  versus  "control.”  There  arose,  therefore,  early  in 
the  development  of  the  authorities,  two  schools  of  thought :  first,  that 
school  whose  confidence  might  be  said  to  rest  on  consent,  who  urged 
the  value  of  the  supervisory  agencies,  unpaid,  divorced  from  partisan 
politics,  having  nothing  in  the  way  of  patronage  to  offer,  and  recog¬ 
nizing  that  ultimate  care  for  the  helpless  must  lie  in  sympathy,  pity, 
good  will,  and  intelligence ;  on  the  other  side  were  ranged  those  who 
might  be  said  to  be  dominated  by  the  ideals  of  efficiency,  who  chafed 
at  delay,  were  shocked  at  the  waste,  were  confident  that  organization 
and  administration  could  hasten  the  accomplishment  of  the  purposes 
they  all  sought. 

It  was  impossible  that  the  authority  created  should  exercise  no  power. 
Visitation,  inspection,  reporting,  suggesting  are  themselves  incisive 
powers  and  further  development  was  inevitable.1  And  in  1887  at  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  Mr.  Sanborn,  the 
executive  of  the  Massachusetts  board  during  the  early  years  of  its 
existence,  pointed  out  that  of  the  twelve  state  boards  then  in  existence 

only  ‘three  or  four  remain  simply  advisory  in  their  power  and  duties,  al¬ 
though  originally  most  of  them  were  so  established,  at  least  in  theory.'  The 
Boards  of  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Illinois,  Michigan,  Wisconsin  and 
doubtless  of  some  other  states  were  created  with  duties  of  inspection  and 
supervision  and  with  powers  of  advice  and  recommendation,  and  only 
these ;  but,  in  all  these  states,  it  has  been  found  necessary  or  expedient  to 
add  executive  powers,  and  to  make  these  Boards,  in  fact  (what  those  of 
Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Kansas,  and  Minnesota  have  always  been  in 
name),  a  part  of  the  state  administration.  In  New  York,  for  example,  exec¬ 
utive  powers  in  regard  to  the  support  of  state  paupers  and  the  removal  of 
immigrants  and  vagrants  have  been  conferred;  in  Pennsylvania,  these 
powers,  and  also  the  summary  powers  of  a  Lunacy  Commission  ;  in  Illinois, 
very  extensive  powers  of  audit;  in  Wisconsin,  the  power  of  the  purse  over 
the  maintenance  of  the  insane  poor  in  county  asylums;  in  Michigan,  exec¬ 
utive  powers  in  regard  to  children  placed  in  families.  The  Rhode  Island 
Board,  which  was  at  first  made  partly  executive  and  partly  advisory,  has 
now  complete  control  of  all  the  state  establishments.  In  Massachusetts, 
the  executive  powers  of  the  Board,  which  were  from  the  first  extensive, 

1In  fact,  as  early  as  1881,  Wisconsin  took  the  step  of  creating  a  Board  of  Super¬ 
vision  of  Charitable,  Reformatory,  and  Penal  Institutions,  abolishing  the  boards  of 
trustees  of  the  state  institutions,  without  disturbing  the  State  Board  of  Charities 
and  Reform, created  in  1873  and  abolished  only  in  1891,  when  the  present  Board  of 
Control  was  established.  See  Laws  of  Wisconsin,  1881,  chap.  298;  1891,  chap.  221. 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION  793 

have  been  enlarged  until  it  is  now  one  of  the  most  important  branches  of 
the  state  administration. 

These  changes  in  the  function  of  the  Boards  are  not  the  result  of  chance, 
but  indicate  what  we  believe  to  be  the  fact,  that  such  authority,  when  once 
created  in  a  state,  will  naturally  increase ;  for  occasions  arise  when  power 
must  be  lodged  somewhere,  and  no  more  suitable  place  can  be  found  for  it. 
No  changes,  so  far  as  we  know,  have  been  made  in  the  other  direction — of 
limiting  the  duties  of  these  Boards — except  when  special  Boards  have  been 
created  to  relieve  the  Board  of  Charities  of  some  part  of  its  increasing 
duties ;  and  we  believe  there  is  no  State  Board  now  in  existence  which  pos¬ 
sesses  less  power  than  when  it  was  first  established.  This  indicates  that  the 
confidence  originally  reposed  in  them  has  been  justified  by  their  activity.1 

However,  the  rate  at  which  the  development  toward  control  should 
take  place,  the  significance  in  the  changes  proposed  and  put  through, 
the  perils  of  relying  rather  on  authority  than  on  developed  intelligence, 
sympathy,  and  conscience  were  subjects  that  could  not  be  ignored  in 
the  presence  of  the  great  advocates  of  the  conservative  school.  There 
were  giant  figures  in  those  days  playing  great  roles  on  the  stage  of 
public  charitable  service ;  and  the  voices  of  Roeliff  Brinkerhoff,  Tim¬ 
othy  Nicholson,  F.  H.  Wines,  F.  B.  Sanborn,  Mrs.  Josephine  Shaw 
Lowell,  still  ring  out  across  the  years,  pointing  on  the  one  hand  to 
the  peril  of  letting  in  the  wolves,  of  overemphasizing  the  need  of 
economy,2  a  term  far  from  clear,  when  the  word  "adequacy”  had 
hardly  been  introduced  into  the  social  workers’  vocabulary,  and  of 
losing  the  whole  force  of  local  initiative.  At  the  National  Conference 
of  1902,  for  example,  it  was  urged: 

In  states  where  the  central  board  (commonly  called  a  board  of  charities) 
is  a  supervisory  board,  and  the  administration  of  the  state  institutions  is 
confided  to  individual  boards  of  trustees  or  managers,  the  state  which 
adopts  this  system  secures  the  benefits  both  of  responsibility  in  the  dis¬ 
charge  of  executive  functions  and  also  of  independent  inspection,  criticism, 

1  Proceedings,  14th  Annual  Meeting  (1887),  p.  103. 

2  The  reports  are,  of  course,  from  the  beginning  to  the  present  times  filled  with 
pleas  for  a  realization  of  the  differences  between  true  and  false  economy.  See,  for 
example,  the  36th  Annual  Report  of  the  New  York  State  Board  (1902),  pp.  15- 
16;  or  the  Second  Biennial  Report  of  the  Kansas  State  Board  of  Administration 
(1920),  p.  8.  The  great  discussion,  however,  and  the  great  comparison  between 
the  relative  efficiency  of  actual  control  as  compared  with  supervision  at  its  best  is 
Mr.  Henry  C.  Wright’s  classic  study  of  the  Methods  of  Fiscal  Control  of  State 
Institutions,  made  for  the  New  York  State  Charities  Aid  Association  in  1911,  now 
out  of  print. 


794 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


and  suggestion.  In  states  where  the  central  board  is  a  board  of  control,  the 
administration  of  the  state  institutions  may  be  equally  good,  or  it  may  be 
worse  or  better  but  there  is  no  adequate  supervision  of  their  methods  and 
results.  In  other  words,  the  loss  is  certain,  but  the  gain  is  problematical. 

The  proposal  to  establish  a  central  board  of  control  usually  originates, 
I  think,  in  the  brain  of  some  scheming  politician,  who  wishes  to  strengthen 
a  political  machine  by  the  addition  to  it  of  the  state  charitable  institutions, 
which  can  be  effectively  used  by  an  adroit  and  unscrupulous  political  man¬ 
ager  as  an  aid  to  the  control  of  caucuses,  primaries,  and  conventions,  and  in 
the  carrying  of  elections.  They  can  of  course  be  far  more  effectively  used 
for  this  purpose  if  they  have  a  single  head,  himself  a  member  of  the  ma¬ 
chine  and  in  sympathy  with  its  general  aims.  The  motive  which  prompts 
the  suggestion  is  concealed,  and  the  ostensible  motive  put  forth  is  the  in¬ 
tention  to  secure  better  business  organization,  improved  business  methods, 
which  appeals  to  business  men,  not  politicians,  and  who  claim  still  less  to 
be  experts  in  benevolent  work.  Into  the  hands  of  these  schemers  those  re¬ 
formers  play,  who  are  impatient  because  reforms  grow  slowly,  with  the 
gradual  education  of  public  opinion,  upon  which  they  at  last  depend  for 
moral  support,  and  who  imagine  that  they  can  be  effected  by  the  concentra¬ 
tion  of  authority  in  a  board  which  can  issue  and  enforce  the  necessary 
orders.  But  does  not  this  authority,  this  power,  already  exist?  Why  is  it 
not  used?  Why  suppose  that  one  set  of  men  will  accomplish  what  several 
sets  of  men  working  in  harmony  cannot  accomplish  ? 

A  central  supervisory  board  is  apt  to  be  far  more  active  and  efficient 
than  a  board  of  control  in  the  matter  of  arousing  public  interest  in  the  be¬ 
nevolent  work,  both  of  the  state  and  of  private  individuals  or  associations, 
and  of  educating  public  opinion  on  social  questions  as  related  to  public  and 
private  charity.  It  is  natural,  is  it  not,  that  an  executive  board  which 
believes  itself  to  be  doing  all  that  can  or  ought  to  be  done,  with  the  means 
and  facilities  at  its  disposal,  should  be  indifferent  to  public  opinion  or  sen¬ 
sitive  to  criticism  of  its  methods  by  the  community?  But  a  supervisory 
board,  whose  function  is  criticism,  welcomes  and  stimulates  the  closest  in¬ 
spection  of  public  and  private  charities  by  the  public  at  large,  feeling  that 
in  such  inspection  it  receives  moral  support  of  inestimable  value  to  the  state. 

Personally  I  dread  the  creation  of  centralized  boards  of  control.  They 
are  less  objectionable  if  they  have  charge  only  of  single  groups  of  institu¬ 
tions,  as,  for  instance,  all  the  hospitals  and  asylums  for  the  insane  or  all  the 
prisons.  They  are  also  less  objectionable  in  small  states  than  in  the  larger 
ones.  They  would  be  very  much  less  objectionable  if  they  did  not  mean 
the  abolition  of  the  supervisory  boards,  but  two  central  boards  cannot  ordi¬ 
narily  be  maintained  in  one  state.  If  they  could  there  would  almost  in¬ 
evitably  exist  rivalry  and  conflict  between  them.1 

1  Proceedings  of  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  1902,  p.  147. 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 


795 


Stress  was  laid,  on  the  other  hand,  on  the  possibility  of  reduced 
cost,  of  increased  accuracy  of  accounting,  of  greater  uniformity  of 
reporting,  of  the  elimination  of  local  authorities,  of  improved  service, 
of  better  discipline  among  employees,  of  relief  given  executives  of 
institutions  from  financial  problems,  of  the  elimination  of  party 
politics,  of  the  equitable  assignment  of  the  state’s  resources  among 
the  various  institutions  and  of  the  general  advantage  of  applying  to 
charitable  service  principles  worked  out  in  the  field  of  business.1 

These  arguments  are,  of  course,  unanswerable.  The  necessity  of 
an  authoritative  central  agency  is  now  fully  recognized,  and  the  ques¬ 
tion  is  now  rather  to  what  extent  is  public  opinion  prepared  and  in 
what  form  is  the  power  to  be  granted.  These  divergencies  of  opinion, 
found  determining  the  phrasing  of  the  most  recent  legislation,  express 
themselves  in  the  terms  supervision,  control,  management,  adminis¬ 
tration,  terms  that  now  may  be  said  to  represent  difference  in  degree 
rather  than  in  kind  of  authority.  And  so,  as  these  controversies  have 
continued  or  have  been  renewed  the  tendency  to  which  Mr.  Sanborn 
referred  in  1887  has  continued,  new  laws  have  been  enacted,  old  ones 
have  been  amended  with  great  variations  in  the  degree  to  which  the 
central  authority  has  been  given  power  and  as-  to  the  kind  of  power 
bestowed  but  moving,  on  the  whole,  toward  a  greater  incisiveness  and 
in  general  toward  a  wider  range  of  control.2 

Devices  for  control.  A  further  word  should  be  said  at  this  point 
concerning  the  devices  authorized  on  the  part  of  the  central  authority. 
They  are,  in  general,  visitation,  inspection,  prescribing  forms  for 
record-keeping,  formulating  rules  and  regulations,  requiring  reports, 
granting  permission  for  organization,  periodic  certification,  granting 
licenses,  with  or  without  the  power  of  revocation,  compulsory  con¬ 
ference  and  consultation,  selection  of  personnel  by  nomination,  ap¬ 
pointment,  or  confirmation,  requiring  estimates  of  expenditure  in  ad¬ 
vance,  approval  of  accounts,  sharing  the  cost  when  the  work  is 
approved,  meeting  the  entire  cost. 

The  great  questions  then  have  been  (1)  to  what  extent  was  the 
mere  force  of  central  knowledge  with  its  possibility  of  publicity  ade- 

1See,  especially,  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Cor¬ 
rection ,  31st  Annual  Meeting  (1904),  pp.  180,  181. 

2 This  does  not  mean  that  the  particular  authority  known  as  "public  welfare” 
has  been  given  wider  powers,  but  that  wider  service  in  meeting  the  needs  of  per¬ 
sons  in  distress  are  undertaken  by  the  state. 


796 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


quate,  and  to  what  extent  should  be  granted  such  other  powers  as 
have  been  enumerated,  especially  those  related  to  purchasing  and  to 
the  selection  of  personnel ;  ( 2 )  to  what  extent  should  the  central  au¬ 
thority  stimulate,  encourage,  and  standardize  the  institutional  and 
local  organizations  and  to  what  extent  should  those  organizations  be 
absorbed  ;  (3)  when  should  agencies  specialized  by  function  be  created 
and  relieve  the  agency  attempting  to  deal  with  many  groups  of  wards ; 
(4)  what  should  be  the  relationships  among  these  services,  those 
allocated  on  the  basis  of  function  and  those  allocated  on  the  basis  of 
ward;  (5)  how  could  the  supervisory  and  critical  element  so  em¬ 
phasized  in  the  early  days  be  retained  as  the  organization  took  on 
more  and  more  the  orthodox  hierarchial  governmental  form ;  (6)  how, 
in  an  economic  and  industrial  system  under  which  the  wage  scale 
leaves  great  numbers  of  persons  below  the  level  of  adequate  living, 
can  the  doctrine  of  adequate  care  for  the  wards  of  the  state  be  recon¬ 
ciled  with  the  apparent  interests  of  the  taxpayer  ? 

The  present  situation .  In  the  face  of  these  questions,  the  present 
organization  of  the  central  authority  in  the  various  states  may  be 
briefly  summarized.1 

Three  states  still  have  no  central  authority.2  Eleven3  still  have 
unpaid  supervisory  boards ;  ten 4  have  administrative  boards  that  are 

4As  has  been  said,  such  a  summary  is  far  from  adequate.  As  to  its  accuracy, 
one  can  plead  only  every  effort  to  secure  accuracy  by  consultation  with  the  session 
laws  since  1913,  by  personal  inquiry  since  the  winter  of  1922  addressed  to  the 
executives  of  the  departments  or  to  the  Secretary  of  State  of  the  various  com¬ 
monwealths  in  which  the  legislature  sat,  where  the  session  laws  are  not  yet 
available. 

2 Mississippi,  Nevada,  Utah  (which  has  had  a  Commission  of  Inquiry  for  two 
years) . 

3  Colorado,  Delaware,  Georgia,  Indiana,  Louisiana,  Maine,  Maryland,  Mon¬ 
tana,  New  Hampshire,  New  York,  North  Carolina. 

4  Connecticut,  Florida,  Kentucky,  Oregon,  Rhode  Island,  South  Carolina,  Ten¬ 
nessee,  Vermont,  Virginia,  Wyoming.  Connecticut  and  Virginia  are  included  here, 
although  their  boards  have  been  in  each  case  given  the  name  Department  of  Pub¬ 
lic  Welfare,  since  in  each  case  the  change  of  name  carried  no  change  in  relation¬ 
ship  to  other  branches  of  the  government  and  in  the  case  of  Virginia  no  change 
in  character  or  function.  See,  for  similar  change  in  the  local  field,  the  Massachu¬ 
setts  act  changing  the  name  of  Boston  Overseers  of  the  Poor  to  Boston  Commis¬ 
sioners  of  Public  Welfare,  without  altering  the  character,  powers,  or  duties  of 
those  officials  (Laws  of  1921,  chap.  146). 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 


797 


either  unpaid  or  ex  officio ;  ten1  have  salaried  boards  of  control ;  four2 
maintain  two  (or  more)  separate  boards,  one  mainly  supervisory,  one 
mainly  administrative ;  ten  have  created  departments,  eight  under 
the  general  name  of  public  welfare.3 

As  has  been  suggested,  other  features  besides  the  general  character 
of  the  authority  are  of  interest.  It  will,  however,  not  pay  to  review 
the  whole  field  from  these  other  points  of  view.  A  number  of  states4 
recognize  the  principle  of  geographic  representation  in  the  selection 
of  the  members  of  the  board ;  many  now  require  the  presence  of  a 
woman  or  of  several  women;5  several  require  the  presence  of  certain 
types  of  experts. 

Selected  problems  of  departmental  organization.  Perhaps  the  most 
interesting  considerations  suggesting  themselves  in  connection  with 
the  development  of  departmental  schemes  of  organization,  are  those 
of  the  attempted  creation  of  one  agency  within  which  shall  be  com¬ 
bined  the  advantages  of  supervision  and  of  control.  Under  the  Illinois 
departmental  organization,  for  example,  an' attempt  was  made  to  re¬ 
tain  the  value  of  the  critical  and  supervisory  service  so  emphasized  in 
the  older  days  and  between  1910  and  1917  embodied  in  the  State 
Charities  Commission,  coordinate  with  the  State  Board  of  Adminis¬ 
tration.  Under  the  departmental  plan,  there  is  a  director  at  the  head. 
Under  him  are  a  group  of  salaried  executives,  superintendents  respec- 

1  Alabama  (Control  and  Economy),  Arizona  (Board  of  Directors  of  State  In¬ 
stitutions  and  Purchasing  Agent) ,  Iowa,  Kansas,  North  Dakota,  Oklahoma,  South 
Dakota,  Texas,  West  Virginia,  Wisconsin. 

2 Arkansas  (really  three  as  there  is  an  honorary  board  for  the  administration 
of  the  penitentiary),  California  (where  there  is  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  the 
Department  of  Institutions,  and  a  Board  of  Finance),  Minnesota,  Missouri  (a 
State  Board  of  Charities,  a  Board  of  Managers  of  Eleemosynary  Institutions,  and 
a  Department  of  Penal  Institutions). 

3  Idaho,  Illinois,  Massachusetts,  Michigan,  Nebraska  (without  either  abolishing 
or  absorbing  the  Board  of  Control),  New  Jersey,  New  Mexico  (really  a  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Health  without  responsibility  for  the  charitable  or  penal  institutions 
of  the  state),  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  and  Washington  (Department  of  Business 
Control). 

4  For  example,  Delaware,  Florida,  Kentucky,  New  York. 

5  The  requirement  concerning  women  represents  political  consideration  for  a 
large  newly  enfranchised  group,  and  also  recognizes  the  woman’s  assumed  peculiar 
intelligence  concerning  the  domestic  problems  involved  in  institutional  manage¬ 
ment  and  concerning  child  care. 


798 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


tively  of  charities,  of  prisons,  and  of  parole,  and  an  alienist  and  a 
criminologist.  Under  the  director,  also,  is  an  unpaid  Board  of  Public 
Welfare  Commissioners,  whose  duties  are  to  make  investigations  and 
to  offer  recommendations  to  the  members  of  the  department,  or  to  the 
Governor  or  to  the  General  Assembly  on  the  request  of  those  officials 
or  on  the  initiative  of  the  commission  itself.1  The  members  of  the 
board  as  well  as  the  executive  members  of  the  department  are  ap¬ 
pointed  by  the  Governor  and  Senate  and  thus  draw  their  authority 
from  the  same  source.  It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  responsi¬ 
bility  for  making  rules  for  the  conduct  of  the  department,  for  laying 
before  the  Governor  the  needs  of  the  department,  for  making  estimates 
and  assignment  of  appropriations  within  the  department  rests  with  the 
director,  while  the  Department  of  Finance,  the  first  named  in  the  list 
of  departments,  is  given  authority  to  examine  at  all  times  the  accuracy 
and  legality  of  accounts,  receipts,  and  expenditures  of  the  various  de¬ 
partments.  The  disadvantage  under  which  the  board  suffers  at  any 
moment  of  serious  question  or  difference  of  view  is  obvious.  No  special 
slur  was  therefore  cast  on  the  board  when  after  three  years  in  office 
the  first  director  of  the  department  assembled  a  committee  of  social 
workers  from  all  over  the  state,  instead  of  making  use  of  the  board 
created  for  this  purpose,  saying  that  he  did  not  know  what  should  be 
done  in  the  field  of  child  welfare  and  should  like  advice  on  the  point ! 2 
The  Massachusetts  authority  had,  from  the  first,  been  vested  with 
certain  administrative  functions,  and,  under  the  law  of  19 19, 3  the 
commissioner,  who  is  head  of  the  department,  is  appointed  by  the 
Governor  and  Senate  for  a  term  of  not  more  than  five  years  as 
the  executive  and  administrative  head.  He  is,  however,  given  a  revolv¬ 
ing  board4  of  six  unpaid  members  appointed  for  terms  of  three  years. 
This  board  is  authorized  "to  assist  the  commissioner  ...  to  keep 
informed  of  the  public  interests  with  which  the  department  is  charged, 
to  study  and  investigate  questions  arising  in  connection  herewith,  to 
consider,  formulate,  and  recommend  proposals,  to  advise  with  the 
Commissioner  concerning  policies.  .  .  .”  It  is  clear,  however,  that  the 
board,  being  advisory  to  the  commissioner  and  having  no  independent 

1  Illinois  Revised  Statutes,  1919,  chap.  24^,  sects.  3,  5,  8,  16,  25,  36,  37,  39. 

2 Report  of  the  Illinois  Department  of  Public  Welfare,  Children’s  Committee, 

December,  1920.  3  Acts  of  1919,  chap.  350,  sect.  88. 

4 Two  of  these  must  be  women.  See  section  90. 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 


799 


provision  for  making  studies  or  for  investigation  on  a  wider  scale  than 
by  individual  observation  and  conference,  will  probably  find  itself 
limited  to  advising  at  the  request  of  the  commissioner,  who  may  be  so 
delayed  in  acquainting  himself  with  the  problems  of  his  department 
that  he  finds  difficulty  in  knowing  just  when  to  ask  for  counsel. 

f 

The  New  Jersey  Department  of  Institutions  and  Agencies1  has  at 
its  head  a  State  Board  of  Control  of  Agencies  and  Institutions2  (the 
governor  and  eight  appointed  members,  one  a  woman,  serving  without 
pay  in  revolving  terms  of  eight  years),  which  appoints  the  commis¬ 
sioner,  who  although  appointed  by  the  board  is  described  as  being 
one  of  the  two  component  elements  of  the  department,3  the  board 
being  the  other. 

Scope  of  Departmental  Responsibility 

An  interesting  question  is  that  relating  to  the  scope  of  the  work  of 
the  department.  In  this  is  involved  the  question  of  relationship  to 
other  branches  of  the  state  government  as  well  as  that  of  relationships 
within  the  department.  The  early  boards  had  to  do  with  "charities 
and  corrections.”  "Charities”  meant  paupers,  lunatics,  idiots,  pos¬ 
sibly  the  physically  handicapped — blind,  deaf,  and  crippled;  "Cor¬ 
rections”  meant  chiefly  prisoners  in  jails  and  lock-ups.  But  paupers 
were  often  sick,  and  lunatics  being  non-able-bodied  were  often  cared 
for  as  paupers,  and  prisoners  were  mostly  poor.  And  the  misery  of 
all  the  groups  therefore  showed  itself  in  the  form  of  destitution.4 
When  so  many  maladies  had  the  same  outward  manifestation  it  was 
natural  to  place  them  all  under  one  category.  It  was  also  inevitable 
that  progressive  analysis  would  lead  to  the  multiplication  of  special 
and  often  of  preventive  service.  Three  fields  of  work  were  therefore 
recognized  in  the  second  incarnation  of  the  Massachusetts  authority,5 

1  Created  in  1918  under  the  name  Department  of  Charities  and  Corrections, 
Laws  of  1918,  chap.  147,  and  given  in  1919  its  present  name.  Laws  of  1919, 
chap.  97,  sect.  2. 

2  Styled  under  the  Act  of  1918  the  State  Board  of  Charities  and  Correction. 

3 Laws  of  1919,  chap.  97,  sect.  2. 

4  It  is  interesting  to  note  that,  when  the  commissioners  of  a  few  state  boards 
assembled  in  1872  and  proposed  a  program  to  be  presented  to  a  larger  gathering, 
all  the  items  had  to  do  with  the  field  in  ''corrections.”  Proceedings  of  the  Ninth 
Annual  Conference  Charities  and  Corrections,  p.  n  (1882). 

5  When  it  became  the  Board  of  Health,  Lunacy,  and  Charity. 


8oo 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


but,  in  1919,  when  it  has  been  given  the  most  general  name  by  which 
it  has  ever  been  known,  it  occupies  the  most  specialized  field  it  ever 
occupied  and  covers  in  fact  only  problems  of  destitution  and  of 
child-care.1  The  Department  in  Illinois  covers  the  field  covered  by  the 
Board  between  1869  and  1910,  that  included  in  the  authority  possessed 
by  the  Board  of  Administration  and  the  State  Charities  Commission 
between  1910  and  1917,  and  in  addition,  that  occupied  during  that 
period  by  the  Boards  of  the  two  penitentiaries  and  the  Reformatory, 
the  Board  of  Prison  Industries,  the  Penitentiary  Commission  and  the 
State  Board  of  Pardons.  In  other  words  it  covers,  but  now  with  full 
authority,  the  old  field  of  Charities  and  Corrections.  The  depart¬ 
ment  in  Pennsylvania  continues  under  its  new  title  and  new  organiza¬ 
tion  the  lines  of  demarcation  between  relative  emphasis  on  supervision 
and  suggestion  for  other  groups  of  wards  and  relative  emphasis  on 
administration  in  the  case  of  lunatics,  which  were  before  expressed  in 
a  supervisory  board  of  ten,  one  a  lawyer  and  one  a  doctor,  each  of  ten 
years  experience,  to  cover  the  whole  field,  while  the  two  with  pro¬ 
fessional  experience  with  three  others,  selected  by  the  board,  were 
given  their  own  executive  and  created  a  Committee  on  Lunacy  with 
executive  powers.  Under  the  new  situation,  the  department  may 
create  four  bureaus,  but  one  of  them  must  be  a  Bureau  of  Lunacy. 
The  functions  ascribed  to  the  new  department  in  Idaho  are  those  of  a 
health  authority,  and  in  New  Mexico,  the  department  has  health  and 
child  welfare  functions. 

" Central”  versus  "local”  As  has  been  said,  one  of  the  considera¬ 
tions  moving  those  who  advocated  the  advisory  as  distinguished  from 
the  executive  authority,  was  the  fear  of  losing  the  benefits  of  local 
initiative  and  of  personal  intimate  contatts,  possible  under  local 
boards  of  management.  The  relationship  worked  out  in  Wisconsin 
in  the  care  of  the  insane  represents  a  cooperation  between  the  central 
and  the  county  authority.2  Under  this  plan,  county  institutions  are 
established  and  utilized  for  certain  groups  of  state  patients,  the  Board 

1For  the  time  the  work  of  the  Homestead  Commission  seems  submerged.  It 
is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  a  Commission  on  State  Administration  and  Expendi¬ 
tures,  in  1922,  proposes  a  reconsolidation  of  the  departments  of  health,  correc¬ 
tions,  and  mental  diseases,  and  the  institutional  activities  of  the  Department  of 
Health  with  the  Department  of  Public  Welfare.  Massachusetts  House  Document 
No.  800,  January,  1922,  p.  22. 

2  Hurd,  Institutional  Care  of  the  Insane ,  Vol.  I,  chap.  vi. 


PUBLIC  WELFARE  ADMINISTRATION 


801 


of  Control,  approving  in  advance  the  establishment  and  the  plans  pro¬ 
posed,  approving  the  bills  before  making  the  per  capita  payments  and 
retaining  the  power  to  remove  a  patient  whose  care  is  unsatisfactory. 
Under  the  New  Jersey  act  of  1918, 1  amended  in  1919,  creating  the 
department  of  institutions  and  agencies,  the  board  appoints  the  boards 
of  trustees  of  the  institutions  and  of  the  non-institutional  agencies, 
who  in  turn,  appoint  the  chief  executive  of  the  institution  or  agency 
(except  the  principal  keeper  of  the  State  Prison,  who  is  a  constitu¬ 
tional  officer).  The  chief  executive,  with  the  approval  of  the  board 
appointing  him,  selects  the  members  of  his  staff.  The  New  Jersey 
Scheme  is  interesting  because,  with  the  attempt  to  maintain  and  re¬ 
tain  the  interests  of  members  of  boards,  there  is  also  the  attempt  to 
secure  for  all  institutions  and  all  agencies  the  benefit  of  expert  services, 
and  the  creation  of  Divisions  of  Medicine  and  Psychiatry,  of*  Labor 
and  Agriculture,  of  Statistics,  of  Parole,  and  of  Dietetics,  is  also 
authorized. 

Brief  reference  may  also  be  made  to  two  other  problems.  As  was 
said  in  the  opening  paragraph,  the  issue  between  wards  and  services 
as  a  basis  for  allocating  functions  is  often  not  clear-cut.  Sometimes, 
however,  the  problem  becomes  an  acute  one.  In  the  matter  of  the 
deaf  and  of  the  blind,  there  is  frequently  a  sharp  division  of  opinion 
as  to  the  authority  with  Which  they  should  be  associated,  and  there 
are  found,  therefore,  not  only  great  varieties  of  practice  as  between 
different  states  but  frequent  changes  of  practice  within  the  same  state. 
In  some  states,  these  groups  are  under  special  authorities,  sometimes 
they  are  under  public  welfare,  sometimes  under  education,  sometimes 
under  both  education  and  public  welfare.2  In  Massachusetts,  Mothers’ 
Aid  administration  is  under  public  welfare ;  in  Illinois,  it  is  judicial ; 
in  Pennsylvania,  the  State  Director  reports  to  the  State  Education 
authority.  Moreover,  in  Illinois,  judicial  administration  is  purely 
local ;  in  Pennsylvania,  the  State  Agent  stimulates  the  organization 
of  local  commissions;  in  Massachusetts,  the  Overseers  of  the  Poor 
(local)  administer,  subject  to  the  advice  and  counsel  of  the  state  de- 

1Laws  of  New  Jersey,  1918,  chap.  147,  sects.  112,  115;  1919,  chap.  97. 

2  Best,  The  Deaf ,  Their  Position  in  Society  and  the  Provision  for  Their  Edu¬ 
cation  in  the  United  States  (1914) ;  also,  The  Blind,  Their  Condition  and  the 
Work  Being  Done  for  Them  (1919).  The  same  discussion  occurs  in  the  case  of 
schools  for  dependent  children. 


802 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  POVERTY 


partment,  and,  if  the  department  approves,  the  local  work  recovers 
one  third  of  the  cost  from  the  state  treasury  for  the  locality. 

The  second  problem  to  which  brief  reference  might  be  made  is 
that  of  cooperation  among  the  various  departments  which  have  a 
common  interest  in  the  same  services  or  in  the  same  wards.  Under 
the  Illinois  statute  it  is  provided  that  the  directors  are  to  devise 
methods  of  cooperating  and  to  secure  the  coordination  of  the  work  of 
the  various  departments.  .  .  d  Since  there  are  great  experiments  in 
departmental  cooperation  being  worked  out  on  a  national  scale  under 
the  so-called  Smith-Lever  act,  the  Smith-Hughes  act,  and  the  Sheppard- 
Towner  act,  in  fields  nearly  related  to  that  of  ''public  welfare,”  it  is 
unnecessary,  perhaps,  to  do  more  than  call  attention  to  the  need  of 
developing  a  fine  art  of  cooperation2  among  the  agencies  concerned 
with  common  undertakings. 

Conclusion.  To  review  briefly — after  sixty  years  of  effort,  there 
are  still  commonwealths  that  have  taken  no  step  in  the  direction  of 
organizing  their  service  in  this  general  field  on  a  state-wide  basis: 
there  are  eight  that  recognize  the  field  as  one  of  a  greater  or  smaller 
number  of  fields  to  which  are  devoted  special  departmental  organiza¬ 
tions.  Those  eight  and  the  other  thirty-seven  that  have  taken  some 
action  in  this  direction  show  diversity  at  well-nigh  every  point,  and 
manifest  variations  accounted  for  by  differences  not  only  in  need, 
situation,  character  of  work  to  be  done,  but  by  variations  due  also  to 
inertia,  to  lack  of  agreement  on  certain  fundamental  principles  of 
effective  governmental  action,  and  in  part,  undoubtedly,  to  lack  of 
such  authoritative  leadership  as  might  come  from  a  national  service 
soundly  developed  and  based  on  the  fundamental  demand  that  the 
victims  of  social  and  economic  maladjustment  be  adequately  cared 
for,  the  symptoms  traced  to  their  source,  and  the  wisdom  acquired 
from  sound  treatment  and  thorough  analysis  applied  to  constructive 
and  preventive  attacks  upon  the  social  and  economic  ills  thus  revealed. 

Illinois  Revised  Statutes,  chap.  24L  sect.  26. 

2 One  feels  hesitant  to  use  the  word  "cooperation,”  which,  like  "charities”  and 
"homes”  and  various  other  beautiful  and  significant  terms,  has  been  first  used, 
then  abused,  and  then  discarded ! 


PART  V.  PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 
108.  What  is  Crime?1 

Crime  needs  to  be  sharply  discriminated  from  vice  on  the  one  hand, 
and  from  sin  on  the  other.  Vices  are  injuries  done  to  oneself,  through 
the  violation  of  natural  law,  which  affect  others  only  indirectly,  if  at 
all.  Intemperance  is  a  vice ;  so  is  sloth,  so  is  improvidence.  Sins  are 
offences  against  God,  whose  commandments  extend  beyond  outward 
acts  and  reach  down  into  the  region  of  unuttered  thoughts  and  un¬ 
fulfilled  desires,  of  which  human  legislation  can  rightfully  take  no 
cognizance.  Crimes  are  wrongful  actions,  violations  of  the  rights  of 
other  men,  injuries  done  to  individuals  or  to  society,  against  which 
there  is  a  legal  prohibition  enforced  by  some  appropriate  legal  penalty. 

The  distinction  just  made  is  real,  but  these  categories  of  wrong¬ 
doing  are  not  necessarily  mutually  exclusive.  There  are  vices  and 
crimes  which  are  also  sins.  And  any  vice  or  sin  becomes  a  crime 
when  it  is  declared  to  be  punishable  by  human  law. 

Again,  actions  or  omissions  contrary  to  equity,  for  which  the  legal 
remedies  are  merely  civil,  and  consist  in  restitution,  with  or  without 
damages,  must  be  discriminated  from  actions  or  omissions  in  which 
the  disregard  shown  for  the  rights  of  others  is  so  palpably  immoral 
and  anti-social  as  to  call  for  the  infliction  of  some  degree  of  criminal 
punishment,  either  by  deprivation  of  life,  liberty,  or  property.  Only 
the  latter  fall  within  the  strict  definition  of  crimes  in  the  technical 
phraseology  of  the  law ;  the  former  are  torts. 

1  From  Punishment  and  Reformation  (pp.  11-13),  by  Frederick  Howard  Wines, 
LL.D.,  formerly  Special  Agent  of  the  Eleventh  United  States  Census  on  Crime, 
Pauperism,  and  Benevolence,  and  Assistant  Director  of  the  Twelfth  United  States 
Census.  Copyright,  1895  and  1910,  by  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  Co.,  New  York. 

803 


804 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Sir  James  Stephen  says : 

The  criminal  law  is  that  part  of  the  law  which  relates  to  the  definition 
and  punishment  of  acts  or  omissions  which  are  punished  as  being 

1.  Attacks  upon  public  order,  internal  or  external ;  or 

2.  Abuses  and  obstructions  of  public  authority;  or 

3.  Acts  injurious  to  the  public  in  general ;  or 

4.  Attacks  upon  the  persons  of  individuals,  or  upon  rights  annexed  to 

their  persons ;  or 

5.  Attacks  upon  the  property  of  individuals,  or  upon  rights  connected 

with  and  similar  to  rights  of  property. 

To  this  succinct  description  of  the  criminal  law  he  adds : 

The  conditions  of  criminality  consist  partly  of  positive  conditions,  some 
of  which  enter  more  or  less  into  the  definition  of  nearly  all  offences;  the 
most  important  being  malice,  fraud,  negligence,  knowledge,  intention,  will. 
There  are  also  negative  conditions  or  exceptions  tacitly  assumed  in  all  defi¬ 
nitions  of  crimes,  which  may  be  described  collectively  as  matter  of  excuse.1 

Crimes  are  distinguished  as  felonies  or  misdemeanors.  By  the  com- 
mon  law  of  England,  felonies  were  punishable  with  death.  In  the 
penal  codes  of  the  United  States,  the  distinction  between  a  felony  and 
a  misdemeanor  is  mainly  statutory,  and  has  lost  its  original  signifi¬ 
cance.  The  graver  offences  are  felonies.  Felonies  are  punishable  by 
death  or  imprisonment  in  a  state  prison  or  penitentiary  for  a  term  of 
years;  an  offence  thus  punishable  is  a  felony.  Misdemeanors  are 
punishable  in  a  minor  prison  for  a  term  of  months  or  days ;  an  offence 
thus  punishable  is  a  misdemeanor. 

1  ...  it  may,  I  think,  be  said  in  general  that  in  order  that  an  act  may  by  the 
law  of  England  be  criminal,  the  following  conditions  must  be  fulfilled: 

1.  The  act  must  be  done  by  a  person  of  competent  age. 

2.  The  act  must  be  voluntary,  and  the  person  who  does  it  must  also  be  free 
from  certain  forms  of  compulsion. 

3.  The  act  must  be  intentional. 

4.  Knowledge  in  various  degrees  according  to  the  nature  of  different  offences 
must  accompany  it. 

5.  In  many  cases  either  malice,  fraud,  or  negligence  enters  into  the  definition 
of  offences. 

6.  Each  of  these  general  conditions  (except  the  condition  as  to  age)  may  be 
affected  by  the  insanity  of  the  offender. 

Crimes  by  omission  are  exceptional  and  the  points  in  which  they  differ  from 
crimes  by  act  will  be  noticed  incidentally. — Stephen,  A  History  of  the  Criminal 
Law  of  England ,  Vol.  II,  p.  97.  Macmillan  &  Co.,  Limited,  London,  1883. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


805 


109.  Anthropological  Theory  of  Crime  :  Atavism 

and  Epilepsy1 

The  fundamental  proportion  undoubtedly  is  that  we  ought  to  study 
not  so  much  the  abstract  crime  as  the  criminal.  The  born  criminal 
shows  in  a  proportion  reaching  33  per  cent  numerous  specific  charac¬ 
teristics  that  are  almost  always  atavistic.  Many  of  the  characteristics 
presented  by  savage  races  are  very  often  found  among  born  criminals. 

Such,  for  example,  are  :  the  slight  development  of  the  pilar  system  ;  low 
cranial  capacity ;  retreating  forehead ;  highly  developed  frontal  sinuses ; 
great  frequency  of  Wormian  bones;  early  closing  of  the  cranial  sutures;  the 
simplicity  of  the  sutures  ;  the  thickness  of  the  bones  of  the  skull ;  enormous 
development  of  the  maxillaries  and  the  zygomata  ;  prognathism  ;  obliquity  • 
of  the  orbits ;  greater  pigmentation  of  the  skin ;  tufted  and  crispy  hair ; 
and  large  ears.  To  these  we  may  add  the  lemurine  appendix ;  anomalies  of 
the  ear ;  dental  diastemata ;  great  agility ;  relative  insensibility  to  pain ; 
dullness  of  the  sense  of  touch ;  great  visual  acuteness ;  ability  to  recover 
quickly  from  wounds ;  blunted  affections ;  precocity  as  to  sensual  pleas¬ 
ures;2  greater  resemblance  between  the  sexes;  greater  incorrigibility  of 
the  woman  (Spencer)  ;  laziness ;  absence  of  remorse ;  impulsiveness ; 
physiopsychic  excitability ;  and  especially  improvidence,  which  sometimes 
appears  as  courage  and  again  as  recklessness  changing  to  cowardice.  Be¬ 
sides  these  there  is  great  vanity ;  a  passion  for  gambling  and  alcoholic 
drinks  ;  violent  but  fleeting  passions  ;  superstition  ;  extraordinary  sensitive¬ 
ness  with  regard  to  one’s  own  personality ;  and  a  special  conception  of  God 
and  morality.  Unexpected  analogies  are  met  even  in  small  details,  as,  for 
example,  the  improvised  rules  of  criminal  gangs ;  the  entirely  personal  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  chiefs;3  the  custom  of  tattooing;  the  not  uncommon  cruelty 
of  their  games  ;  the  excessive  use  of  gestures  ;  the  onomatopoetic  language 
with  personification  of  inanimate  things ;  and  a  special  literature  recalling 
that  of  heroic  times,  when  crimes  were  celebrated  and  the  thought  tended 
to  clothe  itself  in  rhythmic  form. 

This  atavism  explains  the  diffusion  of  certain  crimes,  such  as  in¬ 
fanticide,  whose  extension  to  whole  companies  we  could  not  explain 
if  we  did  not  recall  the  Romans,  the  Greeks,  the  Chinese,  and  the 

xBy  Cesare  Lombroso,  M.D.,  formerly  Professor  of  Psychiatry  and  Criminal 
Anthropology  in  the  University  of  Turin.  Adapted  from  Crime :  Its  Causes  and 
Remedies,  pp.  365-366,  369-373-  Copyright,  1911,  by  Little,  Brown  &  Com¬ 
pany,  Boston. 

2 Homme  Criminel,  Vol.  I,  pp.  136-579. 

3 Tacitus,  Germania,  chap.  vii. 


8o6 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Tahitians,  who  not  only  did  not  regard  them  as  crimes,  but  sometimes 
even  practiced  them  as  a  national  custom.  Garofalo  has  admirably 
summed  up  the  psychical  characteristics  of^he  born  criminal  as  being 
the  absence  of  the  feelings  of  shame,  honor,  and  pity,  which  are  those 
that  are  lacking  in  the  savage  also.1  We  may  add  to  these  the  lack  of 
industry  and  self-control. 

The  same  phenomena  which  we  observe  in  the  case  of  born  criminals 
appear  again  in  the  rare  cases  of  moral  insanity,2  but  may  be  studied 
minutely,  and  on  a  large  scale,  in  epileptics,  criminal  or  not.3  Not 
one  of  the  atavistic  phenomena  shown  by  criminals  is  lacking  in 
epilepsy;  though  epileptics  show  also  certain  purely  morbid  phe¬ 
nomena,  such  as  cephalea,  atheroma,  delirium,  and  hallucination.  In 
born  criminals  also  we  find,  besides  the  atavistic  characteristics,  cer¬ 
tain  others  that  appear  to  be  entirely  pathological,  or  which  at  first 
sight  seem  more  nearly  allied  to  disease  than  to  atavism. 

Such  are,  for  example,  in  the  anatomical  field,  excessive  asymmetry, 
cranial  capacity  and  face  too  large  or  too  small,  sclerosis,  traces  of  menin¬ 
gitis,  hydrocephalous  forehead,  oxycephaly,  acrocephaly,  cranial  depres¬ 
sions,  numerous  osteophytes,  early  closing  of  the  cranial  sutures,  thoracic 
asymmetry,  late  grayness  of  hair,  late  baldness,  and  abnormal  and  early 
wrinkles ;  in  the  biological  field,  alterations  of  the  reflexes  and  pupillary 
inequalities.  To  these  we  may  add  peripheral  scotomata  of  the  visual  field, 
which  one  never  finds  in  savages,  with  whom,  on  the  contrary,  the  field  of 
vision  is  remarkably  wide  and  regular,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  Dinkas. 
There  is  also  to  be  added  the  alteration  of  hearing,  taste,  and  smell,  the 
predilection  for  animals,  precocity  in  sexual  pleasures,  amnesia,  vertigo, 
and  maniac  and  paranoiac  complications.  These  abnormalities,  which  are 
found  in  greater  proportion  among  idiots,  cretins,  and  degenerates  in  gen¬ 
eral,  are  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  in  these  cases  alcoholic  intoxica¬ 
tion  is  added  to  the  effect  of  atavism,  and  still  more  to  that  of  epilepsy. 

However,  the  participation  of  epilepsy  in  producing  the  effect 
does  not  exclude  atavism,  since  they  equally  involve  characteristics  at 
once  atavistic  and  pathological,  like  macrocephaly,  cranial  sclerosis, 
Wormian  bones,  rarity  of  beard;  and  in  the  biological  field,  left- 
handedness,  analgesis,  obtuseness  of  all  senses  except  that  of  sight, 

1  Criminologie  (2d  ed.),  1895. 

2 Homme  Criminel,  Vol.  II,  pp.  2-13. 

3 Homme  Criminel ,  Vol.  II,  pp.  50-201. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


807 


impulsiveness,  pederasty,  obscenity,  sluggishness,  superstition,  fre¬ 
quent  cannibalism,  choleric  and  impetuous  disposition,  tendency  to 
reproduce  the  cries  and  actions  of  animals;  and  especially  the  his¬ 
tological  anomalies  of  the  cortex,  which  we  have  noted  among  crim¬ 
inals,  and  which  reproduce  the  conditions  of  the  lower  animals ;  and 
finally  anomalies  of  the  teeth.  These  latter  might  appear  to  have  no 
connection  with  the  brain,  but  are,  on  the  contrary,  intimately  con¬ 
nected  with  it,  since  the  teeth  proceed  from  the  same  embryonic  mem¬ 
brane  as  the  brain  does.1 

We  may  recall  here  that  Gowers,  having  often  noted  in  epileptics 
acts  peculiar  to  animals,  such  as  biting,  barking,  and  mewing,  con¬ 
cludes  from  this  "that  these  are  manifestations  of  that  instinctive 
animalism  which  we  possess  in  the  latent  state.”2 

If  fully  developed  epileptic  fits  are  often  lacking  in  the  case  of  the 
born  criminal,  this  is  because  they  remain  latent,  and  only  show  them¬ 
selves  later  under  the  influence  of  the  causes  assigned  (anger,  alco¬ 
holism),  which  bring  them  to  the  surface.  With  both  criminals  and 
epileptics  there  is  to  be  noted  an  insufficient  development  of  the 
higher  centers.  This  manifests  itself  in  a  deterioration  in  the  moral 
and  emotional  sensibilities,  in  sluggishness,  physiopsychic  hyper¬ 
excitability,  and  especially  in  a  lack  of  balance  in  the  mental  faculties, 
which,  even  when  distinguished  by  genius  and  altruism,  nevertheless 
always  show  gaps,  contrasts,  and  intermittent  action. 

The  epileptic  background  upon  which  the  clinical  and  anatomical 
picture  of  the  moral  lunatic  and  the  born  criminal  is  drawn  (a  pic¬ 
ture  that  would  otherwise  be  lost  in  vague  semi -juridical,  semi¬ 
psychiatric  hypotheses)  explains  the  instantaneousness,  periodicity, 
and  paradoxical  character  of  their  symptoms,  which  are  doubtless  their 
most  marked  characteristics.  Note,  for  example,  in  this  class,  the 
coexistence  and  interchange  of  kindness  and  ferocity,  of  cowardice  and 
the  maddest  recklessness,  and  of  genius  and  complete  stupidity. 

1  Homme  Criminel,  Vol.  I,  p.  232,  n. 

2  Epilepsy,  London,  1880. 


8o8 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


110.  Study  of  the  English  Convict:  A  Criticism  of 

Lombroso1 

We  were  confronted  with  the  notion  of  a  distinct  anthropological 
criminal  type :  with  the  idea  of  the  criminal  being  such  in  consequence 
of  an  hereditary  element  in  his  psychic  organisation,  and  of  certain 
physical  and  mental  peculiarities,  which  stigmatised  him  as  predes¬ 
tined  to  evil,  and  which  differentiated  him  from  the  morally  well- 
conditioned  person.  In  accordance  with  this  notion,  every  individual 
criminal  is  an  anomaly  among  mankind,  by  inheritance ;  and  can  be 
detected  by  his  physical  malformations,  and  mental  eccentricities: 
the  inevitable  deduction  being  that  any  attempt  at  his  reform  must 
prove  vain. 

The  preliminary  conclusion  reached  by  our  inquiry  is  that  this 
anthropological  monster  has  no  existence  in  fact.  The  physical  and 
mental  constitution  of  both  criminal  and  law-abiding  persons,  of  the 
same  age,  stature,  class,  and  intelligence,  are  identical.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  an  anthropological  criminal  type.  But,  despite  this  nega¬ 
tion,  and  upon  the  evidence  of  our  statistics,  it  appears  to  be  an  equally 
indisputable  fact  that  there  is  a  physical,  mental,  and  moral  type  of 
normal  person  who  tends  to  be  convicted  of  crime :  that  is  to  say,  our 
evidence  conclusively  shows  that,  on  the  average,  the  criminal  of 
English  prisons  is  markedly  differentiated  by  defective  physique — as 
measured  by  stature  and  body  weight ;  by  defective  mental  capacity 
— as  measured  by  general  intelligence ;  and  by  an  increased  posses¬ 
sion  of  wilful  anti-social  proclivities2 — as  measured,  apart  from  in¬ 
telligence,  by  length  of  sentence  to  imprisonment. 

iFrom  The  English  Convict:  A  Statistical  Study ,  by  Charles  Goring,  M.D. 
His  Majesty’s  Stationery  Office,  London,  1913.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the 
Controller  of  His  Majesty’s  Stationery  Office. 

This  investigation  of  three  thousand  English  convicts  has  been  pursued  by  the 
biometrical  method.  It  is  treated  in  the  following  sections: 

Part  I:  An  inquiry  into  the  alleged  existence  of  a  "physical  criminal  type.” 

Part  II:  Chapter  I,  The  physique  of  criminals;  Chapter  II,  Age  as  an  etiologi¬ 
cal  factor  in  crime;  Chapter  III,  The  criminal’s  vital  statistics:  health,  disease, 
mortality,  enumeration;  Chapter  IV,  The  mental  differentiation  of  the  criminal; 
Chapter  V,  The  influence  of  the  "  force  of  circumstances  ”  on  the  genesis  of  crime ; 
Chapter  VI,  The  fertility  of  criminals;  Chapter  VII,  The  influence  of  "heredity” 
on  the  genesis  of  crime. 

2  We  find  that  it  is  the  most  intelligent  recidivists  who  are  guilty  of  the  most 
serious  acquisitive  offences  (Goring,  The  English  Convict ,  p.  288). 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


809 


Reviewing  the  general  trend  of  our  results,  it  would  seem  that  the 
appearances,  stated  by  anthropologists  of  all  countries  to  be  peculiar 
to  criminals,  are  thus  described  because  of  a  too  separate  inspection, 
and  narrow  view  of  the  facts,  by  these  observers.  They  cannot  see 
the  wood  for  the  trees.  Obsessed  by  preconceived  beliefs,  small  dif¬ 
ferences  of  intimate  structure  have  been  uncritically  accepted  by  them, 
and  exaggerated  to  fit  fantastic  theories.  The  truths  that  have  been 
overlooked  are  that  these  deviations,  described  as  significant  of 
criminality,  are  the  inevitable  concomitants  of  inferior  stature  and  de¬ 
fective  intelligence :  both  of  which  are  the  differentia  of  the  types  of 
persons  who  are  selected  for  imprisonment.  The  thief,  who  is  caught 
thieving,  has  a  smaller  head  and  a  narrower  forehead  than  the  man 
who  arrests  him :  but  this  is  the  case,  not  because  he  is  more  criminal, 
but  because,  of  the  two,  he  is  the  more  markedly  inferior  in  stature. 
The  incendiary  is  more  emotionally  unstable,  more  lacking  in  control, 
more  refractory  in  conduct,  and  more  dirty  in  habits,  etc.  than  the 
thief ;  and  the  thief  is  more  distinguished  by  the  above  peculiarities 
than  the  forger;  and  all  criminals  display  these  qualities  to  a  more 
marked  extent  than  does  the  law-abiding  public :  not  because  any  one 
of  these  claves  is  more  criminal  than  another,  but  because  of  their 
inter-differentiation  in  general  intelligence.  On  statistical  evidence, 
one  assertion  can  be  dogmatically  made:  it  is,  that  the  criminal  is 
differentiated  by  inferior  stature,  by  defective  intelligence,  and,  to 
some  extent,  by  his  anti-social  proclivities ;  but  that,  apart  from  these 
broad  differences,  there  are  no  physical,  mental,  or  moral  characteris¬ 
tics  peculiar  to  the  inmates  of  English  prisons.  We  need  not  recapit¬ 
ulate  the  social,  economic,  and  legal  selective  processes  which,  without 
drawing  upon  theories  of  degeneracy  or  atavism,  have  seemed  to  us 
sufficient  simple  explanation  of  the  criminal’s  physical  and  mental 
distinctions.  The  following  figure,  however,  may  assist  the  imagina¬ 
tion  in  realising  the  nature  and  proportions  of  this  differentiation.  We 
may  take  it  that  one  in  thirteen  persons  of  the  general  population  are 
convicted  at  some  time  of  life  for  indictable  offences.  If  the  total 
adult  population  were  made  to  file  by  in  groups  of  thirteen,  and,  out 
of  each  group,  one  person  was  selected,  who  happened  to  be  the 
smallest  there  in  stature,  or  the  most  defective  in  intelligence,  or  who 
possessed  volitional  anti-social  proclivities  to  a  more  marked  degree 
than  his  fellows  in  the  group — the  band  of  individuals  resulting  from 


8io 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


this  selection  would,  in  physical,  mental,  and  moral  constitution,  ap¬ 
proximate  more  closely  to  our  criminal  population  than  the  residue. 

The  second  conclusion  resulting  from  our  inquiry  defines  the  rela¬ 
tive  importance  of  constitutional  and  environmental  factors  in  the 
etiology  of  crime.  The  criminal  anthropologists  assert  that  the  chief 
source  of  crime  lies  in  the  personal  constitution.  His  physical  and 
mental  stigmata,  they  argue,  while  showing  the  anomalous  biological 
origin  of  the  law-breaker,  prove  also  the  existence  in  him  of  a  peculiar 
Constitutional  psychic  quality :  by  reason  of  which  he  is  destined  from 
birth  to  do  evil,  and  will  become  criminal,  however  favourable  or  un¬ 
favourable  his  circumstances  may  be.  On  the  other  hand,  the  criminal 
sociologists  say  that  the  source  of  crime  must  be  sought,  not  in  the 
constitution  of  the  malefactor,  but  in  his  adverse  social  and  economic 
environment.  He  is  not  born,  but  is  made,  criminal,  it  is  contended : 
his  physical,  mental,  and  moral  characteristics,  and  the  ultimate  fate 
of  imprisonment  these  entail,  are  products  of  unfavourable  circum¬ 
stances  ;  in  the  absence  of  which,  even  inborn  criminal  tendencies  will 
fail  to  develop. 

We  have  traced  and  measured  the  relations  of  constitutional  and 
environmental  conditions :  and  while,  with  many  of  the  former,  high 
degrees  of  association  have  been  revealed,  with  practically  none  of  the 
latter  do  we  discover  any  definite  degree  of  relationship.  Thus,  as 
already  stated,  we  find  close  bonds  of  association  with  defective  phy¬ 
sique  and  intelligence ;  and,  to  a  less  intimate  extent,  with  moral 
defectiveness,  or  wilful  anti-social  proclivities — as  demonstrated  by 
the  fact  that  it  is  the  most  intelligent  recidivists  who  are  guilty  of  the 
most  serious  acquisitive  offences.  We  find,  also,  that  crimes  of  vio¬ 
lence  are  associated  with  the  finer  physique,  health,  and  muscular 
development,  with  the  more  marked  degrees  of  ungovernable  temper, 
obstinacy  of  purpose,  and  inebriety,  and  with  the  greater  amount  of 
insane  and  suicidal  proclivity,  of  persons  convicted  of  these  offences ; 
.  .  .  and  that  fraudulent  offenders  are  relatively  free  from  the  con¬ 
stitutional  determinants  which  appear  to  conduce  to  other  forms  of 
crime.  Alcoholism,  also,  and  all  diseases  associated  with  alcoholism ; 
venereal  diseases,  and  conditions  associated  with  venereal  diseases ; 
epilepsy,  and  insanity — appear  to  be  constitutional  determinants  of 
crime :  although,  upon  the  evidence  of  our  data,  it  would  seem  that 
these  conditions,  in  their  relation  to  conviction,  are  mainly  accidental 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME  811 

associations,  depending  upon  the  high  degree  of  relationship  between 
defective  intelligence  and  crime.  On  the  other  hand,  between  a 
variety  of  environmental  conditions  examined,  such  as  illiteracy,  pa¬ 
rental  neglect,  lack  of  employment,  the  stress  of  poverty,  etc.,  etc., 
including  the  states  of  a  healthy,  delicate,  or  morbid  constitution 
per  se,  and  even  the  situation  induced  by  the  approach  of  death1  — 
between  these  conditions  and  the  committing  of  crime,  we  find  no 
evidence  of  any  significant  relationship.  Our  second  conclusion,  then, 
is  this:  that,  relatively  to  its  origin  in  the  constitution  of  the  male¬ 
factor,  and  especially  in  his  mentally  defective  constitution,  crime  is 
only  to  a  trifling  extent  (if  to  any)  the  product  of  social  inequalities, 
of  adverse  environment,  or  of  other  manifestations  of  what  may  be 
comprehensively  termed  the  force  of  circumstances. 

Our  third  conclusion  refers  to  the  influence  of  imprisonment  upon 
the  physical  and  mental  well-being  of  prisoners.  We  find  that  im¬ 
prisonment,  on  the  whole,  has  no  apparent  effect  upon  physique,  as 
measured  by  body  weight,  or  upon  mentality,  as  measured  by  intelli¬ 
gence  ;  and  that  mortality  from  accidental  negligence  is  pronouncedly 
diminished,  and  the  prevalency  of  infectious  fevers  due  to  defective 
sanitation — taking  enteric  as  a  type — is  lessened,  by  prison  environ¬ 
ment  ;  on  the  other  hand,  mortality  from  suicide,  and  from  conditions 
involving  major  surgical  interference  amongst  prisoners,  greatly  ex¬ 
ceeds  the  general  population  standard ;  while,  with  regard  to  the 
prevalency  of,  and  mortality  from,  tuberculosis,  in  English  prisons, 
criminals  may  be  regarded  as  a  random  sample  of  the  general  popula¬ 
tion — one-fourth  to  one-fifth  of  all  deaths  in  the  general  population, 
as  well  as  amongst  prisoners,  being  due  to  some  form  of  tubercular 
disease.2  We  find,  moreover,  that  long  terms  of  imprisonment  militate 
against  the  regularity  of  a  convict’s  employment  when  he  is  free  from 

1At  all  ages  of  life  up  to  fifty-five  the  death  rates  of  prisoners  are  practically 
identical  with  the  general  population  rates. 

2  A  fact  which  demonstrates  that  the  current  allegations  ( i )  of  criminality  and 
tubercular  diseases  being  kindred  manifestations  of  the  same  form  of  human  de¬ 
cadence,  and  (2)  that  prison  conditions  foster  tubercular  disease,  are  both  unsup¬ 
ported  by  statistical  facts. 

With  regard  to  sickness  generally,  the  fraction  of  a  year  spent,  on  the  average, 
in  hospital,  by  the  inmates  of  English  prisons,  is  a  few  hours  less  than,  or  prac¬ 
tically  identical  with,  the  average  period  during  which  the  members  of  one  of 
our  largest  friendly  societies  receive  pay,  and  are  absent  from  work,  on  account 
of  sickness. 


8l2 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


prison,  but  tend  to  increase  the  standard  of  his  scholastic  education ; 
and  that  frequency  of  incarceration  leads  to  a  diminution  of  the 
fertility  of  the  convict,  owing  to  the  circumstance  that,  after  a  certain 
period  of  continually  interrupted  married  life,  habitual  criminals  are 
deserted  by  their  wives,  or  by  the  women  with  whom  they  have  lived. 

Our  fourth  conclusion  disposes  of  the  current  allegation  that  "crim¬ 
inals  share  in  the  relative  sterility  of  all  degenerate  stocks.”  Upon 
the  evidence  of  our  statistics,  we  find  the  criminal  to  be  unquestionably 
a  product  of  the  most  prolific  stocks  in  the  general  community ;  and 
that  his  own  apparent  diminution  of  fertility  is  not  due  to  physiologi¬ 
cal  sterility,  but  to  the  definite,  psychological,  human  reaction  we  have 
just  affirmed. 

The  fact  that  conviction  for  crime  is  associated,  as  our  figures  have 
shown,  mainly  with  constitutional,  and  scarcely  to  any  appreciable 
extent  with  circumstantial,  conditions,  would  make  the  hypothesis  a 
plausible  one  that  the  force  of  heredity  plays  some  part  in  deter¬ 
mining  the  fate  of  imprisonment.  We  have  seen  that  the  principal 
constitutional  determinant  of  crime  is  mental  defectiveness — which, 
admittedly,  is  a  heritable  condition ;  and  scarcely  less  than  8  per  cent 
of  the  population  of  this  country  are  convicted  for  indictable  offences 
— which  could  only  be  possible  on  the  assumption  that  crime  is  limited 
to  particular  stocks  of  the  community : 1  from  these  facts  the  conclu-* 
sion  seems  inevitable  that  the  genesis  of  crime,  and  the  production  of 
criminals,  must  be  influenced  by  heredity.  Our  family  histories  of 
convicts  bear  testimony  to  this  truth ;  and  the  fifth  and  final  conclu¬ 
sion  emerging  from  our  biometric  inquiry  is  as  follows:  that  the 
criminal  diathesis,  revealed  by  the  tendency  to  be  convicted  and  im¬ 
prisoned  for  crime,  is  influenced  by  the  force  of  heredity  in  much 
the  same  way,  and  to  much  the  same  extent,  as  are  physical  and 
mental  qualities  and  conditions  in  man. 

The  scientist,  and,  in  so  far  as  he  would  be  guided  by  the  word  of 
science,  the  legislator,  have  to  reckon  with  three  natural  forces,  upon 
which  the  fates  of  men,  and  the  fortunes  of  society,  depend :  the 
forces  of  heredity,  circumstance,  and  chance.  In  the  case  of  any  one, 
particular,  conviction  for  crime,  it  could  be  imagined  that  the  victim 

1If  persons  convicted,  at  some  time  of  life,  for  indictable  offences,  were  dis¬ 
tributed  at  random,  every  other  family  in  the  land  would  produce  a  criminal 
member. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


813 


was  selected  entirely  at  random — by  ballot,  for  instance,  as  the  jury¬ 
man  is  chosen :  this  would  be  a  case  illustrating  the  force  of  chance ; 
or  he  might  have  been  selected  because,  by  the  spur  of  hunger,  he 
committed  a  theft  which,  in  the  absence  of  this  stimulus,  he  would  not 
have  committed:  such  would  be  a  case  illustrating  the  force  of  cir¬ 
cumstance;  or,  again,  dissociated  from  any  special  stimulus,  apart 
from  temptation  to  which  all  men  living  in  the  world  are  equally 
exposed,  it  could  be  imagined  that  the  committing  of,  and  subsequent 
conviction  for,  the  crime  referred  to,  were  inseparably  related  with  an 
inherent  stupidity,  lack  of  control,  or  other  constitutional  determinant 
of  anti-social  conduct:  in  this  case,  since  offspring  tend  to  resemble 
their  parents  in  constitutional  qualities,  the  crime  could  be  described 
as  mainly  influenced  by  the  force  of  heredity.  The  practical  problem 
facing  the  legislator  is,  therefore,  this  one :  on  the  average,  and  taking 
criminals  in  the  mass,  which  of  the  forces  we  have  enumerated  is 
chiefly  responsible  for  the  social  phenomenon  of  crime?  We  think 
that  our  figures,  showing  the  comparatively  insignificant  relation  of 
family  and  other  environmental  conditions  with  crime,  and  the  high 
and  enormously  augmented  association  of  feeble-mindedness  with  con¬ 
viction  for  crime,  and  its  well-marked  relation  with  alcoholism, 
epilepsy,  sexual  profligacy,  ungovernable  temper,  obstinacy  of  pur¬ 
pose,  and  wilful  anti-social  activity — every  one  of  these,  as  well  as 
feeble-mindedness,  being  heritable  qualities — we  think  that  these 
figures,  coupled  with  those  showing  the  marked  degree  of  ancestral 
resemblance  in  regard  to  the  fate  of  imprisonment,  go  far  to  answer¬ 
ing  this  question. 

Let  us  remember — it  is  nearly  always  forgotten — that  heredity  is 
not  a  spectre  to  be  disregarded,  an  enemy  to  be  dreaded:  it  is  a 
universal  and  natural  force,  to  be  studied  and  measured,  so  that,  when 
understood,  it  can  be  consciously  directed  to  the  welfare  of  human 
beings.  The  force  itself  is  neither  modifiable  nor  extinguishable.  The 
force  of  gravity  does  not  cease  to  operate  when  the  balloon  flies 
upward ;  nor  is  the  mode  of  action  of  the  wind  annihilated  when  a 
ship  sails  in  its  teeth.  And  similarly,  the  force  of  heredity  is  not 
extinguished  when,  isolated  on  a  Pacific  island,  the  tubercular  escape 
the  penalties  of  their  inheritance ;  nor,  when,  by  appropriate  physical 
culture,  the  stature  of  man  may  be  increased  by  inches.  Assuming 
that  by  the  segregation  of  all  criminals,  crime  might  be  reduced  to 


814 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


nothing:  yet  parents  with  the  least  social  proclivities  would  still  go 
on  begetting  offspring  who,  on  the  average,  would  commit  the  greatest 
number  of  anti-social  offences;  just  as,  despite  of  physical  culture 
exercised  by  everybody,  the  tallest  offspring  would,  in  the  long  run, 
be  begotten  by  the  tallest  parents. 

Yet  no  rational  definition  of  the  hereditary  nature  of  crime  supposes 
the  criminal’s  predestination  to  inevitable  sin.  Our  own  statement  is 
that  degrees  of  the  criminal  tendency  possessed,  to  some  degree,  by 
all  people,  are  inherited  in  the  same  way  as  other  conditions  and 
tendencies  in  men  are  inherited:  which  is  to  say  that,  in  regard  to 
constitutional  qualities — feeble-mindedness,  inebriety,  ungovernable 
temper,  etc.,  etc., — tending  to  affect  conviction  for  crime,  there  is  a 
degree  of  parental  resemblance  of  much  the  same  intensity  as  there 
is  between  parents  and  offspring  in  regard  to  their  tendency  to  become 
diseased,  or  to  develop,  under  the  influence  of  a  common  environment, 
to  a  certain  grade  of  stature.  But  this  fact  of  resemblance  does  not 
argue  absence  of  the  environment  in  the  development  of  human  beings. 
It  is  as  absurd  to  say  that,  because  criminal  tendency  is  heritable,  a 
man’s  conviction  for  crime  cannot  be  influenced  by  education,  as  it 
would  be  to  assert  that,  because  mathematical  ability  is  heritable,  ac¬ 
complishment  in  mathematics  is  independent  of  instruction;  or  that, 
because  stature  is  heritable,  growth  is  independent  of  nutriment  and 
exercise.  Our  correlations  tell  us  that,  despite  of  education,  heritable 
constitutional  conditions  prevail  in  the  making  of  criminals ;  but  they 
contain  no  pronouncement  upon  the  extent  to  which  the  general 
standard  of  morality  may  have  been  raised  by  education.  We  know 
that  to  make  a  law-abiding  citizen,  two  things  are  needed — capacity 
and  training.  Within  dwells  the  potentiality  for  growth ;  but  without 
stands  the  natural  right  of  each  child  born  into  the  world — the  right 
to  possess  every  opportunity  of  growing  to  his  full  height. 

The  crusade  against  crime  may  be  conducted  in  three  directions. 
The  effort  may  be  made  to  modify  inherited  tendency  by  appropriate 
educational  measures;  or  else  to  modify  opportunity  for  crime  by 
segregation  and  supervision  of  the  unit ;  or  else — and  this  is  attacking 
the  evil  at  its  very  root — to  regulate  the  reproduction  of  those  degrees 
of  constitutional  qualities — feeble-mindedness,  inebriety,  epilepsy, 
deficient  social  instinct,  etc. — which  conduce  to  the  committing  of 
crime. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME  815 

111.  Physical  and  Social  Factors  in  the  Production 

of  Crime1 

It  has  long  been  a  commonplace  of  ethics,  that  the  commission  of 
crime  depends  more  or  less  upon  the  physical  and  social  environment 
of  the  criminal.  There  is  no  doubt  that  social  environment  has  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  the  continuance  of  the  criminal  class,  as  one  can  hardly 
expect  a  child  brought  up  among  criminals  and  prostitutes  to  be  right- 
minded,  lawful,  or  moral.  Many  sociologists  have  sought  still  further 
to  connect  crime  with  the  physiological  characteristics  of  the  criminal, 
and  hence  look  upon  it  simply  as  an  infirmity  or  a  disease.  Other 
sociologists  have  gone  further  yet,  and  tried  to  connect  the  manifes¬ 
tations  of  crime  with  the  physical  environment,  such  as  climate,  and 
season,  or  with  social  characteristics,  such  as  race,  religion,  density 
of  population,  domicile,  etc.,  and  thus  to  make  it  a  manifestation  of 
social  disease  or  infirmity.  This  last  attempt  has  not  as  yet  attained 
any  very  precise  results.  Some  interesting  deductions  have  been  in¬ 
dicated  as  follows : 

Influence  oj  climate  and  geographical  position.  It  is  an  old  observa¬ 
tion  that  crimes  against  the  person  are  more  numerous  in  southern 
climates  than  crimes  against  property,  and  vice  versa.  Guerry  ob¬ 
served  this  in  France  as  far  back  as  1826-1830.  Dividing  France  into 
three  zones,  he  found  the  following  proportions  for  each  class  of  crimes : 

Crimes  against  Crimes  against 
the  Person  Property 

Northern  zone . 2.7  4.9 

Middle  zone . 2.8  2.34 

Southern  zone . 4.96  2.32 

It  will  be  observed  that  these  proportions  are  almost  directly  in¬ 
verse.  These  old  observations  of  Guerry  have  been  confirmed  in  a 
general  way  by  the  later  statistics.  In  1882,  it  was  said  that  crimes 
against  the  person  were  especially  prominent  in  Corsica  and  the 
Eastern  Pyrenees;  in  the  low  and  high  Alps,  in  Savoy,  in  L’Aveyon 
and  La  Lozere,  crimes  against  property  and  against  the  person  were 
equal  in  number;  in  the  other  departments  crimes  against  property 
were  in  excess.  Corsica  and  Paris  furnish  20  per  cent  of  all  the 

iFrom  Statistics  and  Sociology  (pp.  269-279),  by  Richmond  Mayo-Smith, 
Ph.  D.,  formerly  Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  Columbia  University.  Copy¬ 
right,  1895,  by  The  Macmillan  Company.  Reprinted  by  permission. 


8i6 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


attempts  on  person  or  life,  but  while  in  Paris  there  was  one  such  at¬ 
tempt  for  one  hundred  thousand  persons,  in  Corsica  there  was  one  for 
every  thirteen  inhabitants.1 

In  Italy  there  is  a  general  geographical  distribution  corresponding 
to  the  above.  Homicide  and  injuries  to  the  person  are  most  frequent 
in  the  province  of  Rome,  in  Sicily,  in  Calabria,  and  certain  other 
provinces  of  the  south.  In  these  same  provinces  crimes  against 
morality  are  more  frequent  than  in  the  centre  and  the  north.  In 
simple  larcenies  the  heaviest  number  is  found  about  Rome  and  in 
Sardinia,  but  otherwise  the  northern  provinces  are  more  heavily  rep¬ 
resented  than  the  southern.2 

In  other  countries  we  do  not  get  distinct  indications  of  the  influence 
of  climate  on  the  commission  of  crime.  In  Germany  crime  seems  to 
be  more  frequent  in  the  east  than  in  the  west.  In  the  eastern  provinces 
of  Prussia  crimes  against  the  person,  as  well  as  the  grosser  crimes 
against  property,  are  very  frequent,  while  the  finer  crimes  against 
property,  such  as  embezzlement,  are  more  frequent  in  the  west  and 
south.  The  reason  for  this  distribution  is  not  explained.  It  is  ap¬ 
parent,  however,  that  effect  of  climate  and  geographical  position  might 
be  easily  obscured  by  the  influence  of  economic  and  social  conditions.3 

Influence  of  the  seasons.  It  is  pretty  well  determined  that  crimes 
against  the  person  are  more  numerous  in  summer  than  in  winter ;  that 
crimes  against  property  are  more  numerous  in  winter  than  in  summer. 
Various  reasons  for  this  have  been  given.  That  such  crimes  against 
property  as  larceny  should  be  more  frequent  in  winter  than  in  sum¬ 
mer  may,  perhaps,  be  explained  by  the  greater  pressure  of  economic 
wants  in  the  cold  season.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  explain  why  crimes 
against  the  person,  and  especially  those  against  morality,  such  as  rape, 
should  be  more  frequent  in  summer  than  in  winter.  Some  authors 
ascribe  it  to  the  influence  of  the  season,  others  to  the  greater  oppor¬ 
tunity,  owing  to  the  out-door  life  of  the  agricultural  population.4 

City  and  country.  There  is  generally  more  crime  in  the  city  than 
in  the  country,  and  the  reason,  of  course,  is  that  the  city  is  often  the 
place  of  refuge  for  country  criminals.  In  France,  while  in  the  cities 

1  Zeitschrijt  des  Preuss.  stat.  Bureaus ,  1882,  S.  C.  XLVI. 

2Bodio,  Communication  sur  V organisation  de  la  statistique  penale  en  Italie. 

3 Von  Scheel,  "Zur  Einfuhrung  in  die  Kriminalstatistik,”  Allg.  stat.  Archiv, 

Vol.  I,  p.  205.  4 Allg.  stat.  Archiv ,  Vol.  II,  p.  49. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


817 


there  was  one  accused  (of  crimes  or  misdemeanours)  to  6007  in¬ 
habitants,  in  the  country  districts  there  was  one  accused  to  12,787 
inhabitants.  Of  the  persons  tried  before  juries  in  1890,  13  per  cent 
had  no  permanent  residence,  43  per  cent  lived  in  the  country,  and 
44  per  cent  in  towns  of  2000  inhabitants  and  over.  The  rural  popu¬ 
lation  is  twice  as  numerous  as  the  urban.  In  England,  on  the  other 
hand,#we  have  some  statistics  which  go  to  show  that,  owing  to  police 
control,  the  number  of  criminals  compared  with  the  total  population 
is  less  in  the  large  cities  than  in  the  counties.  The  police  keep  a  record 
of  known  thieves  and  depredators,  of  receivers  of  stolen  goods,  and  of 
suspected  persons.  The  distribution  of  these  persons  in  1890-1891 
was:  in  counties,  1.20  per  1000  of  the  population;  in  boroughs,  1.20; 
and  in  London,  0.41  per  1000  of  the  population.1 

When  we  consider  particular  crimes,  we  find  great  variations  be¬ 
tween  city  and  country,  which,  however,  cannot  be  reduced  to  any  law 
applicable  to  all  countries.  London,  for  instance,  shows  the  largest 
number  of  larcenies ;  in  murder,  Derby  shows  the  highest  percentage, 
while  London  holds  only  a  medium  place ;  in  rape,  Chester,  Mon¬ 
mouth,  Stafford,  and  Southampton  lead,  while  London  stands  only 
twentieth.  Paris  is  the  heaviest  of  all  the  departments  in  France  in 
thefts  and  crimes  against  property ;  but  it  is  very  light  in  arson  and 
rape  compared  with  some  of  the  country  departments ;  and  in  regard  to 
murder  Paris  stands  fifteenth  below  Corsica.  Crimes  against  morality 
are  common  in  France  in  the  industrial  departments,  where  drunken¬ 
ness  is  also  most  common,  while  in  the  agricultural  departments  they 
are  less  frequent.  Infanticide,  on  the  other  hand,  is  more  common  in 
the  country  than  in  the  cities,  owing  probably  to  the  absence  of 
foundling  asylums. 

General  social  influences  on  crime.  The  influence  of  race  or  na¬ 
tionality  is  difficult  to  discern  in  the  statistics  of  crime,  because  of  the 
difficulties  of  international  comparison.  In  the  United  States  we  can 
compare  the  number  of  prisoners  and  convicts  of  foreign  birth  with 
those  of  native  birth.  Care  must  be  taken  to  consider  the  greater 
proportion  of  adults  among  the  foreign-born.  Even  then,  the  amount 
of  criminality  may  be  due  to  the  strange  environment  in  which  these 
foreigners  find  themselves,  rather  than  to  any  influence  of  nationality. 
Taking  into  account  the  birth-place  of  the  parents  of  prisoners,  the 
1  Judicial  Statistics ,  England  and  Wales,  1891,  p.  x. 


8i8 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


census  attributes  43  per  cent  of  the  crimes  committed  by  white  per¬ 
sons  to  the  native  white  element,  and  57  per  cent  to  the  foreign  element. 

Influence  of  religious  confession.  There  is  nothing  yet  very  deci¬ 
sive  in  this  direction  because  the  influence  of  religious  confession  is 
obscured  by  other  conditions.  In  Germany,  for  instance,  there  is 
generally  less  criminality  among  Protestants  than  among  Catholics, 
if  you  take  the  whole  empire.  This  is  explained  by  the  fact  tjiat  in 
North  and  Middle  Germany,  where  the  Protestant  religion  is  preva¬ 
lent,  the  inhabitants  have  a  quieter  temperament  and  are  also  better 
off  economically.  In  those  sections  the  Catholic  population  also  has  a 
smaller  criminality  than  in  other  parts.  In  regard  to  the  difference 
between  Christians  and  Jews,  the  German  statistics  seem  to  show  that 
in  general  the  Jews  have  less  criminality  than  the  Christians ;  but  in 
certain  crimes,  such  as  perjury,  forgery,  fraudulent  bankruptcy,  and 
slander,  the  Jews  surpass  the  Christians.  In  these  cases  it  is  possible 
that  the  difference  in  religion  and  the  corresponding  difference  in  race 
may  be  the  cause,  but  we  must  remember  that  occupation  exerts  a 
great  influence,  and  that  the  Jews,  being  devoted  to  commerce  and 
finance,  have  special  opportunity  and  temptation  to  commit  the  above 
crimes.  Comparisons  between  Christian  and  Jew  would,  therefore,  not 
be  fair  unless  we  took  the  relative  number  in  each  occupation,  which 
would  require  very  minute  investigation  and  lead  to  uncertain  results.1 

Influence  of  social  position.  Crime  is  more  frequent  among  the 
lower  classes  than  among  the  upper.  And  the  criminals  of  each  year 
are  recruited  largely  from  the  criminal  classes.  Of  the  persons  in 
England,  in  1890-1891,  apprehended  for  indictable  offences  or  pro¬ 
ceeded  against  summarily,  those  of  previous  good  character  were  51 
per  cent  of  the  whole  number,  those  known  as  thieves  or  otherwise  of 
bad  character  were  17.5  per  cent,  and  those  of  character  unknown 
31.5  per  cent.2  It  is  commonly  said  in  criminology  that  crime  is 
hereditary  and  descends  from  generation  to  generation.  It  is  often 
impossible,  however,  to  trace  out  the  birth  of  criminals,  and  even  if 
we  show  that  there  is  a  larger  amount  of  criminality  among  the  poor 
and  degraded,  that  is  only  what  might  be  expected. 

Occupation  and  profession.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  the  kind  of 
occupation  exercises  a  considerable  influence  upon  the  commission  of 

1  Allg.  stat.  Archiv,  Vol.  I,  p.  201. 

2  Judicial  Statistics,  England  and  Wales,  1891. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


819 


crime  and  the  kind  of  crime.  In  Germany  they  have  a  very  elaborate 
classification  of  this  sort,  both  for  crime  in  general  and  for  the  different 
particular  crimes.  The  chief  categories  are  seen  in  the  following 
table : 1 


Number  per  100,000  Persons  of  Criminal  Age  condemned  for 

Crimes  against 


In 

The  State 

The  Person 

Property 

Total 

Agriculture . 

784 

302.5 

335-2 

717-3 

Industry . 

201.7 

57i.i 

547-8 

13224 

Trade  and  commerce  . 

294.I 

550.6 

621.9 

1480.0 

Domestic  service  .... 

II. 2 

37-2 

259.0 

307.8 

Other  and  no  occupation  . 

667.8 

706.3 

1080.7 

2476.O 

This  general  classification  shows  extraordinary  differences  between 
the  different  classes.  The  most  favourable  relations  are  found  among 
the  domestic  servants,  the  next  in  agriculture,  the  next  in  industry, 
then  trade  and  commerce,  and  finally,  those  with  other  occupation  or 
no  occupation.  The  numbers  for  these  five  classes  stand  in  the  relation 
of  1  \2  14:5  :8. 

This  grouping  by  general  occupation  is  a  very  rough  one,  and 
economic  and  social  condition  probably  have  more  influence  than 
occupation  upon  criminality.  If  we  take  the  particular  crimes  we  find 
a  little  closer  indication  of  the  influence  of  occupation.  Simple  larceny 
is  heavily  represented  in  all  the  classes,  especially  in  the  fifth,  persons 
of  miscellaneous  or  no  occupation,  which  includes  day  labourers, 
tramps,  and  persons  without  settled  position.  The  proportion  is  593.2 
per  100,000  in  this  class,  while  in  agriculture  it  is  only  175.4.  Danger¬ 
ous  injury  to  the  person  is  very  rare  among  domestic  servants,  but  is 
heavily  represented  among  persons  engaged  in  industry.  Embezzle¬ 
ment  and  fraud  are,  of  course,  heaviest  in  commerce  and  trade,  while 
malicious  injury  to  property  is  frequent  in  the  industrial  occupations. 

In  order  to  follow  out  the  statistics  closely,  it  would  be  necessary 
to  consider  the  particular  occupation,  and  also  the  age  and  sex  classi¬ 
fication.  In  the  case  of  dangerous  assaults,  for  instance,  agricultural 
labourers  and  employees  in  industry,  mining,  and  building  trades  are 

1  Allg.  stat.  Archiv,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  368. 


820 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


much  more  numerously  represented  in  proportion  to  their  number 
than  farmers  or  landlords,  or  employers  of  labour ;  and  this  is  espe¬ 
cially  true  of  the  industrial  compared  with  the  agricultural  labourers.1 
The  reason  for  this  disproportion  is  evident  when  one  remembers  that 
among  the  employees  in  these  trades  there  is  a  great  number  of  men, 
and  especially  of  young  men  who  are  inclined  to  violence.  The  em¬ 
ployers  are  older  men ;  and  among  the  agricultural  labourers  are 
included  many  women.  It  thus  appears  that  often  it  is  not  the  oc¬ 
cupation  so  much  as  the  kind  of  persons  attracted  into  the  occupation 
which  determines  the  amount  of  crime. 

Illiteracy  and  crime.  Large  numbers  of  the  criminals  are  illiterate. 
In  England,  of  those  committed  to  prison  in  1891-1892,  22.8  per  cent 
could  neither  read  nor  write;  74.2  per  cent  could  read,  or  read  and 
write  imperfectly ;  2.9  per  cent  could  read  and  write  well.  In  Austria, 
40  per  cent  of  those  condemned  for  serious  crimes  and  50.3  per  cent 
of  those  condemned  for  misdemeanours  were  illiterate.  In  Hungary 
the  proportion  was  52.9  per  cent ;  in  France,  21  per  cent. 

Influence  of  economic  condition ,  scarcity  of  food ,  and  war.  Hard 
times  increase  the  number  of  crimes,  especially  of  crimes  against  prop¬ 
erty.  A  general  rule  has  been  laid  down  that  as  the  price  of  food 
increases,  crimes  against  property  increase,  while  crimes  against  the 
person  decrease.  The  immediate  influence  of  war  seems  to  be  restrain¬ 
ing  on  crime.  This  is  probably  due  to  the  removal  of  men  of  criminal 
age.  In  Prussia  it  has  been  shown  that  during  war  the  number  of  all 
the  more  serious  crimes  decreases,  while  the  effect  upon  the  lighter 
misdemeanours,  such  as  stealing  wood  in  the  forest,  is  insignificant.  In 
Germany  an  advance  in  the  price  of  rye-meal  and  potatoes  is  followed 
by  an  increased  number  of  crimes  against  property,  especially  simple 
larceny,  the  succeeding  year.2 

Individual  biological  influence.  Sex,  age,  and  conjugal  condition 
have  a  marked  influence  upon  criminality.  There  are  always  more 
males  among  the  criminals  than  females.  In  Germany  (1885-1890) 
there  were  21  female  criminals  for  every  100  male.  But  the  propor¬ 
tion  differs  for  different  crimes.  For  crimes  against  public  order  the 
proportion  is  only  9.1  per  cent;  for  crimes  against  the  person,  15.9 
per  cent;  while  for  crimes  against  property  it  is  27.8  per  cent.  The 

xAllg.  stat.  Archiv,  Vol.  I,  p.  207. 

2  See  Conrad,  Jahrbiicher  fiir  Nationaloekonomie  und  Statistik,  1894,  p.  719. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


821 


large  proportion  in  larceny  (37.8  per  cent)  is  doubtless  due  to  the 
economic  condition  of  women  left  without  means  of  support.  The 
proportion  of  women  convicted  of  concealment  of  stolen  goods  is 
always  very  large,  in  Germany  being  62.7  per  cent  of  the  number  of 
males.1  In  England  it  was  found  that  the  proportionate  number  of 
women  criminals  is  much  greater  in  the  cities  than  in  the  country,  and 
the  same  observation  has  been  made  elsewhere.  In  the  United  States 
the  women  prisoners  were  6405  compared  with  75,924  men,  or  8.7 
females  to  100  males.  The  proportions  differed  widely  for  different 
crimes,  the  women  being  much  less  numerously  represented  in  homi¬ 
cide,  assaults,  larceny,  embezzlement,  fraud,  forgery,  etc.,  and  more 
numerously  represented  in  disorderly  conduct,  receiving  stolen  goods, 
and  offences  against  public  morality.2 

Age,  of  course,  has  powerful  influence  on  criminality.  Crime  is 
most  frequent  at  the  age  of  twenty  to  thirty,  and  next  to  that  at  the  age 
of  thirty  to  forty.  In  Germany  we  have  the  following  number  of  per- 

•1 

sons  condemned  per  one  hundred  thousand  persons  of  the  same  age:3 


For  Crimes 

Against  the 
Public  Peace 

Against  the 
Person 

Against 

Property 

All 

Crimes 

From  12  to  under  18  years  . 

23.O 

145-3 

536.6 

705-4 

From  18  to  under  21  years  . 

2  73-9 

169.6 

89.6 

534-9 

From  21  to  under  40  years  . 

210.0 

650.5 

626.3 

1493.0 

From  40  to  under  60  years  . 

I2I.2 

372-7 

351-6 

850.7 

Over  60  years  .... 

32.0 

116.0 

109.4 

259-5 

The  criminal  age  is  seen  to  be  that  between  twenty-one  and  forty 
years.  Among  children  from  twelve  to  eighteen  years  of  age  crimes 
against  property  are  especially  numerous,  because  children  are  em¬ 
ployed  in  petty  thieving.  During  the  period  from  eighteen  to  twenty- 
one  crimes  against  the  person  are  in  excess  of  those  against  property 
because  that  is  the  age  of  passion  and  violence.  At  the  same  age 
period  crimes  against  the  public  peace  are  also  especially  numerous. 

Conjugal  condition  and  criminality.  Taking  all  ages  and  both  sexes, 
there  is  greater  criminality  among  the  widowed  and  divorced  than 

1Allg.  stat.  Archiv ,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  367. 

2  Compendium  of  the  United  States  Census ,  II,  pp.  193-194. 

3Allg.  stat.  Archiv ,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  367. 


822 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


among  the  married  and  single.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  it  is  not 
widowhood  or  divorce  that  increases  crime,  but  that  among  those 
classes  of  the  population  who  are  driven  to  crime  by  want,  the  dissolu¬ 
tion  of  marriage  by  death  or  divorce  is  especially  frequent,  and  hence 
there  is  a  relatively  large  number  of  criminals  among  the  widowed  and 
the  divorced.  In  general  the  majority  of  the  criminals  are  unmarried, 
as  for  instance,  in  France,  59  per  cent  were  unmarried.  In  Prussia, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  number  of  married  and  unmarried  men  con¬ 
victed  of  serious  crimes  was  almost  the  same.  There  are  frequent 
variations  in  these  statistics. 

112.  Immigration  and  Crime1 

Immigrants  and  natives.  Regarding  the  criminality  of  immigrants 
and  natives,  all  data  analyzed  agree  upon  the  following  points : 

1.  The  class  of  offenses  designated  as  " gainful”  forms  a  larger 
proportion  of  native  than  of  immigrant  criminality. 

2.  The  aggregate  " offenses  of  personal  violence”  and  the  aggregate 
"offenses  against  public  policy”  form  larger  percentages  of  immigrant 
than  of  native  crime. 

3.  The  aggregate  "offenses  against  chastity”  compose  very  slightly 
different  proportions  of  the  total  criminality  of  immigrants  and  of 
natives.  The  only  striking  difference  is  found  in  the  records  of  the 
arrests  made  by  the  Chicago  police  during  the  period  from  1905  to 

1From  Immigration  and  Crime ,  Reports  of  the  United  States  Immigration 
Commission,  Vol.  XXXVI,  Senate  Document  No.  750,  61st  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp. 
13-14,  18-20.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1911. 

"  A  small  amount  of  entirely  new  data  was  collected  by  the  Commission  cover¬ 
ing  2206  convictions  in  the  New  York  City  court  of  general  sessions  from  Oc¬ 
tober  1,  1908,  to  June  30,  1909.  By  special  arrangement  with  this  court  the  race 
of  every  offender  convicted  during  that  period  was  recorded.  So  far  as  is  known 
that  was  the  first  time  that  any  court  in  the  United  States  had  made  a  record  of 
the  race  of  persons  convicted  in  it.  Thus,  although  the  number  of  cases  in  which 
such  data  were  obtained  is  small,  the  newness  of  the  material  renders  it  of  special 
interest.  All  other  data  upon  which  the  statistical  part  of  this  report  is  based 
were  obtained  from  existing  records,  although  in  every  case  the  data  were  sub¬ 
jected  to  special  reclassification  and  tabulation,  and  analyzed  with  the  relation  of 
immigration  to  crime  in  view.  .  .  .  The  following  were  selected  as  affording  the 
greatest  amount  of  data  for  the  purpose  of  the  Commission:  I.  Court  records; 
II.  Records  of  Penal  Institutions ;  III.  Records  of  arrests  by  the  police  of  various 
cities.  .  .  .  From  these  sources  records  of  1,179,677  criminal  cases  were  ob¬ 
tained.” —  Immigration  and  Crime ,  p.  9 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


823 


1908,  inclusive,  which  show  5.2  per  cent  of  the  arrests  of  natives  to 
have  been  for  these  crimes  and  3.3  per  cent  of  those  of  immigrants. 
The  data  from  two  of  the  other  four  sources  show  these  crimes  to 
form  the  same  percentage  of  native  and  immigrant  criminality,  while 
in  one  of  the  remaining  two  sets  of  data  the  native  percentage  slightly 
exceeds  the  foreign  percentage,  and  in  the  other  the  foreign  percentage 
is  slightly  in  excess  of  the  native. 

When  analysis  is  made  of  some  of  the  specific  offenses  within  these 
four  general  classes  of  crime,  a  number  of  exceptions  to  these  rules 
appear.  In  the  main,  however,  various  specific  offenses  bear  the  same 
relations  to  immigrant  and  native  criminality  as  do  the  crime  groups 
to  which  they  belong.1 

The  second  generation.  One  of  the  most  important  facts  estab¬ 
lished  by  the  investigation  concerns  the  American-born  children  of 
immigrants — the  "second  generation.”  While  the  data  upon  which 
the  study  of  this  phase  of  the  problem  is  based  are  too  limited  to 
permit  of  wide  generalization,  the  results  obtained  from  the  analysis 
are  of  value.  The  records  of  convictions  in  the  New  York  court  of 
general  sessions  during  the  period  from  October  1,  1908,  to  June  30, 

1909,  and  of  all  commitments  to  Massachusetts  penal  institutions, 
except  those  to  the  State  farm,  during  the  year  ending  September  30, 
1909,  form  the  basis  of  this  analysis  of  the  criminal  tendencies  of  the 
second  generation. 

From  these  records  it  appears  that  a  clear  tendency  exists  on  the 
part  of  the  second  generation  to  differ  from  the  first  or  immigrant 
generation  in  the  character  of  its  criminality.  It  also  appears  that 
this  difference  is  much  more  frequently  in  the  direction  of  the  crimi¬ 
nality  of  the  American-born  of  non-immigrant  parentage  than  it  is  in 
the  opposite  direction.  This  means  that  the  movement  of  second 
generation  crime  is  away  from  the  crimes  peculiar  to  immigrants  and 
toward  those  of  the  American  of  native  parentage.  Sometimes  this 
movement  has  carried  second  generation  criminality  even  beyond  that 

t 

of  the  native-born  of  native  parentage. 

Summary  by  nationality.  The  races  or  nationalities  which  stand 
out  prominently  in  these  records  of  crime  as  exhibiting  clearly  defined 
criminal  characteristics  are  these : 

1  Detailed  analysis  of  the  criminality  of  immigrants  and  natives  is  made  in 
Immigration  and  Crime ,  chaps,  iv,  v,  and  vi. 


824 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


American  ( including  all  native-born  persons,  both  white  and 
colored).  In  three  of  the  five  sets  of  data  the  aggregate  gainful 
offenses  form  a  higher  percentage  of  the  crimes  of  Americans  than 
those  of  any  other  group  of  offenders.  The  highest  percentages  of  the 
specific  crime  of  burglary  in  these  three  sets  of  data  also  belong  to 
the  American-born.  The  three  sets  of  data  thus  agreeing  are  those 
from  the  New  York  City  magistrates’  courts,  the  county  and  supreme 
courts  of  New  York  State,  and  the  Chicago  police  department.  In 
the  first  and  third  of  these  the  American  percentage  of  robbery  is  also 
greater  than  that  of  any  other  race  or  nationality  group  of  offenders. 

French .  In  the  data  from  the  New  York  City  magistrates’  courts 
and  the  police  department  of  Chicago  natives  of  France  have  a  higher 
percentage  than  any  other  persons  of  the  aggregate  offenses  against 
chastity  and  of  the  specific  " crimes  of  prostitution”  belonging  to  that 
group  of  offenses. 

Greek.  The  records  of  the  city  magistrates’  courts  of  the  Boroughs 
of  Manhattan  and  the  Bronx  in  New  York,  and  of  the  Chicago  police 
department,  show  the  highest  percentage  of  violations  of  city  ordi¬ 
nances  to  be  that  of  persons  born  in  Greece.  Comparison  of  the 
Greeks  with  other  nationalities  in  the  records  of  the  city  magistrates’ 
courts  of  all  five  boroughs  of  Greater  New  York  is  not  possible,  as  the 
courts  of  three  of  the  boroughs  show  no  separate  Greek  group  in  their 
records. 

Italian.  The  Italians  have  the  highest  percentage  of  the  aggregate 
offenses  of  personal  violence  shown  by  the  data  from  the  New  York 
City  magistrates’  courts,  the  New  York  court  of  general  sessions,  the 
county  and  supreme  courts  of  New  York  State,  and  the  penal  institu¬ 
tions  of  Massachusetts.  The  Chicago  police  records  alone  show  a 
different  condition ;  in  them  the  Italian  percentage  is  exceeded  by 
those  of  the  Lithuanians  and  Slavonians,1  neither  of  which  nationalities 
appears  as  a  separate  group  in  the  data  from  the  four  other  sources. 
Certain  specific  crimes  of  personal  violence  also  belong  distinctively 
to  Italian  criminality.  Abduction  and  kidnapping  in  the  figures  from 
the  New  York  City  magistrates’  courts  and  the  county  and  supreme 
courts  of  New  York  State  form  a  larger  percentage  of  the  crimes  of 
Italians  than  of  those  of  any  other  group  of  offenders. 

Slavonians”  is  a  term  employed  by  the  Chicago  police  department  to  desig¬ 
nate  persons  born  in  Croatia  or  Slavonia. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME  825 

In  the  Chicago  figures  the  Italians  rank  second  in  percentage  of 
these  crimes,  being  very  slightly  exceeded  by  the  Greeks.  In  the  re¬ 
maining  two  sets  of  data  no  comparison  of  nationalities  is  made  with 
regard  to  these  crimes,  because  of  the  small  number  of  cases.  Of 
blackmail  and  extortion  the  Italians  also  have  the  highest  percentage 
in  the  four  sets  of  data  having  a  sufficient  number  of  cases  to  make 
comparison  possible.  The  Massachusetts  figures  have  only  one  case, 
and  therefore  afford  no  field  for  such  comparison.  In  all  five  sets  of 
data  the  Italians  have  the  highest  percentage  of  homicide.  Rape  like¬ 
wise  forms  a  higher  percentage  of  the  crimes  of  Italians  than  of  those 
of  any  other  nationality  in  the  statistics  of  the  New  York  City  magis¬ 
trates’  courts,  the  New  York  court  of  general  sessions,  and  the  penal 
institutions  of  Massachusetts.  In  the  county  and  supreme  court 
records  of  New  York  State  the  Italian  percentage  of  rape  is  second  in 
rank,  being  very  slightly  exceeded  by  the  German,  while  in  the  Chicago 
figures  the  Greeks  report  a  higher  percentage. 

Of  the  aggregate  offenses  against  public  policy,  the  Italian  percent¬ 
age  exceeds  all  others  in  two  sets  of  data — those  from  the  New  York 
court  of  general  sessions  and  the  county  and  supreme  courts  of  New 
York  State.  Of  violations  of  city  ordinances  shown  in  the  records  of 
the  city  magistrates’  courts  of  Greater  New  York,  the  Italian  percent¬ 
age  is  greatest,  while  of  the  same  offenses  shown  in  the  records  of 
arrests  by  the  Chicago  police,  the  Italian  percentage  ranks  third. 

Russian.  Of  the  aggregate  gainful  offenses  the  percentage  of  per¬ 
sons  born  in  Russia  ranks  second  in  those  three  sets  of  data  in  which 
the  American  percentage  of  these  crimes  is  first  in  rank — those  from 
the  New  York  City  magistrates’  courts,  the  county  and  supreme  courts 
of  New  York  State,  and  the  Chicago  police  department.  The  Rus¬ 
sian  percentage  of  the  specific  crimes  of  larceny  and  receiving  stolen 
property  is  also  striking.  In  the  figures  of  the  New  York  City 
magistrates’  courts  it  is  third  in  rank,  being  exceeded  by  the  American 
and  English;  in  the  figures  of  the  county  and  supreme  courts  of  New 
York  State  it  is  greater  than  all  other  percentages.  Further  than  this, 
the  Russian  percentage  of  violations  of  city  ordinances  is  second  in 
rank  in  the  data  from  the  New  York  City  magistrates’  courts  (Greater 
New  York)  and  the  Chicago  police  department. 


826 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


113.  Mental  Disease  and  Delinquency1 

New  York  State  in  1917  received  into  its  penal  and  correctional 
institutions  133,047  prisoners,  60  per  cent  of  whom  had  served  previ¬ 
ous  commitments.  Massachusetts  in  a  given  year  received  into  its 
institutions  25,820  prisoners,  57.4  per  cent  of  whom  were  repeaters; 
the  total  number  of  previous  commitments  being  92,443,  averaging 
six  sentences  for  each  recidivist. 

Dr.  Bernard  Glueck,  in  the  first  annual  report  of  the  Psychiatric 
Clinic  in  collaboration  with  Sing  Sing  Prison,  states  that  "of  608  adult 
prisoners  studied  by  psychiatric  methods  out  of  an  uninterrupted 
series  of  683  cases  admitted  to  Sing  Sing  Prison  within  a  period  of 
nine  months,  66.8  per  cent  were  not  merely  prisoners  but  individuals 
who  had  shown  throughout  life  a  tendency  to  behave  in  a  manner  at 
variance  with  the  behavior  of  the  average  normal  person,  and  this 
deviation  from  normal  behavior  had  repeatedly  manifested  itself  in 
a  criminal  act.”  Further,  "Of  the  same  series  of  608  cases,  59  per 
cent  were  classifiable  in  terms  of  deviation  from  average  normal  men¬ 
tal  health.  Of  the  same  series  of  cases  28.1  per  cent  possessed  a  degree 
of  intelligence  equivalent  to  that  of  the  average  American  child  of 
twelve  years  or  under.”  . 

Such  findings  confirm  similar  reports  coming  from  prisons,  reforma¬ 
tories,  and  courts  throughout  the  country  as  indicated  in  the  tables 
which  follow : 


Table  I.  Inmates  of  Prisons  exhibiting  Nervous  or  Mental 

Abnormality 


Institution 


A  uthority 


Auburn  Prison  (N.Y.) 
Sing  Sing  Prison  (N.Y.) 
Indiana  State  Prison 
Mass.  State  Prison  . 


Dr.  Frank  L.  Heacox 
Dr.  Bernard  Glueck  . 

Dr.  Paul  E.  Bowers  . 

Dr.  A.  Warren  Stearns  and 
C.  C.  Rossy  ...... 


Number 
of  cases 
studied 


Percentage  found 
to  have  nervous 
or  mental 
abnormalities 


459  61.7 

608  59.O 

IOO  45.O 


300  34.9 


From  this  table  it  is  seen  that  at  least  50  per  cent  of  the  inmates  of  state 
prisons  are  suffering  from  some  form  of  nervous  or  mental  disease  or  defect. 


1  Adapted  from  A  Report  of  a  Special  Committee  of  the  New  York  State  Com¬ 
mission  of  Prisons.  Prepared  with  the  assistance  of  V.  V.  Anderson,  M.D., 
Director  of  the  Division  of  Prevention  of  Delinquency,  The  National  Committee 
for  Mental  Hygiene.  Mental  Hygiene ,  Vol.  Ill,  No.  2  (1919),  pp.  177-198. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


827 


The  foregoing  figures  show  not  only  the  number  of  persons  with 
intellectual  defect  but  include  cases  of  insanity,  epilepsy,  psychopathic 
personality,  drug  deterioration,  alcoholic  deterioration,  and  other  ab¬ 
normal  nervous  and  mental  conditions,  all  of  which  seriously  handicap 
the  individual  in  his  ability  to  adjust  himself  to  the  conditions  of  nor¬ 
mal  living.  All  of  these  mental  conditions  are  most  important  in  con¬ 
sidering  any  real  constructive  attempt  at  rehabilitating  the  criminal. 

One  of  the  most  important,  if  not  the  most  important  group  of 
which  society  needs  to  take  cognizance,  is  the  feebleminded.  The 
feebleminded  furnish  the  substantial  nucleus  of  that  most  expensive 
body  of  individuals  who  clog  the  machinery  of  justice,  who  spend  their 
lives  in  and  out  of  penal  institutions  and  furnish  data  for  the  astonish¬ 
ing  facts  of  recidivism — facts  which  are  serving  to  awaken  our  social 
conscience  to  the  need  of  more  adequate  treatment  under  the  law  for 
repeated  offenders. 


Table  II.  Inmates  of  State  Prisons  found  to  be  Feebleminded 


Institution 

Sing  Sing  Prison  (N.Y.) 
Auburn  Prison  (N.Y.) 
Mass.  State  Prison  (men) 

Joliet  Penitentiary  (Ill.) 
Auburn  Prison  (women) 
Indiana  State  Prison  . 
San  Quentin  (Cal.) 


A  uthority 


Number  of 
cases  studied 


Dr.  Bernard  Glueck  .  .  .  608 

Dr.  Frank  L.  Heacox  .  .  .  459 

Dr.  A.  W.  Stearns  and  C.  C. 

Rossy  . 300 

Louise  and  George  Ordahl  .  491 

Mabel  R.  Fernald,  Ph.D.  .  .  761 

Dr.  Paul  E.  Bowers  .  .  .  100 

. 150 


Percentage 

feebleminded 

21.8 

35-6 

22.0 

28.5 

25.0 

23.0 

30.7 


Of  the  inmates  in  prisons  throughout  the  country,  where  studies  have  been 
made,  27.5  per  cent  are  found  to  be  feebleminded. 


It  is  clear  from  Tables  I  and  II  that  within  the  prisons,  reforma¬ 
tories,  penitentiaries,  and  workhouses  throughout  the  country  there 
is  found  a  large  group  of  prisoners  who  exhibit  nervous  and  mental 
abnormalities,  who  are  mentally  crippled  or  mentally  ill.  Fifty  per 
cent  of  the  inmates  of  these  institutions  require  much  more  specialized 
and  much  more  individualized  treatment  than  is  afforded  by  the  ordi¬ 
nary  routine  methods  employed  in  the  average  penal  institution.  This 
is  not  a  sentimental  consideration  but  a  practical  measure  looking 
toward  social  security.  Laying  aside  the  humane  element  involved, 
the  paramount  interests  of  society  are  jeopardized  if  we  ignore  the 
well  known  facts  of  individual  differences. 


1  Women. 


828 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Feebleminded  delinquents  comprise  from  27  to  29  per  cent  of  the 
inmates  of  penal  and  correctional  institutions  throughout  the  country. 
Just  what  sort  of  a  problem  the  seriously  delinquent  feebleminded 
person  may  present  is  seen  from  the  following  study  undertaken  in 
connection  with  the  Municipal  Court  of  Boston : 

The  careers  of  100  feebleminded  delinquents  were  intensively 
studied ;  the  case  histories  were  taken  from  the  court  files  alphabeti¬ 
cally,  no  other  selection  being  required  than  that  each  individual 
should  have  been  diagnosed  feebleminded.  The  100  persons  in  this 
particular  group  were  arrested  1825  times;  record  cards  dating  fur¬ 
ther  back  than  five  years  were  not  gone  into  though  many  of  the 
hundred  had  had  earlier  court  records.  The  futility  of  employing  for 
this  group'measures  intended  for  those  capable  of  profiting  by  experi¬ 
ence  is  shown  from  the  following  facts : 

These  delinquents  in  court  were  discharged  after  short  periods  of 
detention  or  judicial  reprimand  a  great  many  times  but  they  returned 
with  unfailing  certainty  to  be  handled  over  again.  They  were  placed 
on  probation  432  times,  but  had  to  be  placed  on  inside  probation, 
that  is,  within  institutions  non-penal  in  character,  118  times.  Of  the 
remaining  probationary  periods,  220  were  unsuccessful,  the  individuals 
again  having  to  be  surrendered  to  the  court,  making  in  all  not  quite 
one  successful  probationary  period  for  each  of  these  100  individuals. 
The  chances  were  better  than  four  to  one  against  any  one  of  these 
individuals  conducting  himself  normally  for  a  six  months’  proba¬ 
tionary  period. 

The  court,  in  addition  to  probation  for  these  individuals,  tried 
penal  treatment.  They  were  sentenced  735  times,  their  sentences  ag¬ 
gregating  in  fixed  time  one  hundred  and  six  years’  imprisonment, 
exclusive  of  250  indeterminate  sentences  to  the  reformatories.  But 
this  did  not  in  any  way  suffice  to  change  the  course  of  their  careers. 

Finally  as  an  explanation  of  all  this  maladjustment,  examination 
disclosed  that  none  of  these  100  persons  possessed  a  degree  of  intelli¬ 
gence  above  that  of  the  average  American  child  of  twelve  years. 
About  75  per  cent  had  the  mental  level  of  children  under  ten  years. 
Investigation  into  the  past  histories  disclosed  the  astounding  fact 
that  75  per  cent  had  never  been  legitimately  self-supporting.  Worst 
of  all,  so  far  as  society’s  responsibility  is  concerned,  73  per  cent  of 
these  persons,  though  having  ample  opportunities  for  common-school 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


829 


education;  beginning  school  at  the  usual  age  and  leaving  at  the  age  of 
fourteen,  fifteen,  and  sixteen  years,  were  never  able  to  get  beyond 
the  fifth  grade  in  school. 

How  much  more  profitable  would  it  have  been  if  the  condition  from 
which  these  persons  were  suffering  had  been  recognized  during  the 
school  period  when  a  chance  existed  in  each  and  every  case  either  for 
some  advance  along  the  lines  of  proper  habit-training,  thereby  saving 
much  economic  waste,  protecting  society  as  well  as  these  individuals 
themselves  from  their  weaknesses  and  making  them  useful  members 
of  the  community,  or  for  placing  them  in  a  limited  environment 
suited  to  their  special  needs ! 

So  far  in  this  report  we  have  endeavored  to  emphasize  two  things : 

1.  That  the  recidivist  is  the  real  problem  in  the  prevention  of  crime ; 
in  him  we  have  failed  to  accomplish  that  which  we  set  out  to  achieve. 

2.  That  an  important  and  probably  the  most  important  under¬ 
lying  causative  factor  in  this  failure  to  profit  by  such  experience  is  the 
defective  mentality  by  which  the  recidivist  is  so  commonly  handi¬ 
capped.  In  this  connection  recent  studies1  made  of  a  group  of  100 
immoral  women  and  a  group  of  100  drunken  women  showed  that 
among  the  immoral  women  39  per  cent  of  first  offenders,  47  per  cent 
of  second  offenders,  and  84  per  cent  of  recidivists  were  suffering  from 
some  form  of  mental  or  nervous  handicap ;  that  among  drunken 
women  35.4  per  cent  of  first  offenders  and  82.2  per  cent  of  recidivists 
exhibited  some  nervous  or  mental  abnormality.  The  relation  between 
the  mental  condition  of  these  persons  and  the  frequency  of  their 
offense  is  obvious. 

The  existence  of  mental  disease  and  deterioration,  intellectual 
defect,  psychopathic  personality,  epilepsy,  and  the  like,  in  a  fairly 
large  proportion  of  the  inmates  of  these  institutions  makes  clear  and 
obvious  how  futile  it  is  fnerely  to  go  on  blindly  administering  the  law 
instead  of  endeavoring  to  solve  the  problems  these  individuals  present. 
A  similar  situation  in  the  treatment  of  disease  would  consist  in  sending 
all  sick  persons  regardless  of  their  disease  to  hospitals  to  be  given  the 
same  treatment,  fixing  in  advance  the  length  of  time  they  were  to 

ry.  V.  Anderson,  M.D.,  and  Christine  M.  Leonard,  M.D.,  "The  Immoral 
Woman  as  Seen  in  Court:  a  Preliminary  Report,”  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical 
Journal ,  Vol.  CLXXVII,  December  27,  1917,  pp.  899-903 ;  "Drunkenness  as  Seen 
among  Women  in  Court,”  Mental  Hygiene ,  Vol.  Ill,  April,  1919,  pp.  266-274. 


830 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


remain  there  and  at  the  end  of  this  arbitrary  period  sending  them  out 
without  any  reference  to  whether  they  were  well  or  not.  Are  we  not 
following  the  same  lines  in  locking  up  criminals  and  then  turning 
them  out,  and  then  locking  them  up  and  turning  them  out  again, 
without  any  reference  to  whether  our  purpose  in  locking  them  up  has 
been  attained ;  or  whether  they  are  any  better  fitted  to  assume  their 
normal  relation  to  society  on  the  day  they  leave  prison  than  they  were 
the  day  they  entered  it  ? 

Even  where  scientific  studies  and  classifications  have  been  under¬ 
taken,  if  these  have  not  been  made  the  basis  for  treatment,  nothing 
in  the  way  of  benefit  to  the  individual  or  security  to  society  can  be 
said  to  have  been  accomplished  by  such  investigations.  The  mere 
knowledge  of  the  existence  of  these  conditions,  the  mere  labeling  of  a 
certain  number  of  prisoners  as  intellectually  defective  or  mentally 
diseased  or  deteriorated,  or  psychopathic,  is  not  enough.  Such  knowl¬ 
edge  should  be  made  the  basis  for  treatment.  Constructive  efforts 
should  be  made  to  rehabilitate  these  persons  in  the  light  of  the  needs 
of  each  individual  prisoner,  not  only  of  his  disabilities,  but  of  his 
capabilities  and  his  adaptabilities.  The  machinery  of  the  penal  insti¬ 
tutions  should  be  so  organized  as  to  enable  it  to  carry  into  effect  such 
recommendations  as  would  be  suggested. 

But  as  indicated  from  the  foregoing  tables,  such  a  heterogeneous 
group  as  is  to  be  found  in  all  penal  institutions,  composed  as  it  is  of 
types  requiring  entirely  different  lines  of  treatment,  would  preclude 
the  possibility  of  carrying  out  this  program  in  every  one  of  the  units 
of  a  penal  system  in  a  great  state  like  New  York ;  therefore,  those  who 
have  given  thoughtful  consideration  to  the  problem  feel  that  the  situa¬ 
tion  could  be  handled  best  by  establishing  clearing  houses  with  medi¬ 
cal  clinics,  through  which  would  pass  all  prisoners  sentenced  to  prison 
and  reformatory  institutions. 

There  is  no  question  more  closely  linked  up  with  the  fundamental 
duty  of  the  criminal  courts,  the  protection  of  society  from  antisocial 
acts,  than  the  proper  disposition  of  those  who,  through  no  fault  of 
their  own,  are  suffering  from  mental  handicap,  and  who,  because  of 
their  mental  condition,  are  liable  to  become  a  burden  and  a  menace  to 
the  community.  This  fact  is  being  fully  appreciated  by  judges 
throughout  the  country  and  in  many  places  attempts  are  being  made 
to  secure  proper  medical  assistance.  In  two  cities,  Boston  and  Chicago, 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME  831 

Table  III.  Relationship  of  Mental  Defect  and  Disease  to 
Selected  Types  of  Problem  Cases  in  Court 


Diagnosis 

100 

Drug  users 

100 

Immoral 

women 

100 

Shoplift¬ 

ers 

100 

Drunken 

women 

100 

Vagrants 

Normal . 

18 

20 

22 

II 

2 

Dull  Normal . 

20 

32 

12 

21 

8 

Feebleminded . 

28 

30 

25 

32 

36 

Epileptic . 

4 

6 

10 

8 

2 

Alcoholic  deterioration  . 

•  • 

2 

.  , 

7 

12 

Drug  deterioration 

14 

2 

#  . 

#  . 

4 

Psychopaths . 

14 

7 

23 

10 

8 

Psychosis . 

2 

1 

8 

11 

28 

Total  exhibiting  abnormal 
mental  conditions 

62 

48 

66 

68 

90 

special  medical  clinics  have  already  been  officially  created  within  the 
municipal  courts,  contributory  to  a  better  understanding  and  a  more 
intelligent  treatment  of  offenders  coming  before  these  courts. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  medical  clinics  in  the  courts  can  ever 
take  the  place  of  clearing  houses  in  the  prisons.  Such  opportunities 
for  prolonged  observation  and  investigation  into  the  causative  factors 
underlying  careers,  not  to  mention  the  advantages  afforded  from  in¬ 
tensive  vocational  training  and  physical  and  mental  rehabilitation  of 
the  prisoner,  cannot  be  secured  in  the  short  time  allowed  for  the  study 
of  a  case  in  the  lower  courts.  What  these  clinics  can  do,  and  most 
effectively  do,  is  to  act  as  a  net  or  sieve  for  the  court,  to  determine 
beforehand  those  who,  because  of  constitutional  defects  and  mental 
handicaps,  are  less  likely  to  profit  by  the  routine  measures  employed 
by  the  court  in  dealing  with  delinquents,  and  who,  because  of  such 
pathological  conditions,  carry  the  potentialities  for  delinquent  careers. 
As  a  result  of  the  use  of  these  clinics  the  feebleminded  and  mentally 
diseased  and  deteriorated  persons  will  no  longer  be  tried  again  and 
again  on  probation  and  after  probation  has  failed,  be  sentenced  for 
short  periods  of  confinement  in  jails,  lockups,  and  houses  of  correction, 
losing  thereby  whatever  opportunities  there  might  have  been  for  re- 

4 

storing  to  health  the  mentally  sick  and  preventing  character  deteriora- 

> 

tion  and  criminal  tendencies  in  the  mentally  defective. 


832 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Such  clinics  should  reduce  the  number  of  criminal  insane.  The 
early  manifestations  of  their  condition  would  be  noted  on  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  these  individuals  as  petty  offenders  in  the  lower  courts,  and 
through  the  agency  of  the  clinics,  measures  would  be  set  in  motion 
towards  restoring  them  to  normal  health.  Through  the  establishment 
of  such  clinics,  the  feebleminded — the  " mental  children” — passing 
through  adult  courts,  whose  so-called  crimes  have  been  more  the  con¬ 
sequence  of  neglect  and  ignorance  on  the  part  of  the  community  than 
of  any  innate  wickedness  on  their  part,  will  be  dealt  with  squarely  on 
the  basis  of  their  needs  as  well  as  their  deeds. 

But  this  is  only  a  part  of  the  helpful  service  furnished  by  medical 
clinics  within  the  courts.  The  large  percentage  of  criminals  suffering 
from  physical  disabilities  is  attested  by  reports  coming  from  penal 
institutions  throughout  the  country.  During  the  administration  of 
Dr.  Katherine  B.  Davis,  arrangements  were  made  to  give  all  inmates 
of  New  York  City  correctional  institutions  the  same  physical  ex¬ 
amination  as  that  required  for  admission  to  the  United  States  Army. 
In  the  Reformatory  for  Male  Misdemeanants  of  New  York  City,  where 
the  inmates  average  barely  twenty  years  of  age,  only  8  per  cent 
passed  the  required  physical  examination.  In  the  penitentiary,  where 
the  average  age  is  greater,  only  5  per  cent  passed  the  required  exami¬ 
nation.  In  the  workhouse,  where  those  who  are  "down  and  out”  are 
to  be  found  in  large  numbers,  only  1  per  cent  passed  the  required 
examination. 

All  studies  that  have  been  made  of  offenders  passing  through  the 
lower  courts  show  a  startling  number  of  individuals  suffering  from 
acute  and  chronic  physical  diseases,  such  as  tuberculosis,  Bright’s 
disease,  asthma,  heart  disease,  syphilis,  and  gonorrhea.  The  vital  im¬ 
portance  of  the  early  recognition  of  these  conditions  cannot  be  over¬ 
estimated.  Their  relationship  to  an  individual’s  industrial  efficiency 
and  through  this  to  his  delinquency,  may  be  seen  from  the  following 
study  made  at  the  clinic  of  the  Boston  Municipal  Court.1 

A  group  of  a  thousand  delinquents  was  studied  with  the  purpose  in 
view  of  determining  what  part,  if  any,  routine  physical  examinations 
might  play  in  the  disposition  of  a  delinquent’s  case  in  court  and  later 

1V.  V.  Anderson,  M.D.,  and  Christine  M.  Leonard,  M.D.,  "A  Study  of  the 
Physical  Condition  of  One  Thousand  Delinquents  Seen  in  Court,”  Boston  Medical 
and  Surgical  Journal,  Vol.  CLXXVIII,  June  13,  1918,  pp.  803-807. 


DEFINITION  AND  CAUSES  OF  CRIME 


833 


in  the  institutions  of  reconstructive  measures  while  on  probation.  It 
was  found  that  85  per  cent  of  those  in  good  or  fair  physical  condition 
had  been  and  were  still  self-supporting,  while  only  18  per  cent  of  those 
found  to  be  in  poor  or  bad  physical  condition  had  been  and  were  still 
self-supporting. 

That  96  per  cent  of  those  regularly  employed  were  found  in  good 
or  fair  physical  condition,  while  only  4  per  cent  were  found  to  be  in 
poor  or  bad  physical  condition.  That  86.3  per  cent  of  those  who 
were  rated  as  " never  worked”  were  found  to  be  in  poor  or  bad  physical 
condition.  The  chances  of  being  self-supporting  were  more  than  four 
to  one  in  favor  of  the  individual  in  good  physical  condition.  Further, 
47  per  cent  of  these  individuals,  practically  every  other  person,  was 
suffering  from  syphilis  or  gonorrhea.  Only  positive  laboratory  find¬ 
ings  were  included. 

Certainly  something  more  than  intelligent  advice,  short  terms  of 
confinement  in  prison,  general  supervision  in  the  community,  and 
securing  employment,  is  needed  to  solve  the  problem  presented  by  the 
delinquent  whose  physical  endurance  is  rapidly  diminishing  under  a 
progressive  Bright’s  disease,  or  the  delinquent  who  is  scattering 
syphilis  and  gonorrhea  broadcast  into  the  community.  These  may  be 
conditions  of  more  vital  importance  to  his  future  welfare  and  to  that 
of  the  community  in  which  he  lives  than  any  other  consideration. 

The  help  that  medical  clinics  will  be  to  the  court  in  determining  the 
presence  of  these  conditions  and  securing  the  proper  protection  to  the 
community  and  treatment  of  the  individual  is  obvious. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 


INVESTIGATION  AND  RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND 

CRIMINALS 

114.  The  Improvement  of  Criminal  Statistics  in  the 

United  States1 

History.  The  beginnings  of  the  Science  of  Criminal  Statistics  may¬ 
be  traced  back  to  the  year  1829.  In  that  year,  Guerry,  whom  Von 
Mayr  regards  as  the  founder  of  Moral  Statistics,2  published  a  small 
pamphlet  on  criminal  statistics.  On  July  9,  1831,  Quetelet  delivered 
before  the  Royal  Academy  of  Brussels  his  address,  "Recherches  sur 
le  penchant  au  crime  aux  differens  ages.”  With  the  further  publica¬ 
tion  by  Guerry  in  1833  of  his  Essai  sur  la  statistique  morale  de  la 
France,  the  science  of  criminal  statistics  may  be  said  to  have  been 
fully  launched. 

In  this  country,  New  York  state  has  the  honor  of  being  the  first 
government  unit  of  any  size  to  collect  data  on  which  statistical  studies 
of  crimes  and  criminals  might  be  based.  In  the  same  year  that  Guerry 
published  his  pamphlet  on  criminal  statistics,  that  is,  in  1829,  it  was 
made  the  duty  of  the  clerks  of  courts  of  record  to  enter  judgment  of 
any  conviction  in  their  minutes  and  to  send  to  the  Secretary  of  State 
a  transcript  of  these  entries  ten  days  after  the  adjournment  of  such 
court.3  Such  material,  it  was  thought,  would  furnish  valuable  evi¬ 
dence  of  the  former  convictions  of  old  offenders.  In  the  first  report 
of  the  Secretary  of  State  on  this  material,  appearing  in  1838  and 
covering  the  period  1830  to  1837,  we  find  frequent  references  to 
Quetelet’s  book,  Physique  sociale,  un  essai  sur  le  developpement  des 
facultes  de  Vhomme,  which  had  in  the  meantime  been  published.  The 

1  By  Louis  N.  Robinson,  Ph.D.,  Chief  Probation  Officer  in  the  Municipal  Court 
of  Philadelphia,  Quarterly  Publication  of  the  American  Statistical  Association , 
Vol.  XVII,  No.  130,  pp.  157-159,  162-163.  Adapted  from  paper  read  before  the 
eighty-first  annual  meeting  of  the  American  Statistical  Association. 

2 Statistik  und  Gesellschaftslehrey  Vol.  I,  1895,  P-  185. 

3  Louis  N.  Robinson,  Criminal  Statistics  in  the  United  States,  p.  46. 

834 


RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND  CRIMINALS 


8,35 


connection,  therefore,  between  the  beginnings  of  criminal  statistics  on 
the  continent  of  Europe  and  in  this  country  is  close.  Massachusetts 
and  Maine  were  the  next  states  to  collect  statistical  information  on 
crimes  and  criminals,  and  this  practice,  of  compiling  data  taken  from 
the  records  of  the  courts  themselves,  or  from  material  in  the  hands  of 
district  attorneys  or  similar  officials,  soon  spread  to  other  states. 

Not  content  with  the  collection  of  judicial  criminal  statistics,  two 
states,  Massachusetts  first  and  New  York  second,  in  1834  and  1839 
respectively,  determined  to  obtain  from  those  into  whose  custody  pris¬ 
oners  were  placed,  i.e.,  the  keepers  and  the  sheriffs,  certain  data 
somewhat  analogous  to  that  obtained  from  the  courts  and  the  court 
officials.  In  my  book  the  History  and  Organization  of  Criminal 
Statistics  in  the  United  States,  I  have  termed  statistics  of  this  kind 
"prison  criminal  statistics”  in  order  to  differentiate  between  the  two 
sources  of  statistics  of  crime  and  criminals. 

The  establishment  of  state  boards  of  charities  and  correction  and 
of  state  boards  of  control  has  given  a  further  impetus  to  the  collection 
of  both  judicial  and  criminal  statistics,  and  the  recent  movement  to 
create  state  departments  of  public  welfare  may  be  expected  to  further 
the  development  of  each  form  of  criminal  statistics. 

Turning  now  to  the  efforts  to  obtain  criminal  statistics  for  the  coun¬ 
try  as  a  whole,  we  find  that  it  was  not  until  the  census  of  1850, 
twenty-one  years  after  New  York  had  begun  the  task,  that  the  Federal 
Government  became  sufficiently  interested  to  collect  information  of 
this  character,  and  even  then  it  was  done  only  in  a  meager  and  half¬ 
hearted  way.  In  fact  it  was  not  until  1880,  when  Mr.  Frederick  H. 
Wines  was  placed  in  charge  of  the  division  of  Social  Statistics  relating 
to  pauperism  and  crime  that  a  genuine  attempt  was  made  to  give  to 
the  public  a  statistical  picture  of  our  criminal  population.  Again  in 
1890,  Mr.  Wines  was  placed  in  charge  of  this  work,  and  the  plan  of 
1880,  with  some  slight  modification,  was  carried  out.  Owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  work  of  the  decennial  enumeration  in  1900  was  limited 
to  the  inquiries  relating  to  population,  mortality,  agriculture,  and 
manufactures,  the  collection  of  criminal  statistics  by  the  Bureau  of 
the  Census  was  not  made  again  until  1904. 

Although  Mr.  Wines  had  planned  in  1880  to  compile  facts  obtain¬ 
able  from  court  dockets,  he  seemed  to  have  met  with  little  success, 
and  the  effort  was  not  repeated  by  the  census  officials  until  1907. 


836 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


This  attempt  also  proved  a  failure,  and  we  must,  therefore,  confess  to 
the  world  that  as  a  nation  we  have  not  yet  been  able  to  do  more  than 
to  collect  what  I  have  termed  prison  criminal  statistics,  and  these 
only  at  long  intervals. 

In  1904,  a  change  in  the  policy  of  collecting  the  prison  criminal 
statistics  was  made.  In  1880,  and  again  in  1890,  the  statistics  dealt 
with  those  in  prisons  on  a  certain  day  of  the  year,  but  in  1904  the 
emphasis  was  placed  on  those  who  had  been  committed  during  the 
year,  a  practice  which  was  followed  in  the  enumeration  of  1910  and 
which  all  statisticians  today  will  agree  ought  to  have  been  inaugurated 
at  the  beginning. 

In  1 91 1,  I  stated  that  the  criminal  statistics  which  were  put  out  by 
state  governments  were,  almost  without  exception,  poor,  and  I  have 
seen  little  reason  to  change  my  opinion  of  their  character  since  that 
time.  The  best  criminal  statistics  we  have  are  those  published  by  the 
Federal  Bureau  of  the  Census,  and  these  are  far  from  satisfactory  for 
two  reasons:  first  because  they  appear  at  such  long  intervals,  and 
secondly,  because  they  are  based  on  data  obtained  from  institutions 
and  not  from  records  of  the  courts  and  are,  therefore,  very  incomplete, 
since  they  do  not  include  those  whose  punishment  is  other  than  com¬ 
mitment.  For  example,  the  total  number  of  juvenile  offenders  com¬ 
mitted  to  juvenile  reformatories  during  the  year  1910,  is  given  in  the 
Report  of  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  as  14,197}  During  the  calendar 
year  1919,  1242  juvenile  offenders  were  placed  on  probation  by  the 
Municipal  Court  of  Philadelphia  alone,  a  little  more  than  one-twelfth 
of  the  total  number  committed  in  the  United  States  to  juvenile  institu¬ 
tions  during  the  calendar  year  1910,  and  more  than  any  one  of  the 
forty-eight  states,  except  New  York,  committed  during  that  year. 

I,  for  my  part,  feel  that  in  the  recent  report  of  the  Bureau  of  the 
Census  we  can  find  good  reason  for  continuing  the  collection  of  these 
statistics,  incomplete  as  they  are,  if  we  can  do  no  better.  I  find,  for 
example,  that  "Of  the  493,934  prisoners  and  juvenile  delinquents 
committed  to  penal  or  reformatory  institutions  in  1910,  278,914,  or 
56.5  per  cent,  were  committed  for  non-payment  of  fine.”2  That  fact 
alone  is  sufficient  to  justify  the  whole  inquiry,  since  it  throws  into 
sharp  relief  what  many  of  us  have  long  contended,  that  the  poor  in 
this  land  do  not  get  a  square  deal  from  the  courts.  Let  me  quote 

1  Prisoners  and  Juvenile  Delinquents ,  1910,  p.  158.  2 Ibid.  p.  41. 


RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND  CRIMINALS 


837 


another  statement  from  the  same  report:  "Of  the  total  number  of 
commitments  in  the  year  1910,  170,977,  representing  34.6  per  cent, 
or  more  than  one-third,  were  for  drunkenness;  91,928,  representing 
18.6  per  cent,  or  almost  one-fifth,  were  for  disorderly  conduct;  and 
50,302,  or  10.2  per  cent,  were  for  vagrancy.”1  Together  these  three 
crimes  account  for  63.4  per  cent  of  the  total  number  committed. 

Recommendations.  I  must  content  myself  with  making  the  follow¬ 
ing  suggestions  to  the  Bureau  of  the  Census : 

1.  That  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  be  requested  to  appoint  either 
for  full  or  part  time  a  special  agent  whose  duties  shall  be : 

a.  To  visit  the  various  state  boards  or  state  officials  charged  with 
the  collection  of  either  prison  or  judicial  statistics,  and  to  ascertain 
the  problems  with  which  they  are  confronted  in  carrying  on  this  work. 

b.  To  visit  the  offices  of  district  attorneys,  clerks  of  court,  institu¬ 
tions,  etc.,  and  to  examine  their  systems  of  record  keeping  with  a  view 
both  to  noting  the  facts  therein  contained  and  also  to  devising  more 
adequate  systems. 

2.  That  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  prepare  a  brief  study  of  the  juris¬ 
diction  of  the  courts  in  each  state  and  keep  the  same  up  to  date. 

3.  That  on  the  basis  of  the  report  of  the  special  agent  and  the  study 
of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  courts,  a  plan  for  the  further  improvement 
of  criminal  statistics  be  formulated,  and  the  aid  of  such  organizations 
as  the  American  Institute  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology  and  the 
Statistical  Association  be  requested  in  putting  the  plan  into  effect. 

No  paper  plan  will  succeed.  Foundation  work  such  as  I  have  sug¬ 
gested  will  have  to  be  undertaken.  Surely,  too,  we  have  a  right  to  look 
to  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  for  the  long  persistent  effort  which  will 
be  needed  to  make  criminal  statistics  a  reality  in  the  United  States. 
Central  guidance  is  also  necessary,  if  there  is  not  to  develop  such 
differences  of  practice  by  state  boards  and  state  officials  as  will  render 
the  task  of  whipping  the  statistics  of  the  various  states  into  a  unified 
whole  impossible.  Many  persons  will  say  that  the  differences  already 
found  in  the  states  regarding  penalties  and  definitions  of  crimes  make 
the  task  unthinkable;  but  these  differences  have  not  prevented  the 
collection  of  fairly  good  prison  criminal  statistics  and  they  should  not 
prove  to  be  insurmountable  obstacles  in  the  collection  of  judicial 
criminal  statistics. 


1Ibid.  p.  30. 


838 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


115.  Systems  of  Identification  of  Criminals1 

Intelligent  police  action  is  today  based  primarily  on  criminal  files. 
Detectives  and  magistrates  alike  must  be  acquainted  with  the  criminal 
propensities  of  specific  individuals ;  they  must  be  armed  with  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  past  records  of  those  whom  they  arrest  or  suspect. 
Such  records  as  these,  however,  classified  merely  by  names,  do  not  in 
themselves  furnish  an  infallible  instrument.  Without  an  accurate 
method  of  identification,  the  simple  invention  of  an  alias  or  any  other 
disguise  will,  if  undetected,  invalidate  the  entire  system.  Indeed,  the 
usefulness  of  criminal  records  depends  upon  the  ability  of  the  police 
to  fasten  upon  each  human  being  an  identity  from  which  he  cannot 
escape.  Criminals  must  be  differentiated  from  the  rest  of  the  popula¬ 
tion  as  well  as  from  each  other.  Means  must  be  discovered  to  prevent 
a  person  guilty  of  crime  from  losing  or  destroying  his  identity.  For¬ 
merly  the  police  were  forced  to  depend  on  descriptions  and  photo¬ 
graphs,  but  these  methods  proved  by  no  means  reliable,  for  the  modern 
criminal  is  an  adept  in  altering  his  personal  appearance.  More  certain 
methods  were  essential,  and  for  years  the  science  of  crime  detection 
concerned  itself  largely  with  the  search  for  an  infallible  system  of 
identification. 

When,  therefore,  in  1883,  Bertillon  announced  an  exact  method  of 
identification  by  means  of  measurement  he  placed  the  entire  world  in 
his  debt.  His  system  was  adopted  in  nearly  every  civilized  country. 
England,  Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  Switzerland,  and  many  states  in 
the  United  States  applied  it  in  their  police  departments,  and  the 
Bertillon  cabinet  became  the  distinguishing  mark  of  the  modern 
police  organization.  During  this  time  Bertillon  was  constantly  devel¬ 
oping  his  identification  methods.  To  the  measurements  he  added,  as 
sub-classifications  of  his  system,  his  famous  descriptive  photography 
( portrait  parle),  and  his  method  of  grouping  colors  and  characteristic 
marks.  Later,  as  we  shall  see,  he  added  finger-prints,  producing  the 
so-called  Parisian  ftche,  which  is  made  up  partly  of  bodily  measure¬ 
ments  and  partly  of  papillary  line  patterns.  Of  the  ten  fingers,  Ber¬ 
tillon  utilized  at  first  only  four  of  the  left  hand.  Only  recently  did  he 

xBy  Raymond  B.  Fosdick,  author  of  European  Police  Systems.  Adapted 
from  "The  Passing  of  the  Bertillon  System  of  Identification,”  Journal  of  the 
American  Institute  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology ,  Vol.  VI,  No.  3,  pp.  363-369. 


RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND  CRIMINALS  839 

« 

consent  to  use  all  ten.  The  Bertillon  criminal  card,  therefore,  while 
classified  by  means  of  measurements,  involves  other  methods  of 
identification. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  Bertillon  system  is  soundly  based  on 
scientific  principles.  Accurately  measured,  no  two  people  will  ever 
show  the  same  dimensions.  But  to  take  measurements  with  even  a 
fair  degree  of  accuracy  requires  special  training,  and  in  many  cities 
such  training  is  not  to  be  had.  Indeed,  in  America  at  least,  training 
along  this  line  is  the  exception  rather  than  the  rule.  In  some  of  our 
southern  and  middle  western  cities,  where,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
Bertillon  system  seems  to  be  regarded  as  a  fetish  rather  than  a  scien¬ 
tific  method  of  identification,  I  have  seen  so-called  experts  measuring 
prisoners  without  even  a  knowledge  of  where  to  place  the  instruments, 
obtaining  results  so  ludicrously  inaccurate  as  to  eliminate  any  chance 
of  identification. 

But  a  system  must  be  judged  by  its  use  rather  than  its  abuse. 
Even  in  Europe,  where  the  Bertillon  method  has  been  tried  under  the 
most  favorable  circumstances,  there  has  been  constant  complaint  of 
its  inaccuracy — or  rather  of  the  difficulty  of  using  it  with  sufficient 
skill  to  produce  accurate  results.  Primarily  it  is  a  system  for  use  by 
highly  trained  men.  Bertillon’s  genius  was  far  above  that  of  the 
average  police  official,  either  in  Europe  or  America. 

However,  the  Bertillon  system  has  lost  its  hold  not  so  much  through 
its  own  inherent  defects  as  through  the  creation  of  a  better  and  simpler 
system — dactyloscopy.  Largely  the  work  of  Sir  William  Herschel 
and  Sir  Francis  Gal  ton,  this  system  was  first  made  really  practicable 
for  police  purposes  by  a  method'  of  classification  devised  by  Sir  Ed¬ 
ward  Henry,  now  Commissioner  of  the  Metropolitan  Police  Force  of 
London.  After  a  trial  by  the  English  authorities  in  India,  the  system 
was  introduced  at  Scotland  Yard  in  1901.  Its  astonishing  success 
there  was  soon  brought  to  the  attention  of  police  authorities  in  other 
countries  and  in  the  next  five  years  it  was  introduced  widely  through¬ 
out  Europe.  The  utility  of  the  finger-print  system  of  identification  is 
not  affected  by  divergencies  in  methods  of  classification,  nor  is  the 
exchange  of  finger-prints  between  departments  in  any  way  hampered. 

For  the  keynote  of  dactyloscopy  is  its  simplicity.  The  only  ac¬ 
cessories  needed  to  take  finger-prints  are  a  piece  of  tin  and  some 
printer’s  ink.  Any  person,  whether  educated  or  not,  can  perform  the 


840 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


function  with  half  an  hour’s  practice.  There  is  no  possible  margin  of 
error,  as  finger-prints  are  absolute  impressions  taken  from  the  body 
itself.  Moreover,  the  ordinary  system  of  classification  is  so  simple  as 
to  facilitate  ready  search.  As  an  example  of  the  speed  with  which  a 
search  can  be  made  under  the  Henry  system  of  classification,  my 
finger-prints  were  *taken  at  Police  Headquarters  in  Vienna,  properly 
classified  and  filed  with  perhaps  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  others. 
An  official  who  had  not  been  present  was  called  in  and  after  taking  my 
finger-prints  afresh,  was  able,  after  three  minutes’  examination,  to 
find  my  card  in  the  files.  This  experiment  was  repeated  for  me  in 
perhaps  a  dozen  cities  in  Europe. 

Finally,  the  finger-print  method  is  advantageous  in  affording  the 
police  frequent  opportunity  to  discover  the  perpetrator  of  a  particular 
crime  through  marks  which  he  leaves  behind  him.  The  finger-print 
system  is,  therefore,  available  for  two  purposes :  first  after  arrest  to 
identify  a  prisoner  with  a  previous  criminal  record;  second,  to  dis¬ 
cover  the  author  of  a  particular  crime  before  any  arrest  is  made  by 
comparison  of  finger-prints  left  behind  him  with  finger-print  cards  on 
file  at  headquarters. 

The  inability  of  the  Parisian  police  authorities  to  discover  the 
author  of  the  theft  of  "Mona  Lisa”  was  due  distinctly  to  Bertillon’s 
method  of  classification.  The  thief,  Perugia  by  name,  had  been  in  the 
hands  of  the  Paris  police  on  a  previous  occasion,  when  his  finger-prints 
were  taken.  Finger-print  impressions  were  left  on  the  frame  of  the 
picture,  but  his  record  in  Bertillon’s  file  was  not  found  because  meas¬ 
urements,  rather  than  finger-prints,  constitute  the  primary  classifica¬ 
tion.  Under  a  pure  dactyloscopic  system,  such  as  is  employed  in 
Rome,  Vienna,  Berlin,  Munich,  Dresden,  London,  or  any  of  the 
provincial  cities  of  England,  the  identity  of  the  thief  could  have  been 
established  in  half  an  hour. 

In  terms  of  actual  results,  the  superiority  of  the  finger-print  system 
can  readily  be  established.  In  England  and  Wales,  for  the  year  end¬ 
ing  December  31,  1911,  the  number  of  identifications  made  by  the 
finger-print  system  was  twenty  times  greater  than  the  largest  number 
effected  in  previous  years  by  the  anthropometric  method. 


RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND  CRIMINALS  841 

116.  Aims  and  Methods  of  the  Survey  of  Criminal 

Justice  in  Cleveland1 

This  book  [Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland ]  embodies  the  results  of 
a  scientific  study  of  the  present  system  of  criminal  justice  in  Cleve- 
land,  Ohio.  The  inquiry  had  two  aims :  first,  to  render  an  accounting 
of  the  functioning  of  this  system,  to  the  fullest  extent  that  social  in¬ 
stitutions  are  as  yet  adapted  to  statistical  appraisal ;  and,  second,  to 
trace  to  their  controlling  sources  whatever  defects  in  the  system  the 
inquiry  disclosed. 

For  some  time  previous  to  this  survey  Cleveland  had  been  restive 
under  a  growing  feeling  of  insecurity  of  life  and  property.  The  fifth 
largest  city  in  the  country  entertained  a  wide-spread  conviction  of  its 
failure  in  the  most  primitive  function  of  government.  In  the  spring  of 
1920  this  feeling  was  brought  to  a  head.  An  atrocious  and  sordid 
crime,  implicating  the  chief  judge  of  the  city’s  municipal  courts, 
stirred  to  action  dormant  civic  pride.  With  rare  self-restraint  and 
self-knowledge  the  leaders  of  the  community  realized  that  the  city 
had  the  feeling,  but  not  the  understanding,  for  action.  They  had  the 
insight  to  realize  that  this  sensational  case  was  but  symptomatic  of 
deeper  causes.  In  a  word,  a  problem  in  social  sanitation  and  social 
engineering  was  presented.  Therefore,  in  the  winter  of  1920,  a  num¬ 
ber  of  civic  organizations,  headed  by  the  Cleveland  Bar  Association, 
requested  the  Cleveland  Foundation  to  undertake  a  survey  of  the 
administration  of  criminal  justice  in  Cleveland. 

Doubtless,  to  a  considerable  extent,  the  survey  proved  what  was 
already  suspected  by  many  and  known  to  a  few.  The  point  is  that 
the  survey  proved  it.  Instead  of  speculation,  we  have  demonstration. 
Now,  one  ventures  to  say,  there  is  no  possible  excuse  for  a  citizen  of 
Cleveland  not  knowing  the  shortcomings  of  the  system,  and  the  indis¬ 
pensable  conditions  for  their  correction.  The  system  is  judged  not  by 
the  occasional  dramatic  case,  but  by  its  normal,  humdrum  operations. 
In  order  to  ascertain  how  law  functions  as  a  daily  instrument  of  the 
city’s  life  a  quantitative  basis  for  judgment  is  essential.2 

1From  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland  (pp.  v-ix),  by  Felix  Frankfurter,  LL.B., 
Byrne  Professor  of  Administrative  Law  in  the  Law  School  of  Harvard  Univer¬ 
sity.  Copyright,  1922,  by  the  Cleveland  Foundation. 

2  The  statistical  method  is  set  forth  in  an  appendix  by  Professor  C.  E.  Gehlke. 


842 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


On  the  other  hand,  early  in  the  investigation  it  became  plain  that 
the  system  of  criminal  justice  had  some  of  its  roots  deep  in  the  whole 
social  and  spiritual  life  of  the  city.  The  sources  of  opinion  and  of 
education  and  the  very  social  ideals  of  the  community  all  bear  their 
important  share  in  that  manifestation  of  its  social  life  which  we  call 
criminal  justice.  Llere  we  are  confronted  with  a  choice  of  social  stand¬ 
ards  which  cannot  be  statistically  established.  But  here,  too,  we  must 
work  in  the  light  of  experience,  and  with  that  objective  habit  of  mind 
which  we  call  the  scientific  spirit. 

The  nation-wide  response  to  Main  Street  indicates  that  every 
town,  whether  large  or  small,  is  in  part  a  Gopher  Prairie.  These  sur¬ 
face  uniformities  of  our  American  cities  must  not  be  allowed  to 
obscure  their  diversities.  For  every  little  Main  Street,  4s  every  big 
Main  Street,  is  also  unique.  And  this  uniqueness  is  significant,  or 
must  be  made  significant,  if  American  life  is  to  have  distinction  and 
depth.  It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  this  truth  in  applying  the  Cleve¬ 
land  survey  to  other  cities.  Specific  impulses  gave  birth  to  this  survey ; 
it  was  conditioned  by  the  specific  problems  presented  by  Cleveland — 
its  traditions,  its  rate  of  growth,  its  racial  composition,  its  politics,  its 
press,  its  bar.  Not  only  was  the  study  thus  defined  by  the  environ¬ 
ment  out  of  which  it  grew  and  in  which  it  was  moving,  but  in  some 
aspects  this  was  a  pioneer  study  and  had  to  improvise  its  own  tech¬ 
nique  and  procedure.  These  local  limitations  and  empiric  efforts  debar 
blind  imitation  of  this  survey  by  other  communities.  In  any  city  a 
survey  of  its  administration  of  criminal  justice  must  grow  out  of  its 
own  needs  and  be  guided  by  its  own  individuality. 

Nevertheless,  the  most  outstanding  features  of  criminal  justice  in 
Cleveland,  namely,  the  practical  breakdown  of  criminal  machinery, 
has  its  parallel  in  other  cities.  The  deep-seated  causes  for  this  condi¬ 
tion — rooted,  as  they  are,  in  modern  industrialism  and  in  the  preva¬ 
lent  standards  of  the  community,  which  turn  into  a  menace  the  early 
American  machinery  and  methods  of  law  enforcement — will  be  found 
in  other  cities  throughout  the  country,1  as  the  survey  found  them  in 
Cleveland.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  problem  and  its  causes  are 
common  to  many  American  cities,  it  may  be  pertinent  to  summarize 
the  broad  principles  upon  which  the  Cleveland  survey  was  planned 
and  executed. 

iSee  infra,  Title  118,  by  Chief  Justice  William  H.  Taft. — Ed. 


RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND  CRIMINALS 


843 


1.  Impersonal  aims.  From  the  outset  it  was  insisted  that  present- 
day  machinery  and  methods  are  largely  the  heritage  of  conditions 
which  have  fundamentally  changed.  The  problem  is  more  comprehen¬ 
sive  and  its  elements  more  manifold  than  the  good-man-bad-man  ex¬ 
planation  of  political  phenomena  assumes.  Personalities,  of*  course, 
play  their  part,  but  a  relatively  small  part.  The  task  is  that  of  diag¬ 
nosing  the  causes  of  a  system  whose  origins  must  be  traced  back  to  . 
social,  economic,  and  political  conditions  distant  in  time  and  different 
from  the  present,  and  whose  consequences  cannot  be  understood  apart 
from  the  civic  standards  and  economic  preoccupations  of  today. 
"Head-hunting”  was  from  the  first  disavowed.  The  search  for  causes 
rather  than  for  victims  had  repeatedly  to  be  insisted  upon  as  the  only 
aim  of  the  survey,  for  blame  of  someone  in  office,  or  of  the  "boss” 
behind  the  scenes,  is  the  natural,  uncritical  desire  of  people  and  of  the 
press,  which  stimulates  that  desire.  A  personal  victim  for  a  complex 
community  failure  satisfies  the  sense  of  the  dramatic,  at  the  same  time 
that  it  affords  the  luxury  of  vicarious  punishment.  But  where  the 
whole  system  of  criminal  justice  has  broken  down  under  the  weight 
imposed  upon  it  by  industrial  urban  life,  the  trail  of  authentic  and 
thorough  diagnosis  must  not  be  diverted  from  essential  causes  to 
occasional  officials  who  exploit  these  causes. 

2.  Scientific  and  professional  direction.  To  resist  effectively  the 
local  demand  for  "head-hunting”  requires  disinterested,  scientific  di¬ 
rection  of  the  survey.  In  Cleveland  the  survey  was  in  the  hands  of 
men  whose  professional  interest  is  the  scientific  administration  of 
justice  adapted  to  modern  industrial  conditions.  Theirs  was  the  final 
authority  and  theirs  the  responsibility.  Only  thus  can  it  be  insured 
that  relevant  factors  are  neither  avoided  nor  their  analysis  withheld, 
nor,  on  the  other  hand,  exploited  to  serve  any  interest  other  than 
truth-finding. 

3.  N on-resident  investigators.  A  disinterested  and  impersonal  in¬ 
vestigation  also  means  that  the  investigators  in  charge  of  different 
divisions  of  the  inquiry  must  be  non-residents.  Only  thus  can  the 
subtle  and  often  unconscious  forces  of  fear  and  favor  be  wholly 
avoided.  The  Cleveland  investigators  were  wholly  indifferent  to  all 
Cleveland  personalia.  Neither  past  entanglements  nor  future  em¬ 
barrassments  influenced  in  the  slightest  the  scope  of  the  inquiry  or  its 
thorough  pursuit. 


844 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


4.  Local  advisory  cooperation.  While  outsiders  must  direct  and 
investigate,  they  must  work  with  the  forces  of  the  community.  Wholly 
apart  from  the  necessity  of  full  and  easy  access  to  the  local  material, 
it  is  indispensable  to  check  up  and  interpret  the  record  data,  the  statis¬ 
tical  material,  by  intimate  city  traditions.  Such  a  survey  deals  with 
social  phenomena,  and  statistics  are,  in  part,  meaningless  without 
human  illumination.  From  the  start  the  Cleveland  investigation  was 
greatly  aided  by  an  advisory  committee  representative  of  the  mani¬ 
fold  interests  of  the  city.  This  survey  could  not  have  been  made 
without  the  unstinted  devotion,  the  civic  influence,  the  professional 
equipment  of  Mr.  Amos  Burt  Thompson,  the  Chairman  of  the  Ad¬ 
visory  Committee.  But  such  a  committee  must  be  strictly  advisory. 
It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the  responsibility  for  the  scope 
of  such  an  inquiry  and  for  its  results  must  rest  solely  with  the  directors 
of  the  survey.  Not  the  least  of  Mr.  Thompson’s  services  was  his 
fastidious  loyalty  to  this  principle. 

5.  Indifference  to  "  quick  results .”  Since  the  aim  of  such  a  study  is 
strictly  scientific,  all  exigent  considerations,  such  as  specific  quick 
results  or  the  effect  on  a  forthcoming  election,  are  irrelevant  and  de¬ 
structive.  The  effort  must  be  wholly  concentrated  on  accurate  investi¬ 
gation,  significant  interpretation,  and  fruitful  suggestion.  Of  course,  at 
bottom  all  such  surveys  are  successful  to  the  extent  that  they  serve  as 
means  for  the  education  of  the  community ;  and  the  press  is  undoubt¬ 
edly  the  most  important  single  instrument  of  civic  education.  But 
this  consideration  comes  into  play  after  the  survey  is  completed,  not 
while  it  proceeds.  The  newspapers  must  not  be  fed  with  hopes  or 
hints.  Nor  must  the  progress  of  the  inquiry  be  influenced  in  the 
slightest  by  the  impatience,  or  the  indifference,  or  the  criticism  of  the 
press.  If  the  survey  finally  produces  a  searching  diagnosis,  the  news¬ 
papers  will  not  be  able,  nor  will  they  want,  to  neglect  it. 

6.  Checks  against  inaccuracy.  There  ought  to  be  no  question  as 
to  the  accuracy  of  the  facts  upon  which  judgments  or  recommenda¬ 
tions  are  based.  The  material  for  opinion  ought  to  be  indisputable. 
Therefore,  before  the  results  of  the  survey  were  published,  they  were 
thoroughly  thrashed  out  with  the  Advisory  Committee,  and  then  sub¬ 
mitted  for  comment  to  the  officials  administering  the  respective  de¬ 
partments  under  investigation.1  There  is  thus  furnished  an  authentic 

1  Except  where  the  officials  themselves  preferred  not  to  consider  the  findings. 


RECORDS  OF  CRIME  AND  CRIMINALS 


845 


and  agreed  analysis  of  the  facts,  leaving  for  discussion  the  relatively 
narrow  field  of  the  inferences  that  flow  from  the  facts  and  the  changes 
which  they  suggest. 

These,  briefly,  were  the  general  principles  which  guided  the  plan¬ 
ning  and  the  execution  of  the  Cleveland  survey,  always  bearing  in 
mind  that  the  dominant  factors  were  the  scientific  aim  and  the  dis¬ 
interested,  professional  devotion  of  the  investigators.  Thus  far  the 
work  is  that  of  outsiders — and  there  is  little  they  can  do  beyond.  The 
rest  is  with  the  community — but  the  rest  is  everything.  First  comes 
publication  of  the  results  of  the  survey-  through  public  meetings, 
pamphlets,  press,  and  book ;  and  then  a  sustained  educational  cam¬ 
paign  to  translate  the  results  of  the  inquiry  into  a  new  civic  outlook — 
a  deeper  understanding  of  the  exactions  of  democracy,  and  of  the 
fashioning  of  machinery  and  methods  adequate  to  modern  needs  and 
equipped  for  self-appraisal. 

A  community  which  expects  quick  results  or  panaceas  is  doomed  to 
disappointment.  So  much  of  our  "reform”  effort  does  not  stay  "put” 
because  the  aim  is  to  "put  things  over.”  The  complexities  of  an 
industrial  democracy  cannot  be  solved  by  the  psychology  of  adver¬ 
tising.  The  starting-point  of  reform  is  the  education  of  the  public  to 
the  necessity  of  a  sustained  interest.  The  conditions  disclosed  by  this 
survey — and  the  recent  Massachusetts  revelations  show  that  no  com¬ 
munity  can  throw  the  first  stone — can  be  rectified  only  if  the  com¬ 
munity  is  aroused  to  the  necessary  persistent,  unostentatious,  detailed 
effort.  That  will  come  if  the  community  cares — or  if  only  a  small 
part  of  it  cares  hard  enough.  At  best,  however,  the  task  is  one  in 
which  time  is  a  necessary  element  and  continuity  of  effort  indispensable. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 
117.  Theories  of  Punishment1 

Ask  the  man  in  the  street  why  a  thief  is  sent  to  prison,  and  in  all 
probability  you  will  receive  one  of  two  answers :  he  will  say,  "because 
he  has  stolen,”  or  "because  it  would  not  be  safe  to  allow  him  to  remain 
at  large.”  These  homely  replies  illustrate  the  two  fundamental  prin¬ 
ciples  which  have  competed,  since  Grotius’s  time,  for  supremacy  in 
the  theory  and  practice  of  punishment.  The  substance  of  the  rival 
doctrines  has  been  compressed  into  short  formulae,  borrowed  from 
the  writings  of  Seneca :  according  to  the  one  we  punish  "quia  peccatum 
est,”  according  to  the  other  "ne  peccetur.” 

Grotius  defines  punishment  as  "malum  passionis  quod  infligitur  ob 
malum  actionis,”  as  the  infliction  of  pain  on  a  person  because  he  has 
done  wrong,  and  the  school  of  which  he  may  be  regarded  as  the  in¬ 
tellectual  father  has  steadfastly  adhered  to  the  view  that  the  ground 
of  punishment  must  be  sought  in  the  criminal  act  itself,  its  justifica¬ 
tion  in  the  culpability  of  the  offender.  Punishment  is  "the  correlate” 
(Grotius),  "the  equivalent”  (Berolzheimer),  "the  supplement” 
(Bradley),  of  guilt,  and  is  inflicted  upon  the  evil-doer  because  he 
deserves  it.  Its  function  is  "pensatio  mali  cum  malo,”  "to  dissolve 
the  vinculum  juris  to  which  crime  gives  rise,  by  meting  out  to  the 
transgressor  his  due”  (W.  S.  Lilly),  to  adjust  and  close  an  account  by 
discharging  the  debt  which  he  has  incurred.  Grotius  indeed,  goes  so 
far  as  to  compare  punishment  with  the  fulfilment  of  an  implied  term 
of  a  contract ;  it  is  a  consequence  which  the  criminal  by  the  commis¬ 
sion  of  the  act  has  accepted  and  assented  to.  In  any  case,  he  pays  the 
penalty  because  he  owes  it,  and  for  no  other  reason.  Punishment, 
then,  has  its  root  entirely  in  the  past ;  it  is  an  end  in  itself  and  does 
not  serve  any  extrinsic  purpose. 

!By  Heinrich  Oppenheimer,  D.Lit.,  LL.  D.,  M.D.,  Rationale  of  Punishment , 
pp.  179-183,  231-239,  255-261,  281-295.  University  of  London  Press,  1913. 

846 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


847 


Plato  ( De  Legibus,  Book  XI,  p.  934)  and  countless  writers  since 
have  found  it  impossible  to  accept  the  position  that  mere  regard  for 
an  immovable  past  should  supply  a  sufficient  motive  for  the  infliction 
of  punishment.  They  resent  the  assumption  that  evil  must  be  met  by 
counter-evil  in  the  shape  of  pain  to  the  wrong-doer.  It  does  not  stand 
to  reason,  they  argue,  that  the  state  should  set  up  and  keep  going  a 
complicated  and  costly  machinery  whereby  deliberately  to  cause  suf¬ 
fering  to  any  class  of  citizens,  unless  it  be  in  the  sure  and  well-founded 
expectation  that  good  will  ultimately  result  from  its  operation.  The 
justification  of  punishment  must,  therefore,  be  sought  in  some  future 
advantage,  and,  since  it  is  the  function  of  the  state  to  serve  the  ends 
of  society,  in  the  social  benefits  which  it  vouchsafes.  By  its  fruits 
alone  can  it  be  justified,  as  a  rational  means  for  the  furtherance  of 
the  objects  of  the  state,  whatever  these  may  be. 

In  German  legal  philosophy  the  rival  schools  are  known  as  "  abso¬ 
lutists  ”  and  "  relativists,”  because  the  latter  account  for  punishment 
by  a  "relatio  ad  effectual,”  the  former  by  an  "absolutio  ab  effectu.” 
But  these  expressions  hardly  convey  the  proper  meaning  to  the  English 
reader.  It  is  obvious  that  if  the  ground  of  punishment  lies  in  the  mis¬ 
deed,  if  crime  cries  aloud  for  punishment,  punishment  becomes  a 
necessity,  and  the  state  has  no  choice  in  the  matter,  but  is  under  an 
absolute  obligation  to  chastise  offenders.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  pun¬ 
ishment  is  inflicted  only  because  it  is  useful,  the  limits  of  its  utility 
prescribe  the  limits  of  its  application,  and  it  is  for  the  state  to  deter¬ 
mine  how  far  it  can  be  administered  with  advantage  for  the  accom¬ 
plishment  of  the  desired  object  or  objects.  Were  it  not  for  the  technical 
meaning  which  they  have  acquired  in  metaphysics  and  in  ethics  re¬ 
spectively,  the  terms  " necessitarian ”  and  "utilitarian”  would  aptly 
describe  the  two  doctrines.  Again,  since  the  one  regards  punishment 
as  an  end  in  itself,  the  other  as  a  means  for  the  attainment  of  an  ex¬ 
trinsic  purpose,  we  might,  but  for  our  horror  of  barbarisms,  call  them 
"autoteletic”  and  "heteroteletic.”  On  the  whole  we  think  it  best  to 
choose  the  terms  "transcendental” — with  an  apology  to  Kant — and 
"political,”  which,  as  will  soon  become  apparent,  draw  attention  to 
the  most  fundamental  difference  between  the  two  classes  of  theories. 

Of  late  years  science  has  taken  the  bold  step  of  challenging  the 
value  of  punishments  altogether.  Whilst  they  agree  with  the  advo- , 
cates  of  the  political  doctrine  in  the  demand  that  crime  must  be 


848 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


suppressed  in  the  interests  of  society,  the  apostles  of  the  new  crim¬ 
inological  movement  claim  that  punishment,  having  proved  a  very 
imperfect,  if  not  an  entirely  useless,  instrument,  ought  to  be  abolished, 
or  at  any  rate  given  a  quite  subordinate  place  in  a  system  of  social 
defence,  founded  on  a  careful  study  of  the  etiological  factors  which 
are  at  work  in  the  making  of  criminals.  A  critical  examination  of  this 
view  cannot  well  be  omitted  from  a  modern  work  on  punishment. 

The  philosophy  of  punishment  has,  therefore,  to  be  studied  under 
the  three  following  headings : 

1.  Transcendental  theories  of  punishment. 

2.  Political  theories  of  punishment. 

3.  Theories  of  modern  criminology. 

Transcendental  Theories 

Fiat  iustitia,  pereat  mundus. 

We  have  seen  that  the  view  according  to  which  punishment  is  an 
end  in  itself,  the  guilt  of  the  actor  its  sole  motive,  postulates,  when 
consistently  adhered  to,  punishment  as  the  necessary  consequence  of 
crime.  This  necessity  is  fully  recognized  and  insisted  upon  by  all  the 
most  prominent  writers  of  the  transcendental  school.  Their  doctrines 
differ  only  in  the  source  to  which  they  trace  the  obligation  of  the  state 
to  strike  down  offenders,  and  the  nature  of  that  superior  authority  to 
the  dictates  of  which  the  organ  of  society  has  to  conform,  supplies, 
therefore,  the  principle  of  classification  of  their  theories. 

1.  It  is  in  the  fulfilment  of  its  divine  mission  that  the  state  dispenses 
punitive  justice.  To  punish  criminals  is  a  religious  duty.  This  is  the 
theological  view  of  punishment,  of  which  the  most  uncompromising 
advocate  is  Joseph  de  Maistre. 

2.  The  stain  of  guilt  must  be  washed  away  by  suffering  in  fulfilment 
of  one  of  those  metaphysical  laws  the  meaning  of  which  man,  as  a 
finite  being,  cannot  comprehend,  but  to  which  he  must  yet  conform, 
since  his  own  infinite  nature  makes  him  part  of  the  order  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  of  which  that  law  is  an  expression.  This  is  the  expiatory  theory 
of  punishment  according  to  the  version  of  Joseph  Kohler. 

3.  The  moral  law,  which  is  binding  on  all  rational  beings,  prescribes 
.  that  crime  shall  be  visited  with  punishment.  The  conception  of  pun¬ 
ishment  as  a  moral  necessity  has  found  in  Kant  its  classical  interpreter. 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT  849 

4.  Crime  postulates  punishment  as  its  necessary  logical  complement. 
This  is  the  root-idea  of  Hegel’s  theory  of  punishment. 

5.  A  misdeed  displeases  and  continues  to  offend  our  sense  of  har¬ 
mony  as  long  as  it  remains  unrequited.  It  is  the  function  of  punish¬ 
ment  to  resolve  the  discord  and  so  to  satisfy  an  urgent  want  arising 
within  our  aesthetic  consciousness.  The  best-known  advocate  of  this 
doctrine  is  Herbart. 

Political  Theories 

Fiat  iustitia,  ne  pcrcat  mundus. 

Unlike  the  systems  hitherto  studied,  the  theories  upon  an  examina¬ 
tion  of  which  we  now  enter  discover  the  rationale  of  punishment,  not 
in  an  absolute  metaphysical  truth,  not  in  an  immutable  law  of  the 
cosmos,  nor  in  a  want  of  our  individual  organization  that  craves  satis¬ 
faction,  but  in  the  aims  and  objects,  realized  in  actual  experience, 
of  society  as  organized  in  the  state.  Upon  this  view  crime  is  the 
necessary  condition  of,  but  not  the  reason  for,  punishment.  Punish¬ 
ment,  instead  of  being  an  end  in  itself,  is  but  a  means  for  the  further¬ 
ance  of  the  purposes  of  the  state. 

Subject  to  one  exception  to  be  presently  mentioned,  the  political 
theories  agree  in  regarding  the  security  and  welfare  of  society  as  the 
end  to  which  punishment  is  subservient.  The  central  idea  in  crime  is 
that  it  constitutes  a  danger  to  society,  which  it  is  the  function  of 
punishment  to  ward  off.  The  difference  of  opinion  between  the  advo¬ 
cates  of  the  doctrine  turns  entirely  on  the  mode  in  which  punishment 
is  thought  to  accomplish  this  object.  The  main  line  of  cleavage  lies 
between  those  theories  according  to  which  it  is  in  its  infliction  that 
punishment  becomes  operative  as  an  instrument  of  social  defence,  and 
those  which  teach  that  the  primary  object  of  the  state  in  providing 
penal  sanctions  is  to  prevent  ab  initio  the  commission  of  crimes  by  the 
threat  of  punishments.  The  latter  view,  elaborated  by  Feuerbach, 
may  aptly  be  termed  the  preventive  theory.  The  former  group  com¬ 
prises  several  varieties  which  are  not,  however,  in  theory  at  least, 
mutually  exclusive.  Indeed,  of  the  authorities  who  rely,  for  the  pro¬ 
tection  of  society,  on  the  actual  execution  of  punishment  some  attach 
equal  importance  to  the  several  proximate  objects  by  which  that  end 
is  to  be  attained.  Thus  Blackstone  writes  ( Commentaries ,  Vol.  IV, 
chap,  i) :  "The  public  gains  equal  security,  whether  the  offender  him- 


850 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


self  be  amended  by  wholesome  correction,  or  whether  he  be  disabled 
from  doing  any  further  harm;  and  if  the  penalty  fails  of  both  these 
effects,  as  it  may  do,  still  the  terror  of  his  example  remains  as  a  warn¬ 
ing  to  other  citizens.”  Reformation,  disablement,  and  determent  are 
in  fact  the  three  immediate  purposes  for  which  punishments  are  be¬ 
lieved  to  be  inflicted.  . 

The  amendment  of  the  criminal,  whilst  looked  upon  merely  as  a 
means  for  the  protection  of  society  by  most  advocates  of  the  reforma¬ 
tory  view,  is  conceived  by  others  to  be  the  final  object  of  punishment. 
The  state  is  credited,  not  indeed  with  the  mission  to  realize  an  absolute 
moral  order,  but  with  the  inclusion,  among  its  positive  purposes,  of  a 
self-imposed  duty  to  provide  for  the  moral  education  of  the  subject, 
in  the  fulfilment  of  which  it  attempts,  by  means  of  punishment,  to 
bring  about  the  moral  regeneration  of  those  of  its  citizens  who  have 
proved  by  their  acts  that  they  do  not  come  up  to  the  moral  standard 
prevailing  in  the  community,  but  stand  in  need  of  further  moral  train¬ 
ing.  Though  radically  different  principles  form  the  bases  of  the  cor¬ 
rective  view  of  punishment  in  the  two  cases,  many  of  the  criticisms 
.  which  we  shall  have  to  offer,  apply  to  both  indiscriminately,  and  it 
will,  therefore,  be  convenient  to  study  them  together. 

Four  classes  of  political  theories,  then,  will  require  investigation: 

1.  The  theory  of  determent. 

2.  The  theory  of  reformation. 

3.  The  theory  of  disablement. 

4.  The  theory  of  prevention,  or  Feuerbach’s  theory. 

The  Theory  of  Determent 

When  it  is  said  that  the  object  of  punishment  is  to  deter,  the  term 
" determent”  is  capable  of  different  significations.  The  deterrent  effect 
may  be  ascribed  either  to  the  perpetual  threat  with  which  penal  rules 
are  sanctioned  and  which  operates  upon  the  mind  of  every  prospective 
offender,  or  to  the  infliction  of  punishment  upon  the  actual  trans¬ 
gressor.  To  escape  from  this  ambiguity  it  is  better  to  designate  the 
first-named  function  of  punishment  as  ''preventive,”  a  subject  which 
will  be  studied  in  a  subsequent  chapter.  But  even  if  we  confine  the 
use  of  the  expression  "determent”  to  the  result  flowing  from  the 
actual  execution  of  the  criminal  law,  it  is  yet  left  in  doubt  whether 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT  851 

we  refer  to  the  influence  which  punishment  exercises  upon  the  wrong¬ 
doer  himself  who  undergoes  it,  or  to  the  example  which  his  sufferings 
set  to  others.  Upon  the  former  view,  the  aim  of  punishment  is  to 
strike  terror  into  the  malefactor  in  order  that  he  may  be  brought  to 
his  senses  and  be  taught  in  future  to  obey  the  law ;  in  other  words, 
determent  is  but  an  instrument  of  reformation.  Here  we  are  con¬ 
cerned  with  punishment  as  deterrent  in  the  sense  that  others  are 
deterred  from  committing  the  crime  for  which  the  criminal  is  seen  by 
society  to  suffer. 

To  provide  the  citizens  with  an  object-lesson  has  been  recognized, 
from  early  times,  as  one,  though  seldom  as  the  sole,  function  of  punish¬ 
ment.  The  same  spirit  of  the  law  is  well  interpreted  by  the  English 
judge  who,  when  passing  sentence  of  death  upon  a  convicted  horse- 
thief,  remarked  in  reply  to  the  latter’s  complaint  about  the  want  of 
proportion  between  the  crime  and  the  punishment :  "Man,  thou  art  not 
to  be  hanged  for  stealing  a  horse,  but  that  horses  may  not  be  stolen.” 

Though  determent  has  been  one  of  the  motives  for  punishment  in 
the  past,  it  may  be  thought  that  it  has  ceased  to  be  so,  at  least  in  those 
countries  in  which  public  executions  have  been  abolished.  As  Ben- 
tham  remarks,  you  have  to  appeal  to  the  eye  if  you  want  to  move  the 
heart,  and  in  abandoning  the  means,  the  state  may  be  held  to  have 
designedly  repudiated  the  end.  Now  the  reason  usually  assigned  for 
this  change  of  policy  is  that  public  executions  were  found  to  brutalize 
the  spectators,  to  deprave  the  public  feelings  and  to  destroy  that  sym¬ 
pathy  with  suffering  which  it  is  the  interest  of  the  state  to  foster. 
Frequently,  however,  they  produced  the  contrary  effect  and  tended 
"to  counteract  in  some  measure  their  own  design,  by  sinking  men’s 
abhorrence  of  the  crime  in  their  commiseration  of  the  criminal” 
(Paley).  Nay,  more  than  that:  a  criminal  displaying  a  certain  bra¬ 
vado  on  the  gallows  had  every  chance  of  becoming  to  the  masses  an 
object,  not  of  abhorrence,  but  of  admiration,  a  hero  among  his  kind. 
At  the  best,  there  was  always  the  danger  that  familiarity  with  pun¬ 
ishment  might  breed  contempt  for  it,  might  blunt,  instead  of  sharpen¬ 
ing,  the  edge  of  criminal  justice.  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  is  quite 
right  if  he  says:  "The  work  of  eradicating  crime  is  not  by  making 
punishments  familiar,  but  formidable.”  It  is  doubtful,  however, 
whether  these  considerations  would,  in  themselves,  have  been  suf¬ 
ficient  to  induce  the  legislature  to  do  away  with  public  executions. 


8s  2 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


The  true  cause  appears  to  be  that  they  have  had  their  day  and  no 
longer  served  any  useful  purpose.  At  a  stage  of  civilization  when, 
owing  to  the  very  primitive  police  organization  and  other  causes,  the 
authors  of  the  majority  of  crimes  remained  undetected,  it  was  neces¬ 
sary  to  utilize  such  malefactors  as  were  caught  and  convicted  in  order 
to  show  in  their  person  that  the  criminal  law  was  not  a  dead  letter, 
but  a  living  reality.  In  our  own  days  the  discovery  and  actual  punish¬ 
ment  of  the  more  heinous  offences  is  a  rule  subject  to  so  few  exceptions 
that  we  look  upon  the  administration  of  criminal  justice  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  there  is,  therefore,  no  need  for  its  demonstratio  ad 
oculos.  But  whilst  the  scope  of  deterrent  punishments  has  thus  been 
narrowed  down  in  proportion  to  their  limited  range  of  usefulness,  we 
still  fall  back  upon  them  when  circumstances  render  their  application 
expedient.  For  if  in  a  particular  district  a  certain  crime  is  greatly  on 
the  increase,  our  judges  are  in  the  habit  of  passing  much  severer  sen¬ 
tences  than  if  it  were  but  rarely  committed  there,  and  they  do  so  with 
the  avowed  object  of  stamping  out  offences  of  that  kind.  In  the  words 
of  the  Duke  in  Measure  for  Measure :  "It  is  too  general  a  vice,  and 
severity  must  cure  it.” 

Determent,  then,  as  an  aim  of  punishment,  though  it  has  lost  much 
of  its  former  importance,  cannot  be  said  to  be  entirely  eliminated  from 
the  policy  of  modern  courts  of  criminal  jurisdiction.  It  is,  however, 
quite  out  of  harmony  with  modem  sentiment.  Not  only  is  there  a 
constant  risk  that  the  judge  will  incline  to  undue  severity  if  the  pun¬ 
ishment  of  the  one  is  to  serve  as  an  example  to  the  many;  but  any 
punishment  will  strike  the  modern  mind  as  both  arbitrary  and  exces¬ 
sive  which  is  standardized,  not  according  to  the  quality  of  the  offence, 
but  according  to  the  probability  that  persons  whom  the  offender  has 
never  seen,  will  commit  similar  acts  in  the  future.  Attempts  have,  in¬ 
deed,  been  made  to  justify  the  deterrent  view  of  punishment  by  such 
arguments  as  the  following :  The  criminal  has,  by  his  crime,  forfeited 
the  rights  of  citizenship.  Society  may,  therefore,  deal  with  him  as  it 
pleases;  and  instead  of  having  ground  for  complaint,  he  has  every 
reason  to  be  grateful  if  he  escapes  with  any  treatment  short  of  capital 
punishment.  It  is  true  instances  may  be  quoted  from  the  history  of 
criminal  jurisprudence  where  the  criminal  was  looked  upon  as  having 
outlawed  himself,  even  before  conviction,  by  the  very  act  which  con¬ 
stitutes  the  offence.  But  to  found  a  modern  theory  upon  such  ancient 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT  853 


examples  is  to  be  guilty  of  an  unpardonable  anachronism.  For  modern 
law  extends  its  protection  even  to  the  convicted  criminal,  and  modern 
morality  concedes  rights  to  man  as  man,  quite  independently  of  all 
questions  of  citizenship.  Most  recent  writers  frankly  confess  that  if 
punishment  is  awarded  as  a  means  of  warning  off  others,  the  criminal 
who  undergoes  it  is  sacrificed  to  the  ends  of  society,  but  many  agree 
with  Bentham  in  calling  such  sacrifice  "indispensable.”  Unavoidable 
social  necessity,  but  nothing  short  of  such  necessity,  will  reconcile 
modern  man  to  a  view  of  punishment  which  entirely  disregards  what 
Green  aptly  terms  "the  reversionary  rights  of  the  criminal.”  Circum¬ 
stances  do  occur  in  modern  life  when  a  few  exemplary  sentences  prove 
the  most  rapid  means  of  restoring  law  and  order ;  whether  they  are 
absolutely  indispensable  even  on  such  occasions  is  a  question  difficult 
to  answer.  But  it  is  certainly  not  permissible  to  base  a  general  theory 
of  punishment  on  what  is  exceptional,  and  this  doctrine,  upon  which 
a  class  of  human  beings  is,  in  Kantian  phraseology,  treated  purely  as 
a  means,  though  still  occasionally  acted  upon  in  forensic  practice, 
cannot  claim  a  high  ethical  value. 

The  Theory  of  Disablement 

Historically,  the  intention  to  deprive  offenders  of  the  power  of 
doing  future  mischief  has  been  very  prominent  among  the  motives 
with  which  punishments  were  inflicted.  The  punishments  first  in  point 
of  time  were  death  and  expulsion  from  the  tribe,  both  means  of  ridding 
society  of  one  who  had  proved  a  source  of  danger  to  it,  either  directly 
or  indirectly  by  calling  down  upon  the  community  the  wrath  of  some 
deity  whose  displeasure  he  had  incurred.  Again,  many  of  the  so- 
called  "characteristic”  punishments  were  chosen,  not  for  the  sake  of 
symbolizing  the  crime,  nor,  as  is  commonly  alleged,  as  a  sort  of  talio, 
namely  for  the  purpose  of  visiting  the  sin  upon  the  offending  member, 
but  in  order  to  incapacitate  the  offender  for  repeating  his  offence.  This 
accounts  largely  for  the  mutilations  which  played  so  prominent  a  part 
in  the  history  of  the  criminal  law.  A  similar  motive  affords  a  partial 
explanation  for  the  practice  of  branding  offenders.  For  in  many  cases 
to  make  a  criminal  recognizable  as  such  is  to  disarm  him. 

,  Among  the  punishments  now  in  use  in  civilized  countries,  those  of 
death,  transportation,  and  imprisonment  for  life  are  often  cited  as 


854 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


complete  realizations  of  the  principle  of  disablement.  According  to 
some  authors,  very  long  terms  of  imprisonment  embody  the  same  idea : 
they  hold  that  the  rationale  of  long  sentences  is  to  be  found  in  the 
expectation  that  the  convict  will  leave  prison  an  old  man,  too  broken 
both  in  spirit  and  in  body  to  do  further  harm.  That  the  first-named 
punishments  have  the  effect  of  permanently  eliminating  the  criminal 
goes  without  saying.  Similarly,  any  prisoner,  as  long  as  he  is  behind 
lock  and  key,  whether  his  term  be  short  or  long,  is,  for  the  time  being, 
forcibly  restrained  from  making  onslaughts  on  society.  It  does  not, 
however,  follow  that  that  which  is  the  result  of  punishment,  is  also  the 
object  with  which  it  is  inflicted.  The  opinion  that  incapacitation  is 
the  end,  and  not  merely  a  by-effect,  of  punishments  which  permanently 
remove  the  offender  from  society,  is  contradicted  in  the  case  of  those 
criminal  systems  in  which  several  such  kinds  of  punishment  are  found 
side  by  side,  by  the  fact  that  the  law  exactly  prescribes  for  what 
offences  the  one  or  the  other  is  to  be  awarded.  As  they  all  answer  the 
purpose  equally  well,  one  of  them  ought  to  have  been  chosen,  on  ac¬ 
count  of  the  collateral  advantages  which  it  offered,  as  applicable  to 
all  cases  in  which  it  seemed  desirable  to  eliminate  the  offender :  capital 
punishment  on  grounds  of  economy,  or,  where  public  sentiment  will 
not  tolerate  the  taking  of  human  life  by  judicial  sentence,  either  trans¬ 
portation  or  imprisonment  for  life,  whichever  of  the  two  appeared 
preferable  for  other  reasons. 

There  seems  to  be  a  complete  consensus  of  opinion  that  these 
drastic  measures  ought  to  be  resorted  to  only  in  the  case  of  such  male¬ 
factors  as  have  shown  themselves  utterly  unfit  for  life  in  society. 
Professional  criminals  and  habitual  offenders  in  general  answer  this 
description ;  and  penal  codes  seem  to  give  practical  recognition  to  this 
consideration  when  they  provide  that  certain  offences  shall  be  punish¬ 
able  with  a  life  sentence  only  after  one  or  more  previous  convictions. 
But  inasmuch  as  incarceration  for  life  is  not  the  sentence  pre¬ 
appointed  by  law  for  such  cases,  but  only  the  maximum  allowed,  the 
judge  being  generally  clothed  with  a  wide  discretion,  in  the  exercise  of 
which  he  may  award  much  shorter  terms,  it  is  not  permissible  to  infer 
that  the  legislature  intended  to  substitute,  all  at  once  when  reaching 
the  top,  an  entirely  new  principle  for  that  which  it  had  adopted  all 
along  the  ascending  line.  Moreover,  punishments  which  render  the 
culprit  permanently  innocuous  are  not  by  any  means  restricted  to  old 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


855 


offenders;  instances  occur  in  all  modern  penal  codes  where  a  single 
act  of  crime  is  considered  a  sufficient  qualification.  Take  the  case  of 
murder  in  English  law,  which  prescribes  that  sentence  of  death  must, 
of  necessity,  be  passed  as  soon  as  a  verdict  of  guilty  has  been  brought 
in.  It  might  be  said  that  a  person  who  has  committed  a  murder,  has 
proved  by  his  act  that  to  him  human  life  is  a  thing  of  no  value  and 
that  he  would  not  shrink  back  from  shedding  more  innocent  blood 
when  it  suited  his  purpose.  And  this  view  was  obviously  adopted  by 
the  malefactor,  quoted  by  Henricus  Stephanus,  who,  when  sentenced 
to  death  for  a  seventh  murder,  petitioned  the  King  of  France  for  a 
pardon,  and  when  his  petition  was  refused,  complained  that  the  six 
last  murders  lay  at  the  door  of  the  king,  whilst  he,  the  actual  assassin, 
was  morally  guilty  of  the  first  one  alone ;  for  if  the  king  had  done  his 
duty  by  having  him  executed  for  the  first,  it  would  not  have  been  in 
his  power  to  commit  any  more.  Yet  circumstances  are  certainly  imag¬ 
inable  which  would  render  it  highly  improbable  that  a  murderer  would 
ever  commit  another  crime,  even  if  he  were  to  gc  quite  unpunished.  A 
poor  nephew  kills  his  uncle  whose  heir  he  is,  in  order  to  satisfy  the 
pressing  demands  of  his  creditors.  The  victim  was  rich  beyond  the 
dreams  of  avarice,  and  the  murderer,  having  come  into  his  property, 
has  certainly  every  inducement  henceforth  to  lead  the  life  of  a  respect¬ 
able  and  law-abiding  citizen.  Again,  a  man  ot  hitherto  unblemished 
reputation  has,  in  the  heat  of  passion,  fired  a  bullet  through  the  heart 
of  his  best  friend,  from  whom  he  had  received  but  the  slenderest 
provocation.  The  catastrophe  cannot  fail  to  make  a  lasting  impression 
on  his  mind,  and  he  is  more  likely  for  the  future  to  keep  his  passions 
in  check  than  if  their  strength  had  never  been  brought  home  to  him 
in  so  dramatic  a  fashion.  On  the  principle  of  disablement  there  seems 
to  be  no  reason  why  the  state  should  come  down  upon  either  of  these 
offenders.  But  would  such  a  defence  be  admitted  in  a  court  of  law  ? 
Certainly  not.  And  if  not,  why  not  ?  Because  the  malignity  revealed 
by  the  act  of  the  former,  the  uncontrollable  temper  displayed  by  the 
latter  constitute,  in  themselves,  disqualifications  for  life  in  civilized 
communities.  Thus  would  answer  the  advocates  of  the  theory  of 
elimination.  Granting  for  the  moment  that  the  answer  given  suf¬ 
ficiently  meets  the  two  hypothetical  cases  adduced  by  way  of  objection, 
it  can  certainly  not  be  relied  on  to  explain  the  catalogue  of  crimes 
which  legislatures  have  made  capital  or  punishable  with  perpetual 


8S6 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


imprisonment.  Society  has  most  emphatically  less  to  fear  from  an 
accused  person  who  has  on  one  occasion  forged  the  endorsement  of  a 
bill  of  exchange  than  from  a  professional  thief,  or  from  a  brute  who 
unhesitatingly  knocks  down  the  most  inoffensive  passer-by  who  hap¬ 
pens  to  cross  his  path. 

Criminal  codes  deal  with  crimes,  not  with  criminals.  Of  modern 
penal  systems  Guizot’s  dictum  still  holds  good  that  "  punishment  has 
a  right  but  against  crime  ” ;  in  other  words,  the  scale  of  punishments 
in  actual  legislation  is  determined  in  reference  to  classes  of  offences. 
Disablement,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  remedy  appropriate  to  certain 
kinds,  not  of  offences,  but  of  offenders.  It  could,  therefore,  claim  a 
rightful  place  only  in  such  penal  schemes  as  were  built  up  on  the 
foundation  of  Liszt’s  doctrine  that  "the  object  of  punishment  is  not 
the  crime  but  the  criminal.”  The  advocates  of  those  theories  accord¬ 
ing  to  which  disablement  is  one  of  the  ends  of  punishment,  have  felt 
this,  though  they  do  not  all  appreciate  the  trend  of  their  opinions. 
They  generally  postulate  elimination  as  the  complement  of  reforma¬ 
tion,  as  the  punishment  suitable  for  incorrigible  offenders.  If  this 
position  is  once  fully  taken,  the  nature  of  the  crime  in  respect  of 
which  the  culprit  has  been  proved  refractory  to  all  reformatory  efforts, 
ceases  to  be  material,  and  the  incorrigible  vagabond,  the  incurable 
thief,  and  the  incorrigible  murderer  will  all  have  to  be  dealt  with  in 
exactly  the  same  way.  This  method  of  disposing  of  malefactors,  then, 
has  no  longer  the  character  of  true  punishment,  but  is  a  pure  measure 
of  social  defence. 

\  • 

The  True  Function  of  Modern  Punishment 

Realizing  that  certain  classes  of  acts  are  highly  detrimental  to  the 
commonwealth  because  they  tend  to  subvert-  the  fundaments  of 
political  society,  endanger  the  public  order,  or  violate  rights  of  the 
citizens  the  enjoyment  of  which  the  state  regards  as  vital  and,  there¬ 
fore,  as  worthy  of  special  protection,  the  state  attempts  to  prevent 
their  occurrence  by  making  them  the  subject  of  legal  prohibitions  of 
a  particularly  emphatic  nature,  the  observance  of  which  it  seeks  to 
enforce  by  means  of  contrivances  believed  to  be  eminently  efficacious 
for  that  purpose.  The  acts  so  forbidden  are  crimes,  the  aggregate  of 
laws  containing  such  prohibitions  forms  the  penal  code,  and  the  special 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


857 


measures  adopted  in  order  to  ensure  obedience  are  called  penal  sanc¬ 
tions  or  punishments.  In  devising  the  latter,  the  state  relies  on  the 
following  psychological  facts:  Before  the  will  is  finally  determined, 
a  struggle  goes  on  in  the  mind  of  a  person  who  contemplates  embark¬ 
ing  on  a  certain  course  of  conduct  between  two  orders  of  motives, 
those  which  urge  him  on  to  pursue  it  and  those  which  prompt  him  to 
desist.  In  this  struggle  the  stronger  of  the  two  groups  is  bound  to 
prevail,  and  the  act  will  be  done  or  left  undone  according  as  to  whether, 
to  use  Bentham’s  terms,  the  " seductive ”  or  the  "repressive”  motives 
proves  the  more  powerful.  If  the  act  under  consideration  is  a  wrong¬ 
ful  one,  the  checks  are,  state  interference  apart,  in  the  main  utilitarian, 
religious,  and  moral.  But  their  joint  force  is  not  always  sufficient  to 
overcome  the  temptation  to  do  it ;  and  in  exceptional  instances,  religion 
and  morality,  instead  of  promoting  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  land, 
supply  the  very  impulses  to  actions  which  the  state  looks  upon  as 
dangerous.  It  is,  however,  generally  possible,  by  placing  a  sufficient 
extra-weight  into  the  scale  which  contains  the  inhibitory  motives,  to 
cause  the  balance  to  incline  to  the  side  of  law  and  order.  And  this 
result  the  state  attempts  to  bring  about  by  adding  to  the  restraints 
which  operate  spontaneously  and  independently  of  its  intervention, 
and  which  may  be  called  natural  restraints,  an  artificial  one  of  its  own 
creation,  the  threat  of  an  evil  of  sufficient  magnitude  to  be  inflicted 
by  the  state  upon  the  actor  if  he  breaks  the  command  of  the  law. 
The  desire  to  avoid  suffering  it  will  enter  into  the  conflict  of  motives, 
and  will  in  many  instances  prove  the  determining  factor :  in  many  in¬ 
stances,  but  by  no  means  always.  Offences  have  been  committed  in 
spite  of  the  most  cruel  torments  which  the  devilish  ingenuity  of  bar¬ 
barous  ages  could  suggest.  Far  less  can  we  hope  that  the  criminal 
impulse  will  always  be  suppressed  by  even  the  harshest  forms  of  pun¬ 
ishment  which  our  humanitarian  era  will  tolerate.  In  modern  law  "the 

highest  penalty  depends  for  its  efficacy  upon  the  love  of  life;  and 
« 

there  are  many  circumstances  under  which  a  man  may  cease  to  care 
for  life,  and  so  far  be  beyond  the  power  of  the  legislator.”  The  greatest 
measure  of  success  would  be  attained  if  it  were  possible  for  the  state 
to  contrive  a  mechanism  by  means  of  which  every  crime  would  auto¬ 
matically  bring  about  the  infliction  of  the  punishment  provided  for  it. 
A  penal  sanction  might  then  be  likened  to  a  Damoklean  sword  hung 
over  the  head  of  every  intending  transgressor  of  the  penal  code  and 


858 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


always  ready  to  descend  upon  him  as  soon  as  by  his  own  act  he 
severs  the  single  horse-hair  by  which  it  is  suspended.  But  since  the 
Watt  of  statecraft  has  not  yet  arisen  to  design  the  required  machinery, 
the  politician  and  the  legislator  have  to  be  content  with  an  approxi- 
mation  to  the  ideal  by  adopting  the  practical  maxims  which  it  suggests. 

First  of  all,  punishment  must  ex  vi  termini  be  an  evil,  and  it  must 
be  an  evil  of  sufficient  magnitude,  or  it  ceases  to  be  deterrent.  A 
sanction  disproportionately  light  is,  as  Hobbes  remarks,  u  rather  the 
price  or  redemption  than  the  punishment  of  a  crime,”  and  will  en¬ 
courage  criminals  to  imitate  the  example  of  the  Roman  madman, 
mentioned  by  Montesquieu,  who  spent  his  time  boxing  the  ears  of 
casual  passers-by,  while  a  slave  who  followed  him  had  instructions  to 
hand  to  each  of  his  victims  twenty-five  coppers,  the  statutory  penalty 
for  such  offence.  Besides,  a  sanction  inadequate  to  prevent  crime 
means  so  much  gratuitous  suffering ;  as  it  fails  of  its  object,  the  pain 
which  it  occasions  is  simply  wasted.  And  inasmuch  as  it  has  to  be 
actually  inflicted  in  a  larger  number  of  instances,  the  sum  total  of 
human  agony  of  which  it  is  productive,  may  well  be  a  good  deal  larger 
than  it  would  have  been  in  the  case  of  a  harsher  and  therefore  more 
effective  punishment.  The  amount  of  suffering  which  constitutes  a 
sufficient  menace  has  to  be  determined  in  relation  to  the  physical  and 
moral  susceptibilities  of  that  section  of  the  community  in  the  midst 
of  which  crime  is  liable  to  be  prevalent.  At  this  point  we  are  con¬ 
fronted  with  one  of  the  most  serious  obstacles  to  the  success  of  pun¬ 
ishment  as  a  preventive  of  crime.  For  the  choice  of  sanctions  rests  in 
the  first  instance  with  the  legislative  bodies  and  in  the  last  resort,  at 
any  rate  in  democratic  states,  with  public  opinion ;  and  the  men  who 
compose  the  former  and  lead  the  latter  cannot  help  being  guided  by 
their  own  feelings  in  judging  of  the  effects  which  the  threat  of  different 
punishments  will  produce  in  the  minds  of  those  to  whom  it  is  chiefly 
addressed.  Yet  the  chances  are  that  the  anticipation  of  an  evil  which 
would  drive  to  despair,  and  possibly  to  self-destruction,  men  endowed, 
as  the  leaders  of  the  community  generally  are,  with  a  vivid  imagina¬ 
tion  and  a  sensitive  nature,  might  not  cause  a  single  sleepless  night  to 
people  of  that  coarser  fibre  of  which  criminals  are  made.  Deprivation 
of  freedom  strikes  the  self-respecting  citizen  as  a  calamity  of  the 
highest  order ;  but  the  appalling  proportion  which  persons  previously 
convicted  bear  to  the  prison  population  as  a  whole,  proves  that  the 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


859 


conditions  of  life  in  confinement  do  not  compare  so  very  unfavourably, 
in  the  opinion  of  those  best  fitted  to  judge,  with  those  under  which  the 
strata  of  society  from  which  the  majority  of  criminals  is  recruited, 
generally  labour  when  at  large. 

Whilst,  then,  sanctions  are  worse  than  useless  unless  they  are  of 
sufficient  intensity  to  act  as  checks  on  crime,  they  ought  not  to  be 
more  than  sufficient  for  the  purpose.  The  true  function  of  punish¬ 
ments  assigns  the  limits  of  their  severity.  If  the  state  can  attain  its 
end,  the  prevention  of  offences,  by  a  mild  penal  system,  there  is  no 
justification  for  a  savage  code.  For  punishment  means  pain,  and 
humanity  forbids  us  to  inflict  unnecessary  pain  on  any  sentient  crea¬ 
ture.  Utilitarian  considerations  lend  further  strength  to  this  ethical 
postulate.  Montesquieu  says:  "L’atrocite  des  lois  en  empeche  l’exe- 
cution.  Lorsque  la  peine  est  sans  mesure,  on  est  souvent  oblige  de 
lui  preferer  Pimpunite.”  The  truth  of  this  statement  is  most  strikingly 
illustrated  by  the  course  of  events  where  the  penal  legislation  of  a 
barbarous  age  survives  into,  and  has  to  be  administered  by,  a  milder- 
mannered  generation.  Where  such  is  the  state  of  the  law,  the  victims 
will  suffer  a  great  deal  in  silence  at  the  hands  of  the  criminal  classes 
rather  than  come  forward,  as  prosecutors,  to  set  the  law  in  motion ; 
witnesses  cannot  be  got  to  attend  the  trial ;  and  miscarriages  of  justice 
will  be  matters  of  daily  occurrence  since  the  attention  of  juries  will 
be  unconsciously  diverted  from  the  consideration  of  the  evidence  and 
will  be  directed  to  the  consequences  of  an  adverse  decision.  Thus,  till 
the  reign  of  William  IV,  larceny  of  certain  goods  in  process  of  manu¬ 
facture  was,  in  English  law,  a  capital  felony.  For  many  years  it  had 
been  impossible  to  obtain  a  conviction  on  an  indictment  for  this  crime, 
however  clearly  the  evidence  might  have  established  the  guilt  of  the 
accused,  till,  at  last,  the  manufacturers  for  whose  protection  the  ex¬ 
treme  penalty  had  been  annexed  to  the  offence,  in  order  to  obtain 
effective,  instead  of  nominal,  protection,  petitioned  parliament  to 
substitute  a  milder  form  of  punishment.  The  legislator,  then,  in  the 
choice  of  sanctions,  has  to  reckon  with  the  opinions,  the  sentiments, 
and  even  with  the  prejudices  of  his  times,  and  the  attempt  to  conform 
to  them  may  land  him  on  the  horns  of  a  dilemma.  Punishments  suf¬ 
ficiently  harsh  to  deter  may  prove  ineffective,  because  they  enlist  the 
sentiments  of  the  community  against,  instead  of  in  favour  of,  the  laws 
of  the  land  and  may  lead  to  dangerous  criminals  being  let  loose  on 


86o 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


society  by  unjust  verdicts  of  acquittal ;  whilst  punishments  which  the 
spirit  of  the  age  will  admit  of,  may  fail  to  make  an  impression  upon 
the  criminal  classes.  Even  those  who  minimize  the  value  of  punish¬ 
ment  as  a  check  on  crime,  generally  make  an  exception  in  favour  of 
capital  sentences  and  own  that  the  fear  of  death,  though  of  nothing 
less  than  death,  will  cause  many  a  prospective  offender  to  desist  from 
the  execution  of  his  criminal  design.  But  a  sickly  sentimentality  of 
the  public  has  led,  in  more  than  one  country,  to  the  abolition  of  capital 
punishment,  though  it  forms  the  most  reliable,  and  in  my  opinion  a 
necessary,  means  of  safeguarding  the  life  of  the  subject.  Again,  the 
progressive  alleviation  of  the  convict’s  lot  by  modern  prison  reforms 
has  deprived  our  chief  penal  instrument  of  much  of  its  terrors  and  is, 
probably,  the  factor  mainly  responsible  for  the  measure  of  truth  which 
there  is  in  the  claim  that  our  penal  law  is  but  an  indifferent  weapon 
in  the  battle  against  crime.  To  steer  a  safe  course  between  the  Scylla 
of  public  opinion  and  the  Charybdis  of  the  criminal  mind  is,  indeed, 
one  of  the  most  difficult  tasks  which  the  modern  statesman  has  to 
accomplish,  and  practical  experience  alone  can  teach  how  to  adjust 
penal  sanctions  in  so  delicate  a  fashion  that,  without  violating  the 
one,  they  operate  upon  the  other. 

The  deterrent  effect  of  the  criminal  law  depends,  however,  not  solely 
upon  its  rigour,  but  largely  upon  the  accuracy  with  which  it  is  ad¬ 
ministered.  Paley  goes  so  far  as  to  assert  that  "the  certainty  of 
punishment  is  of  more  consequence  than  the  severity.”  At  any  rate,  a 
person  who  contemplates  the  commission  of  an  offence  takes  into 
account  not  only  the  actual  punishment  with  which  it  is  visited,  but 
also  the  chances  of  escaping  punishment  altogether.  Indeed,  criminals 
are  only  too  apt  to  flatter  'themselves  that  the  arm  of  the  law  will  not 
be  long  enough  to  reach  them.  Now  "even  a  small  uncertainty  takes 
away  from  the  pain  which  we  fear,  whereas  even  a  great  uncertainty 
does  not  destroy  the  attraction  of  a  pleasure  which  we  are  hoping  for” 
(Ferri).  In  a  somewhat  different  fashion  do  the  prospects  of  dis¬ 
covery  or  concealment  enter  into  the  psychology  of  the  professional 
criminal.  He  reckons  with,  and  accepts,  the  possibility  of  punish¬ 
ment  as  a  risk  incident  to  his  trade,  and  will  thereby  be  deterred  from 
crime  no  more  effectively  than  the  miner  is  deterred  from  working  in 
the  coal-pit  by  the  knowledge  that  he  may  be  killed  by  fire-damp. 
The  professional  criminal  calculates  the  chances  of  being  caught  be- 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


861 


fore  deciding  whether  it  is  worth  his  while  to  undertake  a  certain  job. 
The  greater  the  risk  the  less  will  a  career  of  crime  pay.  Change  the 
risk  into  a  certainty  and  you  create  conditions  under  which  his  busi¬ 
ness  cannot  possibly  be  carried  on.  But  whatever  the  type  of  criminal 
upon  whose  mind  the  sanction  is  to  operate,  its  efficacy  appears  to  be 
the  function  of  two  variables,  its  severity  and  the  probability  of  its 
actual  infliction.  If  we  imagine  the  offences  dealt  with  in  the  criminal 
code  to  be  symbolized  by  one  ideal  or  average  crime,  the  criminal 
classes  as  represented  by  one  typical  criminal,  and  if  we  understand 
by  marginal  deterrent  force  the  strength  of  the  motive  just,  and  only 
just,  sufficient  to  deter  the  typical  criminal  from  the  ideal  crime,  we 
may  express  the  relationship  spoken  of  above  by  the  following  alge¬ 
braic  formula :  d  =  s  •  c,  where  d  stands  for  the  marginal  deterrent 
force  of  punishment,  s  for  its  severity,  and  c  for  the  chance  of  its  in¬ 
fliction.  We  see,  then,  that  the  more  certain  the  state  can  be  of  bring¬ 
ing  offenders  to  book,  the  more  lenient  it  may  be  in  the  construction 
of  its  criminal  code  without  loss  in  security  to  its  subjects.  And  since 
the  risks  which  the  criminal  runs  depend  on  the  chances  that  he  ( i ) 
will  be  caught,  and  (2)  will  be  condemned  if  caught,  it  becomes  ap¬ 
parent  that  a  well-organized  and  vigilant  police,  a  public  opinion 
strongly  on  the  side  of  law  and  order,  a  good  and  clear  criminal  code, 
a  simple  procedure  free  from  technical  intricacies  which  offer  so  many 
loopholes  to  the  guilty,  and  an  efficient  and  incorruptible  judicial 
bench  will  allow  of  a  considerable  mitigation  of  the  penal  system  with¬ 
out  increase  of  crime.  The  uncertainty  of  punishments,  on  the  other 
hand,  must  be  compensated  by  their  greater  severity. 

The  efficacy  of  punishment  as  a  deterrent  depends,  in  the  next  place, 
upon  the  promptitude  with  which  it  follows  the  offence.  Crimes  are 
usually  committed  for  the  sake  of  a  pleasure  close  at  hand,  for  the 
immediate  satisfaction  of  a  desire  both  keen  and  urgent ;  and  fear  of 
an  evil  which  lies  in  the  remote  future  cannot,  then,  be  relied  upon  as 
a  check.  For,  by  a  well-known  law  of  perspective  which  applies  to 
mental  as  well  as  to  ocular  vision,  the  more  distant  an  object  is  the 
smaller  it  appears.  Besides,  futurity  suggests  contingency,  and  how¬ 
ever  illusive  the  association  of  these  two  ideas  often  proves  to  be,  it 
influences  conduct  none  the  less  powerfully  for  that.  Hence  a  pro¬ 
cedure  which  ensures  that  an  offender  is  rapidly  brought  to  trial  and 

that  the  judgment  is  promptly  carried  into  execution,  greatly  enhances 

* 


862 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


the  terror  which  the  criminal  law  inspires.  Tn  this  respect  this  country 
is  far  ahead  of  other  states,  owing  mainly  to  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act, 
which,  though  passed  in  the  interests  of  accused  persons,  has  rendered 
impossible  in  England  those  long  delays  of  the  law  which  detract  so 
materially  from  the  deterrent  force  of  continental  codes. 

We  have  now  evolved  from  the  theory  of  psychological  constraint 
the  supreme  penological  principles  which  govern  the  choice  of  penal 
sanctions  and  the  determination  of  the  level  of  punishments  in  genere, 
that  is  to  say,  the  harshness  or  leniency  of  the  criminal  code  as  a 
whole.  But  we  have  not  deduced  therefrom,  as  some  authorities  of 
repute  have  done,  the  scale  of  punishments  applicable  to  particular 
offences.  We  do  not  subscribe  to  Bentham’s  "rule  of  moral  arith¬ 
metic,”  according  to  which  the  severity  of  the  sanction  must  vary  with 
the  strength  of  the  motive  which  usually  prompts  the  commission  of  a 
certain  type  of  offence.  Nor  can  we  agree  with  Paley  if  he  teaches 
that  the  facility  with  which  any  species  of  crimes  is  perpetrated  and 
the  difficulty  of  discovery  are  among  the  chief  factors  in  the  standardi¬ 
zation  of  punishments.  Graduation  of  punishments  in  accordance 
with  these  rules  would  result  in  a  code  running  counter  to  public 
opinion  and  could  never  fulfil  the  purpose  for  which  it  were  adopted. 
For  criminals,  not  being,  as  a  rule,  trained  lawyers,  are  not  acquainted 
with  the  minute  provisions  of  penal  statutes  and  could  not,  therefore, 
be  influenced  by  a  scale  of  sanctions  elaborated  on  highly  technical 
principles.  What  they  do  expect  and  fear  are  such  punishments  as 
correspond  with  popular  notions  as  to  the  relative  gravity  of  different 
offences.  If  the  essence  of  crime  and  its  distinguishing  mark  from  a 
mere  civil  wrong  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  violates  those  interests,  in¬ 
dividual  or  collective,  which  society  regards  as  vital,  and  if  the  true 
function  of  punishment  is  to  protect  the  community  from  such  viola¬ 
tions,  the  gravity  of  the  offence  from  the  state’s  point  of  view,  i.e.  the 
degree  in  which  it  endangers  public  order,  can  alone  supply  the 
standard  of  penal  sanctions.  This  was  the  opinion  of  Beccaria,  who 
says:  "Crimes  are  only  to  be  measured  by  the  hurt  done  to  society.” 
And  it  is  the  view  adopted,  as  we  have  seen,  by  Feuerbach.  Now  it  is 
quite  possible  that,  in  the  case  of  minor  offences,  a  punishment  which 
appears  appropriate  if  measured  by  the  standard  just  laid  down  may 
prove  an  evil  too  insignificant  to  suppress  them.  Yet  the  state  will 
not  be  justified,  except  within  ill-defined  but  fairly  narrow  limits,  to 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


863 


increase  its  severity  so  as  to  render  the  threat  completely  effective. 
For  considering  the  smallness  of  the  mischief,  the  price  necessary  to 
be  paid  for  its  prevention  would  be  too  dear.  The  legislator  has  here 
to  choose  between  two  evils,  and  even  a  comparatively  frequent  occur¬ 
rence  of  trivial  transgressions  may  well  appear  the  lesser  one.  When, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  rights  to  be  protected  are  so  fundamental  that 
their  enjoyment  must  at  all  costs  be  secured,  we  must  not  complain  of 
the  means,  however  painful,  by  which  alone  that  object  can  be  accom¬ 
plished.  The  existence  and  the  security  of  established  government 
and  the  protection  of  human  life  are  the  two  objects  which,  according 
to  modern  notions,  deserve  to  be  safeguarded  at  all  risks,  and  herein 
lies  the  justification  of  capital  punishment  for  treason  and  murder. 
It  might  be  objected  that  the  measure  of  punishment  which  we  advo¬ 
cate,  cannot  be  applied  in  practice  since  the  degree  in  which  acts  fall¬ 
ing  under  the  same  category  of  crimes  endanger  public  safety,  varies 
within  very  wide  limits.  The  least  touching  of  another  in  anger,  spit¬ 
ting  at  a  man’s  face,  throwing  a  bottle  at  him,  cutting  a  pauper’s  hair 
against  his  will,  giving  a  woman  a  black  eye,  dealing  an  opponent  a 
blow  which  knocks  him  down  or  sends  him  reeling — all  these  mis¬ 
deeds  fall,  in  English  law,  under  the  definition  of  assault.  Again, 
larceny  is  committed  by  the  hungry  wretch  who  steals  a  loaf  of  bread 
from  a  baker’s  shop,  no  less  than  by  the  professional  criminal  who 
takes  a  situation  in  order  to  empty  his  master’s  plate-chest.  But  this 
criticism  does  not  hold  good  since  modern  codes  make  due  allowance 
for  these  possible  variations  by  not  prescribing  a  stereotyped  punish¬ 
ment  for  a  given  class  of  crimes,  but  only  fixing  the  maximum  and  the 
minimum;  and  English  law  shows  even  superior  wisdom  in  having 
done  away,  long  since,  with  minimum  punishments  altogether,  with 
the  result  that  it  has  become  possible  to  award  a  merely  nominal 
punishment  where  the  offence  is  of  a  purely  technical  character.  But 
what  is  it  that  makes  the  same  offence  a  merely  technical  breach  in 
the  one  instance,  a  heinous  crime  in  another?  It  is  the  character  of 
the  offender,  as  expressed  in  the  act.  And  this  is  the  principle  upon 
which  judicial  sentences*  are  measured  out  within  the  latitude  allowed 
by  the  code.  Si  duo  faciunt  idem,  non  est  idem ;  the  difference  lies  in 
their  desires  and  passions,  in  their  dispositions  and  habits,  and  it  is  a 
consideration  of  these  which  guides  the  judge  in  the  exercise  of  his 
discretion  if,  in  the  case  of  two  offenders  charged  with  the  same  crime, 


864 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


he  passes  a  severer  sentence  upon  him  whom  he  judges  to  be  the  more 
serious  menace  to  society.  We  see,  then,  that  the  dangerousness  of 
the  act,  from  the  social  point  of  view,  "the  objective  danger,”  as 
it  may  be  called,  supplies  the  measure  of  the  legal  punishment,  whilst 
the  dangerousness  of  the  actor,  "the  subjective  danger,”  determines 
the  judicial  sentence.  This  distinction  seems  to  underlie  the  maxim 
of  English  criminal  jurisprudence  that  the  criminal  motive  is  irrele¬ 
vant  on  the  issue  "guilty?”  or  "not  guilty?” — but  an  important 
factor  which  has  to  be  taken  into  account  in  awarding  punishment. 
For  the  motive  cannot  alter  the  character  of  the  act,  but  it  supplies 
the  key  to  the  character  of  the  actor.  It  is  because  sanctions  are  fixed 
and  punishments  dispensed  according  to  the  rule  just  explained  that 
criminal  legislation  and  criminal  jurisdiction  generally  conform  to  and 
satisfy  public  opinion.  In  the  popular  mind  the  gravity  of  an  offence 
is  determined  by  the  alarm  which  it  spreads,  i.e.  by  the  degree  in 
which  it  is  felt  by  society  to  endanger  its  peace  and  security;  and 
where  the  moral  and  intellectual  levels  of  the  rulers  and  of  the  ruled 
do  not  materially  differ,  the  popular  and  the  official  index  to  the  meas¬ 
ure  of  punishment  cannot  but  practically  coincide. 

Crimes,  we  have  found,  are  in  their  essence  acts  which  menace,  or 
are  believed  to  menace,  the  existence  of  the  state,  the  peace  of  society 
or  the  fundamental  rights  of  the  individual,  and  the  function  of  pun¬ 
ishment  is  to  prevent  their  commission.  Penal  sanctions  have  been 
found  by  experience  to  be  powerful  instruments  for  shaping  men’s 
conduct ;  but  there  is  nothing  in  them  to  limit  their  application  to 
acts  falling  within  the  above  definition  of  crime.  Indeed,  rulers  have 
discovered  at  an  early  date  how  easily  they  can  be  utilized  for  the 
purpose  of  enforcing  obedience  to  rules  which  they  were  anxious,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  to  impose  upon  their  subjects.  Modern  de¬ 
mocracies,  likewise,  have  only  too  well  learnt  this  lesson,  and  more 
than  one  instance  has  occurred  where  the  public  has  clamoured  for 
the  annexation  of  penal  sanctions  to  legislative  measures  intended  to 
carry  into  effect  some  popular  scheme  of  social  or  economic  reform. 
In  one  way  and  another,  a  certain  amount  ot  heterogeneous  matter 
has  thus  been  introduced  into  the  penal  law  of  every  state.  And  so 
it  has  come  about  that  analytical  jurisprudents  were  at  a  loss  to  find 
any  generic  character  whereby  to  recognize  a  crime,  until  at  last  in 
despair  they  advanced  the  doctrine  that  the  difference  between  crime 


THE  JUSTIFICATION  OF  PUNISHMENT 


865 


and  civil  wrong  is  merely  a  difference  in  procedure,  though  in  formu¬ 
lating  this  view  they  run  counter  to  popular  feeling  which  obstinately 
clings  to  the  association  of  crime  and  public  alarm.  When  once  this 
artificial  conception  of  crime  had  been  adopted,  the  true  object  of 
punishment  could  not  fail  to  be  obscured.  The  truth  is  that  the  ex¬ 
tension  of  penal  sanctions  beyond  their  legitimate  sphere  forces  us  to 
distinguish  between  a  material  and  a  formal  criminal  law.  The  do¬ 
main  of  the  latter  has,  it  is  true,  to  be  defined  by  reference  to  the 
remedies  alone  by  which  it  is  enforced ;  for  it  comprises  all  the  rules 
the  transgression  of  which  is  visited  with  punishment.  Material  crim¬ 
inal  law,  on  the  other  hand,  deals  only  with  those  acts  criminally  sanc¬ 
tioned  which  fall  under  the  definition  of  crime  which  we  have  given. 
It  is  only  by  concentrating  our  attention  upon  criminal  law  in  the 
latter  sense  and  by  adhering  to  the  conception  of  crime  as  implying 
a  disturbance  of  public  order,  that  a  clear  insight  into  the  true  ra¬ 
tionale  of  punishment  can  be  gained. 

The  function  of  punishment  does  not,  however,  exhaust  itself  in 
muzzling  wild  beasts,  to  use  Schopenhauer’s  metaphor.  It  exercises 
in  no  mean  degree  a  moralizing  influence  upon  the  community  at  large. 
Let  the  legislator  penalize  a  line  of  conduct  to  which  current  morality 
is  but  slightly  averse,  wholly  indifferent,  or  even  somewhat  favourably 
inclined,  and  the  immediate  result  will  be  that  the  vast  majority  of 
the  citizens  will  refrain  from  the  prohibited  act,  partly  because  they 
desire  to  avoid  the  sanction,  but  partly  because  in  a  well-ordered 
community  obedience  to  the  commands  of  a  lawfully  constituted  au¬ 
thority  is  recognized  as  a  binding  duty.  Conduct  conforming  to  the 
dictate  of  the  law  thus  becomes  habitual,  and,  habitual  conduct  react¬ 
ing  on  opinion,  a  moral  aversion  to  the  opposite  conduct  may  gradually 
grow  up ;  in  other  words,  what  was  originally  only  a  legal  duty, 
gradually  acquires  the  obligatory  force  of  custom  too.  Besides,  the 
forbidden  act  being  constantly  visited  with  punishment  by  the  state, 
the  feelings  of  repugnance  which  the  mental  picture  of  the  gallows  or 
of  the  broad  arrows  inspires,  are  communicated,  by  a  ready  associa¬ 
tion,  to  the  deed  which  brings  those  horrors  in  its  trail ;  and  that  which 
is  in  the  first  instance  a  source  of  evil  rapidly  comes  to  be  looked  upon 
as  an  evil,  and  finally  as  evil.  In  both  these  ways  a  malum  quia 
prohibitum  is  converted  into  a  malum  per  se,  into  a  moral  wrong. 
The  legislator,  then,  has  it  in  his  power,  by  branding  certain  acts  as 


866 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


crimes,  to  modify,  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations,  the  moral 
sentiments  of  the  community,  and  it  may  safely  be  asserted  that  in 
the  past  the  penal  code  has  been  one  of  the  most  valuable  instruments 
in  the  moral  education  of  the  human  race.  We  have  here  a  partial 
explanation  of  the  reason  why,  though  crime  is  a  creature  of  the  law, 
and  nothing  else,  public  opinion  generally  endorses  the  dispensations 
of  the  criminal  courts.  The  fixed  associations  gradually  formed,  as 
we  have  seen,  in  the  minds  of  the  whole  population  are  one  of  the 
roots  of  that  sense  of  justice  which  imperatively  demands  the  punish¬ 
ment  of  crime.  Upon  the  lower  strata  of  society  into  the  dark  recesses 
of  which  the  ethical  spirit  of  the  age  penetrates  with  difficulty,  the 
operation  of  the  criminal  law,  as  an  engine  of  moral  discipline,  is  even 
more  direct ;  there  are  probably  thousands,  as  Mr.  Rashdall  remarks, 
who  have  scarcely  any  moral  notions  except  those  rudimentary  ideas 
of  right  and  wrong  which  are  inculcated  at  assizes  and  petty  sessions. 

The  conclusion  at  which  we  arrive,  then,  is  that  though  punishment 
cannot  be  regarded  as  a  panacea  for  crime,  it  is  a  valuable  means  of 
social  hygiene  in  the  struggle  against  that  disease  of  the  body  politic. 
Such  efficacy  as  it  possesses,  flows,  in  the  main,  from  its  character  as  an 
agent  of  prevention ;  and  it  discharges  the  functions  of  this  office  in 
two  different  ways :  by  appealing  to  the  fears  of  persons  likely  to 
commit  crimes  and  by  operating  upon  the  habitual  sentiments  of  the 
citizens  in  general. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT  AND  CRIMINAL 

PROCEDURE 

118.  Delays  and  Defects  in  the  Enforcement  of 

Law  in  this  Country1 

When  we  come  to  the  administration  of  criminal  law  and  the  asser¬ 
tion  of  public  right,  which  have  a  more  direct  bearing  upon  the  welfare 
of  the  whole  people  than  the  settlement  of  private  rights,  the  injurious 
delays  caused  by  the  procedure  provided  by  legislative  act  are  greatly 
accentuated.  No  one  can  examine  the  statistics  of  crime  in  this  coun¬ 
try  and  consider  the  relatively  small  number  of  prosecutions  which 
have  been  successful,  without  realizing  that  the  administration  of  the 
criminal  law  is  a  disgrace  to  our  civilization.  Some  of  the  causes  for 
the  lax  administration  of  the  criminal  law  may  be  found  in  the  lenient, 
happy-go-lucky  character  of  the  American  people,  absorbed  in  their 
own  affairs  and  not  fully  realizing  that  this  tremendous  evil  exists  in 
the  community. 

In  criminal  cases  the  jury  system  is  essential  to  secure  the  rights  of 
the  individual  against  possible  abuses  by  the  government ;  but  it  neces¬ 
sarily  causes  delay.  The  grand-jury  system  enforced  by  the  federal 
Constitution,  although  not  required  in  many  of  the  states,  is  another 
cause  of  delay  in  bringing  criminals  to  justice.  Fully  conceding  the 
necessity  of  these  constitutional  restrictions  as  essential  under  our  form 
of  government  to  the  preservation  of  the  liberty  of  the  individual,  we 
still  find  a  large  field  in  which  the  legislature,  by  formulating  proper 
and  expeditious  criminal  procedure,  could  avoid  the  discouraging  and 
disgraceful  delays  that  now  exist,  when  the  criminal  has  the  means  to 
employ  acute  lawyers  who  take  advantage  of  every  technical  necessity 
presented  by  the  rules  obtaining  in  the  trial  of  criminal  causes.  Every 

1  By  William  H.  Taft,  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
An  address  delivered  before  the  Civic  Forum,  New  York  City,  at  Carnegie  Hall, 
April  28,  1908. 


867 


868 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


month  of  delay  in  bringing  a  person  charged  with  crime  to  justice 
inures,  in  his  ultimate  trial,  to  his  benefit.  In  order  to  resist  the 
amiable  tendency  of  human  nature  toward  mercy  and  compassion  for 
the  unfortunate  charged  with  crime,  a  jury  must  be  strongly  imbued 
with  the  right  of  the  public  to  have  crime  punished,  and  the  further 
backward  into  the  past  the  facts  upon  which  the  prosecution  is  based 
are  pursued,  the  less  strongly  does  the  jury  feel  its  obligation  to  the 
public  at  large  to  restrain  future  crime  by  the  punishment  of  offenses 
committed  in  the  distant  past. 

Again,  the  procedure  provided  by  legislative  enactment  for  the  trial 
of  the  crime  itself  too  frequently  affords  the  opportunity  to  prolong  the 
trial,  and  exaggerates  into  undue  prominence  circumstances  having  no 
direct  bearing  upon  the  innocence  or  guilt  of  the  defendant,  but  calcu¬ 
lated  to  divert  the  minds  of  the  jury  from  the  real  issues,  and  ulti¬ 
mately  to  lead  to  a  disagreement  or  to  an  acquittal  of  a  really  guilty 
man.  Of  course  such  a  result  could  hardly  be  obtained  except  by  the 
employment  of  skilled  counsel  of  dramatic  power,  able  to  confuse  the 
minds  of  the  jury,  to  destroy  their  sense  of  proportion,  and  to  make 
them  reach  conclusions  as  jurymen  which,  as  men  in  their  own  busi¬ 
ness,  they  would  repudiate  as  absurd.  The  creation  of  an  atmosphere 
of  fog  and  error  and  confusion  is  only  possible  under  a  system  in  which 
the  power  of  the  court  to  control  its  own  proceedings  and  to  guide  the 
jury  to  some  extent  in  the  way  in  which  it  should  go,  is  so  limited  by 
rules  of  judicial  procedure  laid  down  by  legislative  enactment  that  the 
judge  becomes  nothing  but  a  moderator  of  the  proceedings  and  help¬ 
less  in  the  hands  of  an  acute  and  eloquent  counsel  for  the  defense. 
The  theory  of  legislatures  in  this  country  and,  indeed,  the  popular 
view,  seems  to  be  that  it  somehow  works  for  the  benefit  of  the  public 
that  the  power  of  the  judge  in  the  courtroom  should  be  greatly  reduced 
and  the  power  of  the  jury  greatly  magnified ;  and  we  discover  the 
tendency  to  this  view  more  and  more  as  we  go  toward  the  western 
and  the  newer  states.  The  fact  is,  however,  that  every  expedient 
which  weakens  the  power  of  the  court  and  increases  the  power  of  the 
jury  has  an  effect  wholly  different  from  that  which  is  intended,  and 
increases  the  advantage  enjoyed  by  the  wealthy  when  brought  before 
the  bar  of  a  criminal  court. 

We  have,  as  is  well  understood,  certain  constitutional  restrictions 
as  to  the  procedure  in  criminal  cases,  which  offer  protection  to  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


869 


accused  and  present  difficulties  in  the  proof  of  his  guilt.  But  these 
obtain  as  well  in  the  English  courts  as  in  our  own,  and  their  existence 
does  not  offer  a  reason  for  the  delays  from  which  we  suffer,  for  such 
delays  do  not  exist  in  the  administration  of  justice  in  England.  A 
murder  case  which  in  this  country  is  permitted  to  drag  itself  out  for 
three  weeks  or  a  month,  in  England  is  disposed  of  in  a  day,  two  days, 
or,  at  the  most,  three  days, — certainly  in  less  than  one  fifth  the  time. 
This  is  because  the  English  judges  insist  upon  expedition  by  counsel, 
cut  short  useless  cross-examinations,  and  confine  the  evidence  to  the 
nub  of  the  case.  They  exercise  the  greater  power,  which,  under  the 
common-law  rule,  has  always  been  exercised  by  the  court.  Under 
such  practice  it  would  be  possible  for  the  prosecuting  attorneys  to 
clear  their  dockets ;  as  it  is  now  they  are  utterly  unable  to  do  so. 

At  the  present  time,  in  our  larger  cities,  a  man  who  is  indicted  and 
has  means  with  which  to  secure  bail  is  released  on  bond,  unless  he  is 
confined  for  murder  in  the  first  degree.  The  pressure  upon  the  prose¬ 
cuting  officers  is  for  the  trial  of  those  who  are  in  jail  and  unable  to  give 
bail,  and  as  a  result  of  the  delays  I  have  mentioned,  jail  cases  are  pro¬ 
tracted  and  the  trial  of  those  who  are  released  on  bail  is  postponed 
oftentimes  to  the  indefinite  future,  the  evidence  disappears,  newer  and 
more  sensational  cases  come  on,  and  ultimately  nolles  are  entered  and 
the  indicted  man  escapes.  This  is  one  explanation  why  so  many  crimes 
go  wholly  unpunished. 

Another  cause  of  the  inefficiency  in  the  administration  of  the  crim¬ 
inal  law  is  the  difficulty  of  securing  jurors  properly  sensible  of  the 
duty  which  they  are  summoned  to  perform.  In  the  extreme  tender¬ 
ness  which  the  state  legislatures  exhibit  towards  persons  accused  as 
criminals,  and  especially  as  murderers,  they  allow  peremptory  chal¬ 
lenges  to  the  defendant  far  in  excess  of  those  allowed  to  the  prosecu¬ 
tion.  In  my  own  state  of  Ohio,  for  a  long  time,  in  capital  cases,  the 
law  allowed  the  prosecution  two  peremptory  challenges  and  the  de¬ 
fendant  twenty-three.  This  very  great  discrimination  between  the  two 
sides  of  the  case  enabled  the  defendant’s  counsel  to  eliminate  from  the 
panel  every  man  of  force  and  character,  and  to  assemble  a  collection  in 
the  jury  box  of  nondescripts  of  no  character,  who  were  amenable  to 
every  breeze  of  emotion,  however  maudlin  or  irrelevant  to  the  issue. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  members  of  the  bar  can  escape  the  responsi¬ 
bility  for  the  demoralizing  tendencies  to  which  I  have  referred.  The 


870 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


perversions  of  justice  in  my  own  city  of  Cincinnati  in  1884  led  to  the 
appointment  of  a  committee  of  the  bar  to  visit  the  legislature,  to  urge 
it  to  rid  our  criminal  code  of  procedure  of  those  features  which  placed 
the  prosecution  at  an  unfair  disadvantage  in  the  trial  of  capital  cases. 
The  indignation  of  the  public  at  some  of  the  failures  of  justice  in 
flagrant  cases  of  crime  had  led  to  a  riot  and  to  the  burning  of  our 
courthouse,  and  the  public  finally  became  aroused  to  the  serious  de¬ 
fects  in  the  law.  I  had  the  honor  of  being  one  of  those  who  waited 
upon  the  Judiciary  Committee  of  the  Ohio  legislature  and  preferred 
the  request  that  the  twenty-three  challenges  allowed  to  the  defendant 
be  reduced  to  twelve,  and  that  the  state  be  allowed  a  similar  number ; 
but  we  found  that  there  were  upon  that  committee  lawyers  a  sub¬ 
stantial  part  of  whose  practice  consisted  in  acting  as  counsel  for 
defendants  in  criminal  trials.  When  I  protested  that  twenty-three 
challenges  was  an  outrageous  number,  the  chairman  of  the  committee 
leaned  back  with  the  remark,  "Many  a  time  I  would  have  given  all 
my  fee  to  have  had  twenty-four  challenges  for  the  defendant.”  I  cite 
this  instance  because  I  believe  that  the  unjust  disposition  to  curtail 
the  power  of  judges  is  due  more  or  less  to  the  intervention  of  some 
members  of  the  bar  whose  practice  is  more  or  less  beneficially  affected, 
as  they  conceive,  by  obstacles  thus  created  to  the  due  course  of  justice. 

Another  reason  for  delays  in  the  enforcement  of  criminal  law  is  to 
be  found  in  the  right  of  repeated  appeals  which  are  given  in  criminal 
cases.  The  code  of  evidence,  with  its  complicated  rules  and  numerous 
technical  statutory  limitations  designed  to  favor  the  defendant,  are 
all  used  as  a  trap  to  catch  the  trial  court  in  error,  however  technical, 
upon  which,  in  appellate  proceedings,  a  reversal  of  the  judgment  of 
the  court  below  may  be  obtained.  The  rule  which  generally  obtains 
in  this  country  is,  that  any  error,  however  slight,  must  lead  to  a  re¬ 
versal  of  the  judgment,  unless  it  can  be  shown  affirmatively  that  it  did 
not  prejudice  the  defendant.  The  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  courts 
to  think  that  every  provision  of  every  rule  of  the  criminal  law  is  one 
to  be  strictly  construed  in  favor  of  the  defendant,  and  even  widened 
in  its  effect  in  the  interest  of  the  liberty  of  the  citizen,  has  led  courts 
of  appeal  to  a  degree  of  refinement  in  upholding  technicalities  in 
favor  of  defendants,  and  in  reversing  convictions,  that  renders  one 
who  has  had  practical  knowledge  of  the  trial  of  criminal  cases  most 
impatient. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


871 


In  a  case  carried  on  error  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
the  point  was  raised  for  the  first  time  in  that  court  that  the  record  did 
not  show  an  arraignment  of  the  defendant  and  a  plea  of  not  guilty ; 
and  on  this  ground  the  court,  three  judges  dissenting,  reversed  the 
judgment.  There  was  not  a  well-founded  doubt  of  the  fact  that  the 
defendant  was  arraigned  and  pleaded  not  guilty.  The  record  itself 
raised  a  presumption  that  this  was  the  fact ;  but  the  judgment  was 
reversed,  although  there  was  not  a  pretense  that  the  defendant  had 
suffered  any  injury  at  the  trial  by  reason  of  the  alleged  defect  in  the 
procedure.  When  a  court  of  highest  authority  in  this  country  thus 
interposes  a  bare  technicality  between  a  defendant  and  his  just  con¬ 
viction,  it  may  be  pertinent  to  inquire  whether  some. of  the  laxity  in 
our  administration  of  the  criminal  law  may  not  be  due  to  a  proneness 
on  the  part  of  courts  of  last  resort  to  reverse  judgments  of  conviction 
for  narrowly  technical  error.  There  ought  to  be  introduced  into  the 
statutes  of  every  state  and  of  the  United  States,  in  regard  to  appeals 
in  criminal  cases, — and,  indeed,  in  regard  to  appeals  in  civil  cases, — 
a  provision  that  no  judgment  of  a  trial  court  should  be  reversed  except 
for  an  error  which  the  court,  after  reading  the  entire  record,  can 
affirmatively  say  would  have  led  to  a  different  verdict  and  judgment. 
This  would  do  no  injustice  and  would  end  reversals  for  technicalities. 

And,  now,  what  has  been  the  result  of  the  lax  administration  of 
criminal  law  in  this  country  ?  Criminal  statistics  are  exceedingly  dif¬ 
ficult  to  obtain.  The  number  of  homicides,  the  number  of  lynchings, 
and  the  number  of  executions  one  can  note  from  the  daily  newspapers, 
but  the  number  of  indictments,  trials,  convictions,  acquittals,  or  mis¬ 
trials  it  is  hard  to  find.  Since  1885  in  the  United  States  there  have 
been  131,951  murders  and  homicides,  and  there  have  been  2286  execu¬ 
tions.  In  1885  the  number  of  murders  was  1808.  In  1904  it  had 
increased  to  8482.  The  number  of  executions  in  1885  was  108.  In 
1904  it  was  1 16.  This  increase  in  the  number  of  murders  and  homi¬ 
cides  as  compared  with  the  number  of  executions  tells  a  startling  story. 
As  murder  is  on  the  increase,  so  are  all  offenses  of  the  felony  class, 
and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  they  will  continue  to  increase  unless 
the  criminal  laws  are  enforced  with  more  certainty,  more  uniformity, 
and  more  severity  than  they  are  at  present. 

The  strongest  force  in  our  community  is  public  opinion,  and  fre¬ 
quently  the  existence  of  evils  in  the  community  is  due  to  the  fact  that 


872 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


it  is  not  sufficiently  directed  to  the  evil  in  hand.  The  enormous  dis¬ 
crepancy  between  the  crimes  which  are  committed  and  the  crimes 
which  are  actually  brought  to  trial  is  sufficient  to  show  that  public 
opinion  is  not  alert  enough,  and  is  not  directed  against  prosecuting 
officers  and  judicial  officers  with  sufficient  vigor  to  bring  to  trial  every 
man  guilty  of  an  offense.  In  recent  years  we  have  been  engaged  in 
the  trial  of  wealthy  men  and  corporations  charged  with  violating  the 
antitrust  laws  and  the  antirebate  laws,  or  laws  against  railway-rate 
discrimination.  In  these  trials  there  has  been  brought  home  to  the 
public  the  difficulty  of  securing  the  conviction  of  wealthy  defendants, 
who  employ  acute  counsel  to  take  advantage  of  all  the  technicalities 
and  delays  which  the  present  criminal  procedure  makes  possible.  And 
it  is  quite  possible  that  the  escape  of  wealthy  malefactors  from  just 
punishment  will  bring  home  to  the  people  at  large  the  conviction  which 
ought  to  obtain,  that  by  the  tenderness  toward  the  individual  charged 
with  crime  manifested  by  legislatures  and  lawmakers  during  the  last 
fifty  years  in  this  country,  great  injustice  has  been  caused  to  the  in¬ 
terests  of  the  public,  and  that  the  time  has  come  to  call  a  halt. 

" 

. 

119.  Criminal  Responsibility1 


It  is  the  theory  of  some  philanthropists  and  insanity  experts  that  a 
criminal  offence  is  always  a  symptom  of  mental  disease.  According  to 
their  theory  only  the  innocent  could  ever  be  punished.  If  a  man  robs 
or  kills,  the  fault  is  not  his ;  he  is  the  victim  of  an  hereditary  taint  or 
of  his  unfortunate  environment,  to  be  pitied,  but  not  to  be  blamed  or 
punished.  Such  ultra-pacifistic  condonation  of  all  crime  unfortunately 
prejudices  many  practical  persons  against  much  needed  reforms,  such 
as  the  discriminating  use  of  psychological  tests  of  mental  deficiency  to 
guide  our  dealings  with  delinquents,  young  and  old. 

In  nearly  every  capital  charge  when  other  defences  appear  hopeless, 
insanity  is  put  forward  as  a  last  resort.  The  apprehension  of  abuse 
and  fabrication  of  the  plea  of  insanity,  like  that  of  drunkenness,  reacts 
on  the  law  to  make  it  restrict  the  defence  where  theoretical  justice 
would  demand  it.  A  majority  of  jurisdictions  thus  refuse  to  recognize 

aBy  -Henry  W.  Ballantine,  LL.B.,  Professor  of  Law  in  the  University  of 
Minnesota.  Adapted  from  "  Criminal  Responsibility  of  the  Insane  and  Feeble 
Minded,”  Journal  of  the  American  Institute  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology , 
Vol.  IX,  pp.  485-499. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


87 3* 


uncontrollable  impulse  as  a  defence,  unless  the  defendant  was  unable 
to  distinguish  right  from  wrong.1  In  19  n  a  committee  of  the  New 
York  Bar  Association  recommended  the  statutory  abolition  of  the 
defence  of  insanity,  and  drafted  a  proposal  that  insanity  at  the  time 
of  the  act,  regardless  of  the  condition  at  the  time  of  the  trial,  should 
be  ground  for  confinement  in  an  asylum  for  the  criminal  insane  for  a 
definite  period.2 

In  the  State  of  Washington  in  1909  a  statute  was  enacted,  that  it 
should  be  no  defence  in  criminal  cases  that  the  defendant  was  unable 
by  reason  of  his  insanity,  idiocy,  or  imbecility  to  comprehend  the 
nature  and  quality  of  the  act  committed,  or  to  understand  that  it  was 
wrong  or  that  he  was  afflicted  with  a  morbid  propensity  to  commit 
the  act.  This  statute  was  held  unconstitutional,  because  it  takes  from 
the  jury  the  question  of  criminal  intent,  thereby  violating  the  "due 
process”  and  trial  by  jury  clauses,  on  the  question  of  whether  the 
mental  element  required  by  law  was  present.3 

By  the  Trial  of  Lunatics  Act  (1883)  in  England,  if  at  the  trial  for 
any  offence,  the  evidence  indicates  that  the  defendant  was  insane,  the 
jury  must  find  specially  that  he  was  guilty  of  the  offence  charged,  but 
was  insane  at  such  time.  If  they  so  find,  the  court  is  to  order  him 
kept  in  custody  as  a  criminal  lunatic  until  further  order.  The  Act 
abolishes  the  verdict  of  acquittal  on  the  ground  of  insanity  and  sub¬ 
stitutes  a  special  verdict.  This  prevents  the  plea  of  insanity  from 
being  set  up  upon  any  but  capital  charges. 

In  spite  of  the  disrepute  of  insanity  pleas  and  insanity  experts,  it  is 
likely  that  there  are  many  more  insane,  defective,  and  irresponsible 
persons  who  are  unjustly  convicted  of  crime  than  there  are  guilty 
persons  who  succeed  in  escaping  by  pretended  insanity.  It  requires 
a  good  actor  to  feign  insanity,  whereas  there  are  common  varieties  of 
mental  disease  which  may  escape  ordinary  observation. 

It  is  generally  recognized  that  mere  mental  weakness  or  disorder, 
feeble  mindedness,  degeneracy,  moral  depravity,  or  even  insanity,  do 
not  exempt  from  punishment  where  there  is  capacity  to  know  that  the 

1  Smith  v.  Mississippi ,  95  Miss.  786,  49  So.  945,  27  L.  R.  A.  (N.  S.)  1461  n.; 
Ann.  Cas.  1912  A,  36  n.  Compare  Hankins  v.  State ,  L.R.  A.  1918  D,  794  n. 

2 New  York  State  Bar  Association  Reports ,  Vol.  XXXIII,  p.  401 ;  Vol.  XXXIV, 
pp.  274,  278.  2  Jour.  Crim.  Law  and  Criminology ,  p.  531. 

3Strasburg  v.  State  (1910),  60  Wash.  106,  no  Pac.  1020,  32  L.R. A.  (N.S.) 
1216.  2  Jour.  Crim.  Law ,  pp.  521,  529. 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


£  74 

act  is  wrong.1  The  tests  of  criminal  responsibility  generally  adopted 
in  this  country  are  (i)  the  right  and  wrong  test  (a)  in  the  abstract, 
( b )  as  regards  the  particular  act,  and  ( c )  as  regards  moral  or  legal 
wrong;  and  (2)  the  irresistible  impulse  test.  The  Supreme  Court  of 
New  Hampshire  denies  the  utility  of  any  specific  legal  test,  and  leaves 
it  to  the  jury  as  a  question  of  fact  whether  the  crime  was  the  product 
of  mental  disease.2  Another  test  which  has  been  suggested  is  capacity 
to  conceive  the  specific  intent  which  constitutes  one  of  the  elements 
of  the  particular  crime.3  Delusion  is  not  recognized  by  English  or 
American  courts  as  a  special  test,  but  is  simply  one  form  of  aberration 
which  destroys  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong  or  creates  mistakes  of  fact. 

The  right  and  wrong  test  may  be  applied  in  such  a  way  as  to  con¬ 
vict  almost  any  one  except  a  total  idiot  or  a  raving  maniac,  or  in  such 
a  way  as  "to  allow  very  considerable  fish  of  the  malefactor  species  to 
escape  from  the  judicial  net.”4 5  Juries  exercise  the  actual,  albeit  un¬ 
authorized,  power  to  mitigate  the  rigors  of  the  law  by  refusing  to  con¬ 
vict  and  by  dealing  with  cases  according  to  what  they  feel  to  be  right 
and  just.  It  is  desirable,  however,  for  the  law  to  formulate  intelli¬ 
gently  what  it  is  driving  at. 

Is  the  knowledge  of  the  right  and  wrong  test  a  safe  and  satisfactory 
working  rule?  According  to  the  leading  authority,  McNaghten’s 
case ?  the  main  test  is :  Did  the  accused  at  the  time,  know  that  he  was 
doing  wrong  ?  If  not,  he  cannot  be  convicted.  How  can  this  be  directly 
proved  to  the  jury?  Dr.  H.  Oppenheimer  suggests  the  following:6 

Whilst  the  most  definite  proof  should  be  required  of  the  existence  of 
mental  disease,  when  once  it  has  been  established  that  the  prisoner  is  a 
lunatic,  the  present  presumption  of  law  should  be  reversed ;  and  those 
proved  to  be  of  unsound  mind  should  be  assumed  until  the  contrary  be 
shown,  not  to  know  the  nature  and  quality  of  their  acts  and  that  that  which 
they  were  doing  was  wrong. 

/ 

1 16  Corpus  Juris,  99;  Rogers  v.  State ,  128  Ga.  67,  10  L.  R.  A.  (N.  S.)  999 

n.;  People  v.  Spencer ,  264  Ill.  124;  Commonwealth  v.  Wireback ,  190  Pa.  138, 
42  Atl.  542.  2State  v.  Jones ,  50  N.H.  369,  9  Am.  Rep.  242. 

3  Bishop,  Criminal  Law ,  sect.  381 ;  State  v.  Peel,  23  Mont.  358,  75  A.S.R.  529; 
Keedy,  30  Harv.  Law  Rev.  585. 

4F.  W.  Griffin,  "Insanity  as  a  Defence,”  Journ.  Crim.  Law  &  Crim.,  Vol.  II, 
No.  2  (July,  1910),  p.  18. 

5  4  St.  Tr.  (N.S.)  847;  10  Clark  &  Fin.,  p.  200;  Beale’s  Cases  Cr.  Law,  p.  326. 

6 The  Criminal  Responsibility  of  Lunatics ,  p.  253. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


875 


Thus  it  need  not  be  positively  proved  that  defendant  was  not  able  to 
distinguish  right  from  wrong,  or  that  his  ignorance  extended  to  the  very 
act  of  which  he  is  accused.  If  the  evidence  exhibits  morbid  impulses ; 
if  the  will  is  weakened ;  if  the  intelligence  is  of  low  grade ;  if  there  are 
delusions,  obsessions,  or  other  symptoms  of  mental  disease,  this  evi¬ 
dence  may  raise  a  presumption  of  such  disturbance  of  the  mental  and 
volitional  faculties  as  to  exclude  intelligent  choice  of  conduct. 

According  to  one  of  the  rules  of  McNaghten’s  case ,  if  the  accused 
is  subject  to  partial  insane  delusions,  or  monomania,  he  is  to  be  treated 
as  if  his  delusions  were  true.  Thus  if  A  kills  B,  the  result  is:  (1)  if 
A  did  not  know  that  he  was  doing  wrong,  he  cannot  be  held  account¬ 
able  ;  ( 2 )  if  A  thought  that  B  was  about  to  do  him  grievous  bodily 
harm,  A  is  not  guilty,  for  assuming  the  delusion  to  be  true ;  A  is  simply 
acting  in  self-defence;  but  (3)  if  A  knew  he  were  doing  wrong,  or 
(4)  if  A  acted  under  some  delusion  which,  if  true,  would  not  have 
justified  his  act,  e.g.,  that  B  had  been  intimate  with  A’s  wife ;  in  both 
these  cases  A  would  be  guilty  of  murder.1  The  delusion  would,  how¬ 
ever,  be  available  as  evidence  that  A  did  not  know  that  he  was  doing 
wrong,  even  if  its  truth  would  not  create  such  mistake  of  fact  as  to 
justify  the  act. 

If  A  kills  B  knowing  that  he  is  killing  B,  and  knowing  that  it  is 
illegal  to  kill  B,  but  under  the  insane  delusion  that  the  salvation  of 
the  country  or  of  the  human  race  will  be  obtained  by  getting  himself 
executed  for  the  murder  of  B,  and  that  God  has  commanded  him  to 
get  himself  sacrificed  in  this  way,  his  action  under  this  delusion  will 
not  be  punishable,  if  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong  refers  to  moral 
wrong  rather  than  to  conscious  illegality.  Our  analysis  shows  that 
moral  wrong  is  the  test  which  should  be  adopted  and  this  has  been  so 
held  in  New  York.2  Thus  one  acting  under  the  insane  delusion  that 
God  has  appeared  to  him  and  ordered  the  commission  of  a  crime  by 
him,  is  not  guilty,  although  he  knows  his  act  to  be  contrary  to  law, 
because  he  is  incapable  of  understanding  the  wickedness  of  his  deed 
and  is  not  morally  responsible. 

McNaghten’s  case ,  however,  seems  to  hold  that  in  the  case  of  partial 
delusions  or  monomania,  guilt  should  be  made  to  depend  on  whether 

irrhwaite,  Guide  to  Crim.  Law  &  Proced.,  gth  ed.,  p.  20. 

2People  v.  Schmidt  {1915),  216  N.Y.  324,  no  N.E.  845,  L.R.A.  1916  D, 
5i9,  S27- 


876 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


the  delusion  was  such,  that  if  things  were  as  he  imagined  them  to  be, 
he  would  be  legally  justified  in  the  act.  This  idea  has  been  much 
criticized  on  the  ground  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  partial  insanity, 
and  that  one  cannot  be  affected  with  insane  delusions  on  one  or  more 
particular  subjects  without  affecting  the  entire  mind.  If  one  screw  is 
loose,  the  whole  machine  is  affected.  Accordingly  the  Supreme  Court 
of  Colorado  has  held  that  hallucinations,  delusions,  and  paranoia  may 
relieve  from  responsibility,  not  only  when  the  imaginary  facts,  if  true, 
would  excuse,  but  also,  even  if  the  supposed  grievances  or  wrongs 
would  not  legally  justify  the  act.  The  existence  and  nature  of  the 
delusion,  is  not  the  test  of  responsibility,  but  is  evidence  on  the  ques¬ 
tion  whether  the  mind  is  so  impaired,  unbalanced,  and  beclouded  that 
the  defendant  is  not  a  responsible  moral  agent.  If  the  defendant  is 
laboring  under  delusion  that  he  is  redressing  or  avenging  some  sup¬ 
posed  injury,  or  producing  some  supposed  public  benefit,  the  fact  that 
he  knew  at  the  time  that  he  was  acting  contrary  to  law  should  not 
necessarily  make  him  accountable.1 

If  A  suddenly  stabs  B  under  the  influence  of  impulse,  caused  by 
disease  of  such  a  nature  that  nothing  but  mechanical  restraint  would 
have  prevented  the  stab,  A  is  not  punishable  if  absence  of  power  of 
control  is  recognized  as  a  defence,  but  would  be  punishable  if  a  strong 
motive,  such  as  fear  of  punishment,  might  have  prevented  the  act. 
Only  those  ought  to  be  punished,  whom  the  threat  of  the  law  could  or 
might  have  deterred  from  the  act.2  According  to  the  theory  of  moral 
responsibility,  both  the  right  and  wrong  test,  and  the  irresistible  im¬ 
pulse  test  ought  to  be  recognized.  If  free  will  and  self-restraint  be 
destroyed  by  mental  disease,  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong  is  entirely 
useless.  Will  is  as  necessary  an  element  of  criminal  intent  as  are 
reason  and  judgment.3  Nevertheless,  in  many  jurisdictions  uncontrol¬ 
lable  impulse  is  not  a  defence  unless  the  defendant  was  also  unable  to 
distinguish  right  from  wrong.4  Where  a  man’s  acts  are  automatic  and 
mechanical,  the  explosive  discharge  of  motor  centers  which  the  patient 

1  Ryan  v.  The  People ,  60  Colo.  425,  L.R.A.  1917  F,  646;  Hotema  v.  United 
States,  186  U.S.  413. 

2  Oppenheimer,  Criminal  Responsibility  of  Lunatics,  p.  129. 

3 Parsons  v.  State,  81  Ala.  577,  596,  2  So.  854,  60  Am.  Rep.  193.  See  also 
Hawkins  v.  State,  L.R.A.  1918  D,  784,  794  n.  Keedy,  30  Harv.  Law.  Rev.  546. 

4 Smith  v.  State,  Ann.  Cas.  1912  A,  36  n. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


877 


is  helpless  to  prevent,  the  established  legal  test  of  right  and  wrong 
cannot  be  strictly  applied  without  injustice.  The  controlling  influence 
of  the  inhibitory  centers  is  for  the  time  being  suspended,  and  the  acts 
may  be  the  mechanical  reflex  movements  from  internal  or  external 
suggestion.  The  defendant  is  not  their  author,  but  their  victim.1 

The  recognition  of  the  principle  that  punishment  should  be  in  pro¬ 
portion  to  the  gravity  of  the  crime  and  the  culpability  of  the  criminal, 
indicates  the  basis  of  qualified  responsibility  as  resting  on  the  degree 
of  guilt  of  the  partly  responsible  persons.  Feeble  mindedness,  for 
example,  might  well  be  admitted  as  a  ground  for  discretionary  reduc¬ 
tion  of  penalty,  even  if  not  a  full  defence.  .  .  . 

The  defendant  may  have  some  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  he  may 
be  aware  that  punishment  will  follow  detection,  but  he  may  have  far 
less  appreciation  of  the  consequences  of  his  acts  and  less  self-control 
than  normal  men  or  even  children.  Can  we  say  that  some  knowledge 
of  right  and  wrong  and  self-control,  however  poor  and  imperfect,  is 
sufficient  ?  Suppose  they  are  less  than  in  normal  children  of  seven, 
ten,  or  fourteen  years  of  age?  Want  of  judgment,  lack  of  will,  and 
weakness  of  character  make  the  feeble-minded  and  defective  persons 
an  easy  prey  to  their  passions  and  impulses.  The  law  has  failed  to 
take  sufficient  account  of  the  possibility  of  different  degrees  of  ac¬ 
countability  of  those  not  altogether  innocent.  At  present  the  jury 
fills  up  the  gaps  existing  in  the  law  of  responsibility,  and  takes  into 
consideration  the  moral  elements  and  motives  of  crime.  Those  who 
as  a  result  of  hereditary  taint  and  unfortunate  environment  are  men¬ 
tally  and  morally  degenerate  have  not  full  penal  accountability  with 
normal  men  any  more  than  little  children,  and  if  punishable  at  all, 
are  punishable  in  a  much  less  degree.2 

It  may  be  suggested  in  conclusion,  that  the  main  issue  where  the 
defence  of  insanity  is  raised,  is  whether  the  defendant  is  morally 
accountable  for  his  act,  and  if  so,  to  what  degree?  The  inquiries  to 
be  submitted  for  the  guidance  of  the  jury  in  determining  this  question, 
should  be  in  substance,  these:  (1)  Was  the  defendant  at  the  time  of 
the  commission  of  the  act  afflicted  with  a  disease  of  the  mind,  or  with 

xDr.  Alfred  Gordon,  '’Mental  Deficiency,”  Jour.  Crim.  Law ,  Vol.  IX,  No¬ 
vember,  1918,  pp.  404,  410. 

2 State  v.  Richards  (1873),  39  Conn.  591;  Beale’s  Cases  Cr.  Law,  p.  333; 
Arnold,  Psychology  and  Legal  Evidence,  p.  503. 


878 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


defect  of  intelligence,  comparable  to  that  of  a  child  under  (say) 
fourteen  years?  (2)  Was  the  alleged  criminal  act  so  connected  with 
such  mental  disease  or  defective  intelligence  as  to  be  regarded  as  the 
offspring  or  product  of  it,  either  in  whole  or  in  part?  (3)  Is  the  de¬ 
fendant  to  be  regarded  as  culpable  or  blameworthy,  according  to  the 
two  following  tests :  ( a )  Did  he  know  that  he  was  doing  wrong,  some¬ 
thing  that  he  ought  not  to  do?  ( b )  Had  he  so  far  lost  the  normal 
power  of  volition,  that  he  was  not  able  to  avoid  doing  the  act  in 
question?  (4)  Were  his  intelligence  and  volition  so  far  below  normal, 
that  although  dimly  conscious  that  his  act  was  wrong,  he  was  only 
partially  accountable  ?  Should  his  mental  condition  be  considered  in 
mitigation  of  punishment? 

This  represents  a  modification  of  the  questions  proposed  in  the  case 
of  Parsons  v.  The  State,1  and  differs  from  the  suggestion  of  the  New 
Hampshire  court  in  State  v.  Jones,2  in  inquiring  into  the  moral  quality 
of  the  act,  and  not  merely  whether  it  was  the  direct  product  of  mental 
disorder,  without  regard  to  the  degree  to  which  the  disease  had  pro¬ 
gressed,  or  to  the  extent  to  which  it  had  deprived  him  of  the  knowledge 
of  right  and  wrong,  or  of  the  capacity  for  self-control.  If  the  defend¬ 
ant  has  only  subnormal  capability  for  controlling  his  actions,  he  may 
still  be  regarded  as  punishable  in  some  degree,  in  spite  of  a  somewhat 
low  order  of  intelligence  or  a  somewhat  unbalanced  mentality,  which 
may  also  warrant  custodial  care. 

The  more  corrupt  the  defendant’s  heredity  and  the  more  defective 
his  mentality,  the  less  his  moral  blame  and  punishability,  but  from  the 
social  viewpoint,  the  greater  is  the  necessity  for  sending  him  to  a 
proper  institution.  Neither  imprisonment  nor  probation  and  parole 
are  suited  to  defective  delinquents  who  cannot  become  normal  citizens. 
It  is  accordingly  urged  .  .  .  that  farm  and  industrial  colonies  should 
be  established  so  that  dangerous  morons,  mental  perverts,  and  other 
degenerates  may  be  placed  under  lasting  restraint  and  supervision 
according  to  their  needs.  The  establishment  of  suitable  institutions 
for  the  feeble  minded,  a  half-way  house  between  the  penitentiary  and 
the  insane  asylum,  is  a  crying  need  in  Illinois  and  in  other  states. 
In  the  alienist,  the  farm  colony,  and  the  asylum  lie  society’s  protec¬ 
tion  against  abnormal  persons  rather  than  in  the  criminal  law.  Any 
one  who  by  reason  of  feeble  mindedness,  insanity,  or  other  disorder, 
1 81  Ala.  577.  -50  N.H.  369. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


879 


mental  or  physical,  such  as  leprosy  or  syphilis,  becomes  a  menace  to 
the  safety  or  health  of  the  public,  should  be  confined  for  purposes  of 
quarantine  and  treatment.  This  should  be  done  on  custodial  prin¬ 
ciples  rather  than  on  principles  of  the  criminal  law,  which  deals  with 
definite  acts  of  wrongdoing  rather  than  with  general  conditions  of 
potential  menace. 

120.  Treatment  of  Persons  Awaiting  Court  Action1 

The  prisoner  usually  has  his  first  experience  behind  the  bars  in  a 
jail,  and  that  is  the  time  of  greatest  opportunity  for  his  reclamation. 
He  has  received  a  shock ;  he  realizes  for  the  first  time  the  inevitable 
consequences  of  his  reckless  course.  That  is  when  the  sheriff,  the 
jailer,  the  doctor,  the  psychiatrist,  the  social  worker,  the  religious 
teacher,  and  the  prisoner’s  aid  society  should  unite  their  wisdom  and 
their  efforts  for  his  redemption.  These  propositions  seem  to  the  Com¬ 
mittee  self-evident,  yet  for  fifty  years  past  penologists  and  philan¬ 
thropists  have  expended  their  efforts  chiefly  upon  state  convict  prisons 
and  felons  convicted  of  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors,  and  have 
almost  unanimously  neglected  the  prisoner  awaiting  trial  and  the  short 
term  prisoner. 

Accused  persons  to  be  treated  as  if  innocent.  Under  the  Constitu¬ 
tion  and  laws  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  several  states,  persons 
awaiting  court  action  are  either  actually  innocent  or  presumed  to  be 
innocent,  for  it  is  a  well-established  principle  of  American  jurispru¬ 
dence  that  every  person  accused  of  crime  shall  be  deemed  to  be  inno¬ 
cent  until  he  is  proved  to  be  guilty.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  large 
number  of  the  persons  awaiting  court  action  are  actually  innocent  of 
crime.  In  many  cases  their  innocence  is  plainly  proved  in  court  and 
they  are  acquitted  of  the  charges  made  against  them.  Among  the 
innocent  are  included  witnesses,  who  are  held  for  the  benefit  of  the 
community  in  order  to  insure  their  testimony  in  important  cases; 
insane  persons,  who  are  simply  sick  persons  and  who  ought  to  receive 
hospital  treatment;  and  debtors  of  whom,  notwithstanding  the  gen¬ 
eral  prejudice  against  imprisonment  for  debt,  a  small  number  are  still 
found  in  the  jails  of  a  number  of  our  states. 

1  Adapted  from  the  "  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Treatment  of  Persons 
Awaiting  Court  Action  and  Misdemeanant  Prisoners,”  Hastings  H.  Hart,  Chair¬ 
man,  Proceedings  of  the  Congress  of  the  American  Prison  Association,  1921. 


88o 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


The  multitude  of  persons  awaiting  court  action  includes  also  a  great 
number  of  children  awaiting  action  of  the  juvenile  court.  Most  of 
these  children  await  their  trial  in  their  own  homes  or  in  special  de¬ 
tention  homes  for  children ;  nevertheless,  a  considerable  number  of 
children  under  sixteen  years  of  age  are  still  found  in  county  jails,  not¬ 
withstanding  the  fact  that  the  laws  of  most  of  the  states  prohibit  the 
confinement  of  such  children  in  any  prison  or  other  place  where  adults 
are  confined. 

The  principle  that  persons  awaiting  court  action  are  to  be  treated 
as  if  they  were  innocent  is  by  no  means  a  legal  fiction.  It  is  taken  very 

seriously  in  some  of  its  aspects ;  for  example,  it  is  universally  recog- 

« 

nized  by  sheriffs  and  jail  officers  that  persons  awaiting  trial  cannot 
be  compelled  to  labor.  In  the  New  York  City  jail,  known  as  the 
Tombs  Prison,  six  hundred  or  eight  hundred  prisoners  awaiting  trial 
are  kept  in  idleness,  and  sixty  or  seventy  prisoners  are  transferred  to 
the  Tombs  Prison  from  {he  House  of  Correction  to  do  the  domestic 
work  at  the  Tombs,  while  the  prisoners  awaiting  trial  are  kept  in  de¬ 
moralizing  idleness,  though  a  few  prisoners  awaiting  trial  are  allowed 
to  do  domestic  work  by  their  own  request. 

The  principle  that  persons  awaiting  court  action  are  not  to  be  re¬ 
garded  as  criminals  is  demonstrated  by  the  universal  practice  of 
releasing  such  prisoners,  except  those  accused  of  very  grave  crimes, 
on  bail,  usually  in  a  moderate  sum  not  exceeding  $1000.  This  bail  is 
furnished  in  the  form  of  credit.  A  friend  of  the  prisoner,  or  a  bonding 
company,  simply  executes  a  bond  agreeing  to  pay  this  sum  in  case 
the  prisoner  shall  fail  to  appear  when  his  case  comes  up  for  trial. 
When  such  a  bond  is  given  the  prisoner  goes  at  large  and  transacts 
his  ordinary  business  until  the  time  of  his  trial ;  but  if  he  is  unable  to 
give  bail  he  has  to  go  to  jail. 

Commissioner  Sanford  Bates,  of  the  Massachusetts  Department  of 
Correction,  in  reviewing  this  report  writes : 

As  a  practical  matter  I  think  it  should  be  observed  that  the  necessity  for 
detaining  persons  in  jail  today  is  nothing  like  what  it  was  when  the  jail  sys¬ 
tem  was  inaugurated.  The  improved  methods  of  identification,  the  practice 
of  releasing  respectable  suspects  on  their  own  recognizance,  has  diminished 
the  number  of  decent  people  who  are  obliged  to  stay  in  jail.  Fewer  men 
have  no  friends  who  will  go  surety  for  them.  One  practical  suggestion 
might  be  the  liberal  extension  of  the  bail  system. 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


881 


The  misdemeanant  convict  not  to  be  treated  as  innocent.  The  mis¬ 
demeanant  prisoner  stands  in  a  very  different  relation  to  society  from 
the  prisoner  awaiting  trial.  He  has  been  convicted  of  a  crime  and  is 
sentenced  to  punishment.  He  is  subject  to  labor  without  compensa¬ 
tion  and  to  such  reformatory  discipline  as  the  law  may  provide.  It  is 
the  intention  of  the  law  that  his  treatment  shall  be  such  that  he  shall 
feel  that  the  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard  and  shall  be  deterred  from 
future  wrongdoing. 

While  it  is  true  that  the  misdemeanant  prisoner  is  a  convict,  sen¬ 
tenced  to  punishment,  nevertheless  the  law  discriminates  sharply 
between  the  felon  and  the  misdemeanant.  The  felon  is  sentenced 
ordinarily  to  a  state  prison  for  a  term  ranging  from  one  year  to  life. 
The  misdemeanant  is  regarded  as  a  petty  offender  and  is  sentenced  to 
jail  or  a  house  of  correction,  usually  for  a  period  extending  from  one 
day  to  sixty  or  ninety  days,  and  seldom  exceeding  one  year.  More¬ 
over,  and  more  important,  the  sentence  of  the  misdemeanant  prisoner 
is  often  alternative  between  a  fine  and  imprisonment.  He  is  ordered 
to  pay  a  cash  fine  of  $5,  $10,  or  more — usually  less  than  $50.  This 
fine  may  be  paid  from  his  own  pocket,  from  the  earnings  of  his  wife, 
or  by  some  employer  who  desires  his  services,  but  in  any  case  he  goes 
free,  without  prejudice.  If  he  is  unable  to  pay  his  fine,  he  must  serve 
his  prison  sentence. 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  the  misdemeanant  who  is  sentenced  to 
"fine  or  imprisonment”  is  in  reality  a  prisoner  for  debt,  confined  sim¬ 
ply  because  he  cannot  pay  a  small  sum  of  money.  It  appears  reason¬ 
able,  therefore,  that  while  his  brief  imprisonment  should  be  sharp  and 
deterrent,  it  should  be  less  severe  than  that  of  the  individual  who  has 
been  guilty  of  a  grave  crime. 

The  United  States  Census  of  1910  reported  misdemeanant  prisoners 
serving  sentence  as  follows : 

In  county  jails . 19,861 

In  workhouses  and  houses  of  correction . 9,968 

Total . 29,829 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  exactly  two-thirds  of  these  misdemeanant 
prisoners  were  found  in  county  jails,  where  they  were  confined  usually 
in  immediate  contact  with  prisoners  awaiting  trial,  living  under  identi¬ 
cal  conditions,  eating  the  same  food,  breathing  the  same  air,  and 
associating  in  idleness  with  the  same  individuals. 


882 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


The  paradox  of  the  county  jail.  There  is  an  extraordinary  paradox 
in  the  conditions  of  the  county  jail :  given  the  same  building,  the  same 
room,  the  same  surroundings,  the  same  food,  the  problem  is  to  make 
the  confinement  for  one  inmate  a  humane  and  easy  detention,  and  for 
the  other  a  severe  and  bitter  punishment.  You  say,  it  cannot  be  done ; 
but  it  is  done  every  day  in  the  county  jails  throughout  America.  The 
trouble  is  that  we  give  the  humane  and  easy  detention  to  the  wrong 
prisoner,  and  we  give  the  severe  and  bitter  punishment  to  the  wrong 
prisoner.  The  tramp,  the  vagabond,  the  petty  thief  does  not  mind  bad 
air,  filthy  floors,  or  even  verminous  bedding.  Give  him,  in  winter, 
a  warm  room,  plenty  of  food,  a  pack  of  old  greasy  cards,  and  the 
society  of  others  like  himself,  and  he  is  entirely  happy.  He  may  even 
steal  to  get  back  into  these  comfortable  conditions.  But  take  a  man 
of  cleanly,  decent  habits,  with  some  remnants  of  self-respect.  Confine 
him  in  a  steel  cage  where  he  is  exhibited  like  a  wild  beast  in  a  me¬ 
nagerie  ;  give  him  no  change  of  underclothing  (as  in  the  Cook  County 
jail  in  Chicago ;  and  the  New  Haven  jail  in  1917)  ;  lock  him  up  from 
dark  until  daylight  with  five  other  prisoners  in  a  cell  6^x10  feet ; 
compel  him  to  listen  day  and  night  to  the  vilest  language  in  the  thief’s 
dialect,  and  to  associate  in  idleness  with  the  worst  criminals  in  the 
county.  Can  you  conceive  of  a  worse  punishment  for  a  fairly  decent 
man  this  side  of  perdition?  Yet  this  is  the  prisoner  who  is  entitled  to 
humane  and  comfortable  detention. 

Physical  condition  0)  jails.  As  we  have  previously  remarked,  the 
efforts  to  improve  the  physical  conditions  of  jails  have  thus  far  reached 
only  a  part  of  the  county  jails.  One  reason  for  this  is  the  fact  that 
most  of  the  jails  are  built  of  stone,  brick,  iron,  and  steel — enduring 
materials.  County  commissioners  have  been  very  unwilling  to  tear 
down  a  solid  fireproof  buildiftg  and  erect  an  entirely  new  structure. 

Another  obstacle  in  the  way  of  improvement  of  jail  architecture 
has  been  the  fact  that  very  few  architects  have  made  a  specialty  of 
jail  planning.  Jail  architecture  has  fallen  very  largely  into  the  hands 
of  a  few  professional  jail-building  firms.  Some  of  these  firms  have 
had  a  sincere  desire  to  build  good  jails,  but  they  have  been  compelled 
to  bear  in  mind  constantly  the  commercial  side  of  the  business — what 
kind  of  a  jail  can  be  sold. 

In  the  minds  of  the  sheriffs  the  chief  point  has  been  security — what 
kind  of  jail  construction  will  hold  the  prisoner  most  securely  with  the 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT  883 

smallest  amount  of  watchfulness  on  the  part  of  the  jailer.  The  in¬ 
genuity  of  jail  builders  has  been  expended  upon  tool-proof  material, 
locking  devices,  double  doors,  and  steel  cages,  all  of  which  are  expen¬ 
sive.  County  commissioners  have  demanded  low  costs,  and  these  have 
been  secured  by  arranging  for  two  to  six  prisoners  in  each  cell,  by 
constructing  inside  corridors  three  to  six  feet  wide,  and  by  minimizing 
bathrooms,  hospitals,  departments  for  women,  and  rooms  for  witnesses. 

Intelligent  sheriffs  and  inspectors  have  urged  the  location  of  cells 
against  the  outside  walls,  but  they  have  been  vigorously  opposed  be¬ 
cause  of  increased  cost  of  construction  and  greater  liability  to  escape. 

The  worst  reproach  of  the  jail  system  is  that  prisoners  awaiting 
trial,  many  of  whom  are  young  and  inexperienced,  are  exposed  to  the 
most  debasing  and  corrupting  influences,  and  are  kept  under  such 
conditions  as  destroy  their  self-respect  and  subject  them  to  blackmail 
and  persecution  by  prison  associates  after  they  are  discharged. 

Elimination  oj  enforced  association  in  idleness.  The  real  crux  of 
the  jail  question  is  how  to  obviate  the  pernicious  effects  of  the  enforced 
association  of  prisoners  of  all  sorts  and  descriptions  in  idleness.  Sec¬ 
retary  A.  G.  Byers,  of  Ohio,  for  many  years  advocated  the  separate 
detention  of  each  jail  prisoner  in  his  own  cell,  on  the  ground  that  the 
evils  of  separate  confinement  were  infinitely  less  than  the  evils  of 
corrupt  association.  He  secured  the  enactment  of  a  law  compelling 
the  separate  confinement  of  prisoners  in  the  jails  of  Ohio  whenever 
the  construction  of  the  jail  would  permit,  and  he  secured  the  erection 
of  at  least  ten  or  twelve  jails  with  this  end  in  view.  A  similar  law  was 
enacted  in  the  state  of  Minnesota.  The  separate  confinement  of  pris¬ 
oners  prevailed  in  a  good  many  individual  jails  in  different  parts  of  the 
country.  There  is  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  this  plan,  but  it  is 
practically  impossible  to  secure  its  enforcement  because  of  the  popular 
prejudice  against  solitary  confinement. 

The  Vermont  plan.  The  plan  which  has  been  pursued  in  Vermont 
for  the  last  thirteen  years  is  one  under  which  the  sheriff  finds  outside 
jobs  for  nearly  all  of  his  prisoners — both  those  awaiting  trial  and 
those  serving  sentence — in  the  vicinity  of  the  jail  and  usually  with 
farmers,  but  often  with  other  employers.  The  prisoner  goes  to  work 
in  the  morning  with  his  dinner  bucket,  does  a  day’s  work,  and  returns 
at  night  to  sleep  in  the  jail.  He  remains  constantly  in  the  custody  of 
the  sheriff,  who  collects  his  wages,  deducts  one  dollar  per  day  to 


884 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


4 


reimburse  the  county  for  his  keep,  and  pays  the  remainder  to  his 
dependent  family,  or,  on  discharge,  to  the  prisoner  himself.  Under 
Sheriff  Tracy’s  plan  multitudes  of  prisoners  have  paid  their  way, 
earned  money  for  their  families,  and  have  made  good  after  discharge. 
The  number  of  escapes  has  been  negligible — less  than  one-fourth  of 
one  per  cent.  The  plan  is  approved  by  the  community. 

Outline  of  a  Jail  Program 

1.  The  elimination  of  political  control  of  county  jails.  This  may 
be  done  by  relieving  the  county  sheriffs  of  responsibility  for  jail  ad¬ 
ministration  and  making  the  jails  state  institutions  administered  by  a 
state  board ;  by  making  jailers  and  turnkeys  state  employes,  selected 
under  civil  service  rules  solely  on  account  of  fitness;  and  by  estab¬ 
lishing  schools  for  their  training. 

2.  The  exclusion  of  all  sentenced  prisoners  who  are  sick  people, 
insane  patients,  debtors,  and  children  from  county  jails,  and  commit¬ 
ting  misdemeanants  to  state  farms  or  district  farms  under  state  control 
with  reformatory  discipline  and  a  state  parole  system.  The  state 
probation  system  should  be  extended  to  misdemeanant  convicts  as 
well  as  felons. 

3.  Use  the  jails  exclusively  for  prisoners  awaiting  trial  and  provide 
suitable  day  employment,  either  in  the  jail,  as  is  done  in  some  of  the 
jails  of  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  and  Pennsylvania,  or  by 
finding  employment  by  day  at  normal  wages  outside  of  the  jail  but 
near  at  hand  so  that  the  prisoner  shall  return  each  night  and  sleep  in 
the  jail,  and  shall  be  under  the  constant  supervision  of  the  jailer,  in 
accordance  with  the  Vermont  plan  which  has  been  successfully  pursued 
for  fifteen  years  by  Sheriff  Tracy  at  Montpelier,  and  has  been  fol¬ 
lowed  with  some  modification  with  a  fair  degree  of  success  in  Windham 
County,  Connecticut,  Newcastle  County,  Delaware,  and  Rock  County, 
Wisconsin.  The  prisoner  awaiting  trial  cannot  be  compelled  to  work, 
but  should  be  permitted  to  work  under  the  conditions  above  suggested. 
Those  who  decline  to  work  should  be  separately  confined  in  their  own 
cells,  as  is  required  by  law  in  Minnesota  and  Ohio,  in  order  to  prevent 
corrupt  association. 

4.  Development  of  rational  plans  for  the  intellectual  and  moral  im¬ 
provement  of  jail  prisoners  in  such  ways  as  were  developed  twenty 


PROBLEMS  OF  LAW  ENFORCEMENT 


885 


years  ago  by  the  John  L.  Whitman  Improvement  Association,  com¬ 
posed  of  prisoners  in  the  jail  in  Cook  County,  Chicago.  It  is  suggested 
that  such  plans  might  be  developed  by  trained  jailers  through  co¬ 
operation  with  such  local  organizations  as  the  Salvation  Army,  the 
Young  Men’s  Christian  Association,  the  Young  Women’s  Christian 
Association,  the  Knights  of  Columbus,  the  Young  Men’s  Hebrew 
Association,  the  churches,  or  other  similar  organizations. 

5.  Provision  for  suitable  religious  services  and  recreational  plans, 
which  should  be  directed  by  intelligent  and  judicious  people  approved 
by  the  jailer. 

6.  Systematic  and  adequate  plans  for  obtaining  employment  for 
discharged  prisoners. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY1 
121.  The  Nature  of  the  Problem2 
Men,  Machinery,  and  Environment 

Primitive  man  interprets  all  things  in  terms  of  benevolent  or  malevo¬ 
lent  powers  whom  he  must  placate  and  to  whose  caprices  he  is  sub¬ 
jected.  His  laws  are  gifts  or  revelations  of  the  gods.  The  need  for 
obeying  them  is  to  avoid  the  wrath  of  the  gods,  which  will  fall  in¬ 
discriminately  upon  the  community  which  harbors  those  who  do  not 
walk  in  the  divinely  dictated  path.  He  seeks  to  understand  things  in 
terms  of  personalities,  with  wants  and  desires  and  wills  like  his  own. 
This  interpretation  of  the  occurrences  of  nature  in  terms  of  personality 
is  closely  connected  with  a  primitive  instinct  to  hurt  somebody  or  be 
avenged  on  something  when  things  go  wrong  or  one  is  crossed  in  his 
purposes  or  meets  with  some  injury.  The  fundamental  instinct  of 
pugnacity  reacts  at  once  to  such  situations.  In  the  Mosaic  Law,  if  an 
ox  gored  a  man,  the  ox  must  be  surrendered  for  vengeance.  In  Athens, 
when  a  man  was  killed  by  the  falling  of  a  branch  from  a  tree,  the 
kinsmen  of  the  dead  man  solemnly  chopped  down  the  tree.  At  Rome, 
if  a  domestic  animal  did  any  injury,  the  owner  must  surrender  the 
animal  to  the  vengeance  of  the  injured  person  or  pay  a  penalty  for 
standing  between  the  latter  and  his  vengeance.  When  Huckleberry 
Finn’s  father  stumbled  over  the  barrel,  he  promptly  kicked  it  in  re¬ 
sponse  to  the  same  instinct.  So  when  things  go  wrong  in  the  conduct 
of  government  or  in  the  administration  of  justice,  the  instinct  of  pug¬ 
nacity  is  aroused  and  the  public  cries  out  for  some  one  to  be  hurt. 
The  general  assumption  is  that  legal  and  political  miscarriages  resolve 

1By  Roscoe  Pound,  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Law  of  Harvard  University, 
from  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland  (pp.  559-611).  Reports  of  the  Cleveland 
Foundation  Survey  of  the  Administration  of  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland, 
Ohio.  Directed  and  edited  by  Roscoe  Pound  and  Felix  Frankfurter.  Copyright, 
1922,  by  the  Cleveland  Foundation.  .  2 Ibid.  pp.  559-566. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  887 


themselves  into  a  matter  of  good  men  and  bad  men,  and  that  the  task 
is  a  simple  one  of  discovery  and  elimination  of  the  bad. 

In  truth,  the  matter  is  much  more  complicated  than  the  bad-man 
interpretation  of  social  and  political  difficulties  assumes.  Formerly 
men  sought  to  understand  history  by  means  of  a  great-man  interpreta¬ 
tion.  History  was  the  record  of  the  actions  of  great  men  and  of  the 
effects  of  those  actions  upon  social  life.  Just  now  there  is  a  certain 
tendency  to  revive  this  interpretation,  and  we  need  not  ignore  the  role 
of  great  men  while  insisting  that  much  else  needs  to  be  taken  into 
account  in  order  to  understand  history.  In  the  same  way  we  need  not 
ignore  the  importance  of  good  men  in  public  life  in  insisting  that  much 
besides  individual  character  needs  to  be  considered  in  order  to  under¬ 
stand  the  shortcomings  of  legal  administration.  For  good  men,  if  we 
get  them,  must  work  in  the  social  and  political  and  legal  environment, 
and  with  the  legal  and  administrative  tools  of  the  time  and  place. 
Often  the  best  of  men  are  the  victims  of  bad  or  inadequate  machinery 
which  impedes  their  earnest  efforts  to  do  right,  and  may  even  con¬ 
strain  them  to  do  what  they  would  not  do  freely.  Easy-going  men  of 
the  best  intentions  become  caught  in  the  machinery  and  unconsciously 
become  part  of  it.  Moreover,  bad  men,  who  commonly  make  their 
livelihood  by  their  wits,  are  unceasingly  vigilant  to  take  advantage  of 
the  opportunities  which  outworn  or  inadequate  machinery  affords. 
Where  the  good  are  impeded  by  the  instruments  with  which  they  must 
work,  the  easy-going  give  up  the  effort  to  do  things  in  the  face  of  the 
impediments  and  let  the  machinery  take  its  own  course.  Thus  the 
well-intentioned  drift.  It  may  be  that  the  ill-intentioned  secretly  give 
direction  to  the  drift ;  but  quite  as  likely  the  drift  is  to  their  profit  be¬ 
cause  they  are  watchful  to  make  it  so.  We  may  not  expect  that  any 
political  or  legal  machinery  may  be  conceived  which  will  eliminate 
wholly  these  opportunities  for  the  ill-intentioned  to  warp  the  adminis¬ 
tration  of  justice  to  their  desires.  Yet  some  machinery  increases  them 
both  in  number  and  in  possibilities,  and  it  must  be  our  study  to  devise 
political  and  legal  apparatus  which  will  reduce  them  to  a  minimum 
in  both  respects. 

Along  with  the  bad-man  interpretation  there  commonly  goes  a  faith 
in  legal  and  political  machinery  in  and  of  itself :  a  belief  that  when 
anything  goes  wrong  we  should  appeal  at  once  to  the  legislature  to  put 
a  law  upon  the  statute  book  in  order  to  meet  the  special  case,  and  that 


888 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


if  this  law  is  but  abstractly  just  and  reasonable,  it  will  in  some  way 
enforce  itself  and  set  things  to  rights.  We  must  enact  the  one  perfect 
law  for  each  special  situation  and  put  out  of  office  the  one  bad  man 
who  perverts  its  operation.  Then  all  will  go  well  of  itself.  This  faith 
in  legal  and  political  machinery  is  inherited  and  deep  rooted.  Our 
Puritan  forbears  abhorred  subordination  of  one  man’s  will  to  another’s, 
and  sought  rather  a  "consociation”  in  which  men  should  be  "with  one 
another,  not  over  one  another.”  They  conceived  of  laws  as  guides  to 
the  conscience  of  the  upright  man,  and  believed  that  if  laws  were  in¬ 
herently  just  and  reasonable,  they  would  appeal  to  his  conscience  as 
such,  and  secure  obedience  by  their  own  moral  weight.  This  mode  of 
political  thought,  well  suited  to  the  needs  of  a  small  group  of  God¬ 
fearing  men  founding  a  commonwealth  in  a  new  world,  is  ill  suited  to 
the  needs  of  the  enormous  groups  of  men  of  all  sorts  and  conditions 
who  jostle  each  other  in  the  city  of  today.  There,  law  must  be  more 
than  a  guide  to  conscience.  There,  men  will  not  take  time  to  consider 
how  the  intrinsic  right  and  justice  of  the  law  appeal  to  their  con¬ 
sciences,  but  in  the  rush  and  turmoil  of  a  busy,  crowded  life,  will 
consider  offhand  how  far  the  law  may  be  made  an  instrument  of 
achieving  their  desires.  There,  good  laws  will  not  enforce  themselves, 
and  the  problem  of  enforcement  becomes  no  less  urgent  than  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  providing  just  laws.  The  administrative  element  in  justice,  the 
work  of  adjusting  the  application  of  law  to  individual  cases  with  an 
eye  to  their  unique  features,  becomes  increasingly  important  as  we  be¬ 
come  more  crowded  and  division  of  labor  becomes  more  minute,  and 
individual  wants  and  desires  and  claims  come  in  contact  or  conflict  at 
more  points.  In  this  administrative  element  of  justice  men  count  for 
more  than  machinery.  And  yet  even  here  men  must  work  with  ma¬ 
chinery.  The  output  is  a  joint  product  of  man  and  of  machine,  and 
it  often  happens  that  what  the  man  does  is  dictated  by  the  capacity 
or  the  exigencies  of  the  machine  quite  as  much  as  that  what  the  ma¬ 
chine  does  is  dictated  by  the  will  of  the  man. 

Not  the  least  significant  discoveries  of  modern  psychology  are  the 
extent  to  which  what  we  have  called  free  will  is  a  product,  not  a  cause, 
and  the  extent  to  which  what  we  take  to  be  reasons  for  actions  are  but 
rationalizings  of  what  we  desire  to  do  and  do  on  different  grounds. 
In  the  administration  of  justice  there  are  many  subtle  forces  at  work 
of  which  we  are  but  partially  conscious.  Tradition,  education,  physi- 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  889 


cal  surroundings,  race,  class  and  professional  solidarity,  and  economic, 
political,  and  social  influence  of  all  sorts  and  degrees  make  up  a  com¬ 
plex  environment  in  which  men  endeavor  to  reach  certain  results  by 
means  of  legal  machinery.  No  discussion  simply  in  terms  of  men  or 
of  legal  and  political  machinery,  or  of  both,  ignoring  this  complex  en¬ 
vironment,  will  serve.  At  whatever  cost  in  loss  of  dramatic  interest 
or  satisfying  simplicity  of  plan,  we  must  insist  on  plurality  of  causes 
and  plurality  and  relativity  of  remedies. 

Both  the  bad-man  interpretation  and  the  faith  in  legislation  and 
new  laws  as  remedies  illustrate  a  common  mode  of  thinking  which 
seeks  to  explain  everything  by  some  one  cause  and  to  cure  every  ill  by 
some  one  sovereign  remedy.  It  is  not  hard  for  an  ordinary  person 
to  toss  up  one  ball  so  as  to  keep  it  in  motion  continually.  With  prac¬ 
tice  one  may  learn  to  keep  two  going  at  once.  But  only  a  skilful 
juggler  can  so  handle  three  or  more  at  once.  In  the  same  way  the 
ordinary  man  may  think  of  one  cause  or  one  remedy  at  a  time,  but 
finds  difficulty  in  bearing  two  in  mind  at  once  and  leaves  consideration 
of  larger  numbers  to  the  expert.  All  branches  of  knowledge,  theoreti¬ 
cal  and  practical,  have  had  to  contend  with  this  difficulty  of  holding 
all  the  factors  of  problems  in  mind  at  once.  In  all  ages  men  have 
sought  to  avoid  this  difficulty  by  searching  for  some  solving  word  or 
phrase  or  some  ultimate  idea  or  some  universal  cure-all,  whereby  to 
escape  the  hard  task  of  thinking  of  many  things  in  one  connection. 
The  several  sciences  have  struggled  with  the  desire  for  a  simplification 
that  covers  up  difficulties  instead  of  overcoming  them  and  the  assump¬ 
tion  of  one  cause  for  each  phenomenon  and  one  remedy  for  each  ill. 
Neither  the  science  of  law  nor  the  science  of  politics  has  escaped  this 
struggle  to  master  complex  facts  by  giving  them  a  fictitious  appear¬ 
ance  of  simplicity.  Nor  has  the  quest  for  the  simple  and  easy  been 
more  successful  in  these  sciences  than  elsewhere.  There  was  no  easy 
royal  road  to  learning,  and  there  is  no  simple  and  easy  popular  road 
to  an  understanding  of  law  and  government  and  mastery  of  the  difficult 
problems  which  each  presents.  The  citizen  who  seeks  such  understand¬ 
ing  must  expect  to  study  hard  and  think  critically  and  to  keep  many 
things  in  mind  at  once  while  framing  his  judgments.  He  must  expect 
those  judgments  to  be  largely  tentative  and  relative  to  time,  place,  and 
circumstances.  Much  as  he  might  like  to  rest  in  some  formula  and 
to  believe  in  the  efficacy  of  some  one  specific  applied  once  for  all,  he 


8  c;o 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


will  find  such  hope  as  futile  as  the  quest  for  the  philosopher’s  stone  or 
the  fountain  of  youth  or  the  one  cure  for  all  bodily  ills  in  which  men 
formerly  engaged  in  a  like  hope  of  achieving  an  easy  simplicity.  At 
the  very  outset  we  must  give  up  the  search  for  a  single  explanation  of 
the  inadequacy  to  its  purposes  of  punitive  justice  in  action,  and  hence 
must  give  up  the  search  for  any  single  simple  remedy. 

We  may  say  that  the  three  chief  factors  in  the  administration  of 
justice  are — (i)  the  men  by  whom  it  is  administered;  (2)  the  ma¬ 
chinery  of  legal  and  political  institutions  by  means  of  which  they 
administer  justice ;  and  (3)  the  environment  in  which  they  do  so.  One 
who  surveys  the  workings  of  a  legal  system  with  these  three  things  in 
mind  will  not  go  far  wrong.  Yet  his  picture  will  not  be  complete  nor 
wholly  accurate.  He  must  take  account  also  of  certain  practical  limi¬ 
tations  and  practical  difficulties  inherent  in  the  legal  ordering  of  human 
relations,  at  least  by  any  legal  institutions  thus  far  devised.  The  pur¬ 
poses  of  law,  as  we  know  them,  and  the  very  nature  of  legal  institutions 
as  we  have  received  and  fashioned  them,  involve  certain  obstacles  to 
our  doing  everything  which  we  should  like  to  do  by  means  thereof,  and 
even  to  our  doing  well  many  things  which  we  have  been  trying  to  do 
thereby  for  generations.  These  practical  limitations  on  effective  legal 
action  explain  much  that,  on  a  superficial  view,  is  ascribed  to  bad 
men  or  bad  legal  machinery.  Hence  a  fourth  factor  must  be  added, 
namely,  (4)  the  bounds  within  which  the  law  may  function  effectively 
as  a  practical  system. 


The  Function  of  Law 

We  look  to  the  physical  and  biological  sciences  to  augment  the 
means  of  satisfying  human  wants  and  to  teach  us  to  conserve  those 
means.  We  look  to  the  social  sciences  to  teach  us  how  we  may  apply 
those  means  to  the  purpose  of  satisfying  human  wants  with  a  mini¬ 
mum  of  friction  and  waste.  Thus  we  may  think  of  the  legal  order  as 
a  piece  of  social  engineering ;  as  a  human  attempt  to  conserve  values 
and  eliminate  friction  and  preclude  waste  in  the  process  of  satisfying 
human  wants.  That  part  of  the  whole  process  of  social  engineering 
which  has  to  do  with  the  ordering  of  human  relations  and  of  human 
conduct  through  applying  to  men  the  force  of  politically  organized 
society  is  the  domain  of  law. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  89 1 

To  illustrate  the  function  of  law  we  may  consider  the  common  case 
where  large  numbers  of  persons  seek  admission  to  a  baseball  game  or 
seek  to  buy  tickets  at  a  theater.  If  each  individual  is  left  to  himself,, 
and  in  his  desire  to  get  to  the  ticket  window  first  and  procure  the  best 
seat  pushes  and  shoves  his  individual  way  thereto  as  his  strength  and 
disposition  dictate,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  few  will  be  served  in  any 
reasonable  time.  When  all  seek  to  be  served  at  once,  no  one  may  be 

served.  In  the  endeavor  of  each  to  secure  his  individual  desire  in  a 

♦ 

crowd  of  fellow-men  seeking  likewise  to  secure  their  individual  desires, 
he  and  they  are  sure  to  lose  much  of  what  they  seek  through  the  fric¬ 
tion  of  a  disorderly  scramble,  the  waste  of  time  and  temper  in  trials 
of  individual  strength  and  persistence,  and  the  inability  to  do  business 
at  the  window  in  the  push  and  shove  of  an  unregulated  crowd  after 
they  get  there.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  crowd  is  lined  up,”  is  or¬ 
dered,  and  is  required  or  persuaded  to  pursue  an  orderly  course  to  the 
window  and  await  each  his  turn,  friction  is  done  away  with,  time  is 
conserved,  waste  of  effort  is  eliminated,  and  each  may  secure  freely 
and  with  comparative  speed  what  he  seeks  to  the  extent  that  there 
are  accommodations  available.  If  there  are  not  enough  for  all,  yet 
all  are  satisfied  so  far  as  may  be  with  a  minimum  of  waste.  The  task 
of  the  law  is  similar.  It  is  one  of  making  the  goods  of  existence  go  as 
far  as  possible  in  the  satisfaction  of  human  wants  by  preventing  fric¬ 
tion  in  the  use  of  them  and  waste  in  the  enjoyment  of  them,  so  that 
where  each  may  not  have  everything  that  he  wants  or  all  that  he 
claims,  he  may  at  least  have  all  that  is  reasonably  possible. 

In  this  process  of  adjusting  and  ordering  human  relations  and  or¬ 
dering  human  conduct  in  order  to  eliminate  friction  and  waste,  the 
legal  order  deals,  on  the  one  hand,  with  controversies  between  individ¬ 
uals.  Where  their  claims  or  wants  or  desires  overlap,  it  seeks  to  har- . 
monize  and  reconcile  those  claims  or  wants  or  desires  by  a  system  of 
rules  and  principles  administered  in  tribunals.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
has  to  deal  with  certain  acts  or  courses  of  conduct  which  run  counter 
to  the  interests  involved  in  the  existence  and  functioning  of  civilized 
society.  Civilized  society  rests  upon  the  general  security,  including 
the  general  safety,  the  general  health,  peace,  and  good  order,  and  the 
security  of  the  economic  order.  It  is  maintained  through  social  insti¬ 
tutions,  domestic,  religious,  and  political.  It  involves  a  moral  life  and 
hence  calls  for  protection  of  the  general  morals.  In  a  crowded  world 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


892 

it  presupposes  conservation  of  social  resources.  It  is  a  society  of  in¬ 
dividual  human  beings,  and  hence  its  proper  functioning  presupposes 
the  moral  and  social  life  of  each  individual  therein  according  to  its 
standards.  These  social  interests,  as  they  may  be  called,  namely,  the 
general  security,  the  security  of  social  institutions,  the  general  morals, 
the  conservation  of  social  resources,  and  the  individual  moral  or  social 
life,  are  threatened  by  the  anti-social  acts  or  anti-social  conduct  or 
even  anti-social  mode  of  life  of  particular  individuals.  To  restrain 
these  persons,  to  deter  others  who  might  follow  their  example,  to  cor¬ 
rect  such  anti-social  mode  of  life  as  far  as  possible,  and  to  give  effect 
to  these  social  interests,  the  law  imposes  a  system  of  duties  upon  all 
persons  in  society,  enforced  through  administrative  and  police  super¬ 
vision,  through  prosecution,  and  through  penal  treatment.  The  part 
of  the  legal  system  that  defines  these  duties  and  prescribes  how  they 
shall  be  enforced  by  means  of  prosecutions  and  penal  treatment  is  the 
criminal  law. 

It  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  law  is  only  one  of  many 
regulative  agencies  whereby  human  conduct  is  ordered  for  the  securing 
.of  social  interests.  The  household,  religious  organizations,  fraternal 
organizations,  social,  professional,  and  trade  organizations  may  oper¬ 
ate  also,  through  their  internal  discipline,  to  order  the  conduct  of  their 
members  and  to  restrain  them  from  anti-social  conduct.  In  the  past 
these  organizations,  whereby  the  force  of  the  opinions  of  one’s  fellow- 
members  may  be  brought  to  bear  upon  him,  have  played  a  large  part 
in  maintaining  civilized  society.  When  the  law  seems  to  break  down 
in  whole  or  in  part  we  may  well  inquire,  among  other  things,  how  far 
it  is  supported  or  is  interfered  with  by  some  or  all  of  these  organiza¬ 
tions,  and  how  far  they  also  or  some  of  them  must  bear  the  blame. 
Obviously  the  number  and  vitality  of  these  organizations  in  any  so¬ 
ciety  and  the  manner  in  which  and  ends  for  which  they  are  conducted 
are  important  items  in  the  environment  of  the  administration  of  justice. 

To  think  of  the  legal  order  functionally,  in  terms  of  engineering,  is 
especially  important  in  such  a  survey  as  the  present.  Here  we  are  not 
concerned  with  legal  rules  in  their  abstract  nature,  but  in  their  con¬ 
crete  workings.  We  are  not  seeking  to  know  what  the  law  is.  We  seek 
to  know  what  the  legal  system  does  and  how  what  it  does  measures  up 
to  the  requirements  of  the  ends  for  which  it  is  done.  Hence  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  the  law  must  be  before  us  as  a  critique  of  its  achievements  in 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  893 

action,  not  some  criterion  drawn  from  the  law  itself.  When  the  growth 
of  a  city  makes  the  old  mechanical  structures,  set  up  by  the  engineers 
of  the  past,  inadequate  to  the  wants  or  needs  of  the  present,  and  calls 
for  newer  and  larger  and  better  structures  of  mechanical  engineering, 
we  do  not  judge  the  old  structures  by  their  conformity  to  some  ideal 
plan,  conceived  before  they  were  built,  but  by  their  results  in  action. 
We  do  not  abuse  the  men  who  devised  nor  those  who,  for  the  time 
being,  are  operating  the  old  structures.  We  set  out  to  plan  and  build 
new  and  better  structures.  No  less  science,  no  less  preliminary  study, 
no  less  thorough  preparation,  no  less  intelligently  directed  effort,  is 
required  when  the  growth  of  a  city  calls  for  new  structures  in  the  way 
of  social  engineering.  In  each  case  the  question  is  one  of  achieving 
certain  practical  ends  in-  view  of  the  means  at  hand,  the  structures  of 
the  past,  the  ingenuity  of  the  engineers,  the  limitations  of  science,  and 
the  strengtji  or  feebleness  of  the  public  desire  that  those  ends  be  met. 
In  each  case,  also,  the  preliminary  survey  must  take  account,  in  the 
first  instance,  of  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome. 

Difficulties  in  the  administration  of  justice,  with  which  we  must 
reckon  in  order  to  appraise  intelligently  the  workings  of  any  particular 
legal  or  judicial  organization,  are  partly  in  the  very  subject  matter. 
That  is,  they  are  wider  than  time  and  place  and  inhere  in  all  attempts 
to  order  human  conduct  and  human  relations  by  the  force  of  politically 
organized  society — at  least  through  any  legal  or  administrative  ma¬ 
chinery  which  thus  far  the  wit  of  man  has  been  able  to  devise.  Also 
they  are  partly  in  the  times  in  which  justice  is  administering.  That  is, 
they  are  wider  than  the  place  which  we  may  be  investigating  and 
are  involved  in  the  general  condition  of  legal  science  in  the  civilized 
world,  in  a  particular  time,  the  ideas  as  to  the  purpose  of  law  enter¬ 
tained  generally  in  that  time,  and  the  general  attitude  of  the  time 
toward  law  and  government.  Again,  they  are  partly  in  the  system 
that  has  come  down  to  us  from  a  past  in  which  it  was  constructed 
under  and  to  cope  with  different  conditions  and  hence  is  ill-adapted  to 
the  social,  economic,  and  political  environment  in  which  it  must  oper¬ 
ate.  Finally  they  may  be  partly  in  purely  local  conditions.  Accord¬ 
ingly,  I  shall  consider  these  difficulties  under  four  heads :  ( 1 )  Inherent 
difficulties;  (2)  general  difficulties;  (3)  American  difficulties;  (4) 
local  difficulties.1 

1  The  chapter  on  local  difficulties  is  not  included  in  this  book  of  Readings. — Ed. 


894 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


122.  Inherent  Difficulties1 
Dissatisfaction  with  the  Administration  of  Justice 

Dissatisfaction  with  the  administration  of  justice  is  as  old  as  law. 
As  long  as  there  have  been  laws  and  lawyers  conscientious  men  have 
believed  that  laws  were  but  arbitrary  technicalities,  and  that  the  at¬ 
tempt  to  govern  the  relations  of  men  in  accordance  with  them  resulted 
largely  in  injustice.  From  the  beginning  others  have  asserted  that, 
so  far  as  laws  were  good,  they  were  perverted  in  their  application,  and 
that  the  actual  administration  of  justice  was  unequal  or  inefficient  or 
corrupt.  In  the  first  stage  of  legal  development  one  of  the  Greek 
Seven  Sages  said  that  'Taws  are  like  spiders’  webs,  wherein  small 
flies  are  caught,  while  the  great  break  through.”  In  the  history  of 
Anglo-American  law  discontent  has  an  ancient  and  unbroken  pedigree 
from  Anglo-Saxon  times  to  the  present.  The  Anglo-Saxorf  law  books 
are  full  of  complaint  that  the  king’s  peace  is  not  well  kept,  that  justice 
is  not  done  equally,  and  that  great  men  do  not  readily  submit  to  the 
law  which  is  appropriate  to  them.  Later  the  Mirror  of  Justices  con¬ 
tains  a  list  of  155  abuses  in  legal  administration.  Still  later  Wyclif 
complains  that  lawyers  try  causes  "by  subtlety  and  cavilations  of 
law,”  and  not  by  the  gospel,  "as  if  the  gospel  were  not  so  good  as 
pagan’s  law.”  In  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  it  was  complained  that  good 
laws  were  obstructed  in  their  operation  by  interpretations  in  the  courts 
in  which  "everyone  that  can  color  reason  maketh  a  stop  to  the  best 
law  that  is  beforetime  devised.”  James  I  sent  for  the  judges  on  com¬ 
plaint  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  argued  to  them  that  "the 
law  was  founded  upon  reason  and  that  he  and  others  had  reason  as 
well  as  the  judges.”  In  the  eighteenth  century  there  was  complaint 
that  the  bench  was  occupied  by  "legal  monks,”  utterly  ignorant  of 
human  nature  and  of  the  affairs  of  men.  After  the  Revolution  the 
administration  of  justice  in  America  was  the  subject  of  bitter  at¬ 
tacks.  Many  judges  were  impeached,  not  for  any  crimes  or  misde¬ 
meanors,  but  because  the  whole  administration  of  justice  was  suspected 
or  objected  to.  The  movement  for  an  elective  bench  which  swept  over 
the  United  States  about  the  middle  of  the  last  century  grew  out  of 
these  attacks.  In  England  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 


1Roscoe  Pound,  in  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland ,  pp.  567-582. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  895 

attacks  on  the  courts  were  hardly  less  bitter,  as  the  reader  of  Dickens 
may  readily  verify.  In  our  own  time  the  agitation  for  recall  of  judges 
and  recall  of  judicial  decisions  was  strong  less  than  a  decade  ago. 
We  must  not  allow  this  perennial  and  perhaps  inevitable  discontent 
with  all  law  to  blind  us  to  serious  and  well-founded  complaints  as  to 
the  actual  operation  of  the  legal  system  today.  But  it  may  give  us  a 
needed  warning  that  some  discontent  is  unavoidable,  that  we  may  not 
hope  to  obviate  all  grounds  of  complaint,  and  that  we  must  begin  by 
taking  account  of  the  inherent  difficulties,  because  of  which  a  certain 
amount  of  dissatisfaction  must  always  be  discounted. 

Inherent  Difficulties  in  all  Justice  according  to  Law 

1.  The  mechanical  operation  oj  legal  rules.  To  a  certain  extent 
legal  rules  must  operate  mechanically  and  the  most  important  and 
most  constant  cause  bf  dissatisfaction  with  all  law  in  all  times  grows 
out  of  this  circumstance.  A  proper  balance  between  strict  rule  and 
magisterial  discretion  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  the 
science  of  law.  Throughout  the  history  of  law  men  have  turned  from 
an  extreme  of  the  one  to  an  extreme  of  the  other  and  then  back  again, 
without  being  able  to  attain  a  satisfactory  administration  of  justice 
through  either.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  strict  law  of  the  late  medieval 
courts  in  England,  or  as  in  the  maturity  of  American  law  in  the  last 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  men  put  their  faith  in  strict  confine¬ 
ment  of  the  magistrate  by  minute  and  detailed  rules  or  by  a  mechani¬ 
cal  process  of  application  of  law  through  logical  deduction  from  fixed 
principles.  By  way  of  reaction  at  other  times  men  pin  their  faith  in 
a  wide  magisterial  power  to  fit  justice  to  the  facts  of  the  particular 
case  through  judicial  discretion,  as  in  the  administrative  tribunals  of 
sixteenth-  and  seventeenth-century  England,  the  executive  and  legis¬ 
lative  justice  of  the  American  colonies,  and  the  executive  boards  and 
commissions  which  are  setting  up  in  this  country  today  on  every  hand. 
But  these  reactions  are  followed  by  new  periods  of  fixed  rules.  Thus 
experience  seems  to  show  that  the  mechanical  action  of  law  may  be 
tempered  but  may  not  be  obviated. 

We  seek  to  administer  justice  according  to  law.  That  is,  we  seek 
just  results  by  means  of  a  machinery  of  legal  rules.  But  a  certain 
sacrifice  of  justice  is  involved  in  the  very  attainment  of  it  through 


8g6 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


rules,  which  yet  are,  on  the  whole,  the  best  and  most  certain  method 
of  attaining  it  which  we  have  discovered.  Legal  rules  are  general 
rules.  In  order  to  make  them  general  we  must  eliminate  what  by  and 
large  are  the  immaterial  elements  of  particular  controversies.  This 
would  be  of  no  consequence  if  all  cases  were  alike,  or  if  it  were  possible 
to  foresee  or  to  reckon  precisely  the  degree  in  which  actual  cases  ap¬ 
proach  or  depart  from  the  types  which  the  law  defines.  In  practice 
they  approximate  to  these  types  in  endless  gradations,  the  one  often 
shading  into  the  next,  so  that  in  difficult  cases  choice  of  the  proper 
type  is  not  easy  and  often  gives  rise  to  judicial  disagreement.  As  a 
result,  when  the  law  eliminates  what  are  taken  to  be  immaterial  factors 
in  order  to  frame  a  general  rule,  it  can  never  avoid  entirely  elimination 
of  factors  which  may  have  an  important  bearing  upon  some  particular 
controversy. 

There  are  three  ways  of  meeting  this  difficulty :  One  is  to  provide  a 
judicial  or  magisterial  dispensing  power,  or  even  a  series  of  devices 
for  introducing  discretion  into  the  administration  of  justice.  In  Amer¬ 
ican  administration  of  criminal  justice  today  there  is  a  long  series  of 
such  devices,  one  imposed  upon  the  other.  There  is  the  discretion  of 
the  police  as  to  who  and  what  shall  be  brought  before  the  tribunals. 
There  are  wide  and  substantially  uncontrolled  powers  in  prosecuting 
attorneys  to  ignore  offenses  or  offenders,  to  dismiss  proceedings  in 
their  earlier  stages,  to  present  them  to  grand  juries  in  such  a  way  that 
no  indictment  follows,  to  decline  to  prosecute  after  indictment,  or  to 
agree  to  accept  a  plea  of  guilty  of  a  lesser  offense.  There  is  the  power 
of  the  grand  jury  to  ignore  the  charge.  There  is  the  power  of  the 
trial  jury  to  exercise  a  dispensing  power  through  a  general  verdict  of 
not  guilty.  Next  comes  judicial  discretion  as  to  sentence  or  suspen¬ 
sion  of  sentence  or  mitigation  of  sentence.  Finally  there  is  adminis¬ 
trative  parole  or  probation,  and  in  the  last  resort  executive  pardon. 
All  these  involve  uncertainty — opportunity  for  perversion  of  the  de¬ 
vice  intended  to  meet  exceptional  cases  into  a  means  of  enabling  the 
typical  offender  to  escape,  and  a  sometimes  intolerable  scope  for  the 
personal  equation  of  the  official. 

A  second  way  of  meeting  this  difficulty  is  to  eliminate  all  discretion 
and  seek  to  meet  exceptional  cases  by  an  elaborate  series  of  legal  ex¬ 
ceptions  and  qualifications  and  detailed  provisos.  But  human  fore¬ 
sight  has  not  proved  equal  to  foreseeing  all  the  varieties  of  exception 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  897 

for  which  provision  must  be  made,  and  the  attempt  to  cover  every¬ 
thing  by  special  provisions  makes  the  legal  system  cumbrous  and 
unworkable. 

Hence  the  law  usually  ends  by  adopting  a  third  method  of  com¬ 
promising  between  wide  discretion  and  over-minute  law  making.  But 
in  order  to  reach  a  middle  ground  between  rule  and  discretion  some 
sacrifice  of  flexibility  of  application  to  individual  cases  is  necessary. 
And  this  sacrifice  cannot  go  far  without  a  danger  of  occasional  injus¬ 
tice.  Moreover,  the  slightest  sacrifice,  necessary  as  it  is,  makes  legal 
rules  appear  arbitrary  and  brings  the  application  of  them  more  or  less 
into  conflict  with  the  moral  ideas  of  individual  citizens.  Whenever, 
in  a  complex  and  crowded  society  containing  heterogeneous  elements, 
groups  and  classes  and  interests  have  conflicting  ideas  of  justice,  this 
cause  of  dissatisfaction  is  likely  to  become  acute.  The  individual 
citizen  looks  only  at  single  cases,  and  measures  them  by  his  individual 
sense  of  right  and  wrong.  The  courts  must  look  at  cases  by  types  or 
classes  and  must  measure  them  by  what  is  necessarily  to  some  extent 
an  artificial  standard.  If  discretion  is  given  the  judge,  his  exercise  of 
it  may  reflect  the  view  of  the  element  of  society  from  which  he  comes 
or  with  which  he  associates.  If  his  hands  are  tied  by  law,  he  may  be 
forced  to  apply  the  ethical  ideas  of  the  past  as  formulated  in  common 
law  and  legislation.  In  either  event  there  are  many  chances  that 
judicial  standards  and  the  ethical  standards  of  individual  critics  will 
diverge.  Herein  lies  a  fruitful  cause  of  popular  dissatisfaction  with 
the  administration  of  justice. 

2.  Difference  in  rate  of  progress  between  law  and  public  opinion. 
In  seeking  to  maintain  the  interests  of  civilized  society  through  public 
administration  of  justice  we  risk  a  certain  sacrifice  of  those  interests 
through  corruption  or  the  personal  prejudices  of  magistrates  or  in¬ 
dividual  incompetency  of  those  to  whom  administration  is  committed. 
To  make  this  risk  as  small  as  possible,  to  preclude  corruption,  restrain 
personal  prejudices,  and  minimize  the  scope  of  incompetency,  the  law 
formulates  the  moral  ideas  of  the  community  in  rules  and  requires  the 
tribunals  to  apply  those  rules.  So  far  as  they  are  formulations  of 
public  opinion,  legal  rules  cannot  exist  until  public  opinion  has  be¬ 
come  fixed  and  settled,  and  cannot  well  change  until  public  opinion 
has  definitely  changed.  It  follows  that  law  is  likely  to  lag  somewhat 
behind  public  opinion  whenever  the  latter  is  active  and  growing. 


898 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Many  devices  have  been  resorted  to  in  order  to  make  the  law  more 
immediately  sensitive  and  responsive  to  public  opinion.  Some  of  these 
are  frequent  and  copious  legislation  upon  legal  subjects,  deprofes- 
sionalizing  the  practice  of  law  by  opening  it  to  all,  regardless  of 
education  and  special  training,  putting  of  the  courts  into  politics 
through  making  judges  elective  for  short  terms,  conferring  wide  powers 
upon  juries  at  the  expense  of  courts,  setting  up  of  administrative 
tribunals  with  large  jurisdiction,  to  be  exercised  in  a  non- technical 
fashion,  and  recall  of  judges  or  of  judicial  decisions.  The  first  four 
of  these  expedients  were  tried  in  the  fore  part  of  the  last  century,  and 
many  jurisdictions  carried  some  or  even  all  of  them  to  extremes.  The 
last  three  have  been  urged  in  the  present  century,  and  a  tendency  to 
commit  enforcement  of  law  to  administrative  agencies  and  tribunals 
has  gone  far.  But  none  of  them  has  succeeded  in  its  purpose,  and 
many  of  them  in  action  have  subjected  the  administration  of  justice 
not  to  public  opinion,  but  to  influences  destructive  of  the  interests 
which  law  seeks  to  maintain.  We  must  recognize  that  this  difficulty 
in  justice  according  to  law  may  be  minimized,  but  not  wholly  obviated. 
We  must  make  a  practical  compromise.  Experience  has  shown  that 
public  opinion  must  affect  the  administration  of  justice  through  the 
rules  by  which  justice  is  administered  rather  than  through  direct  pres¬ 
sure  upon  those  who  apply  them.  Interference  with  the  uniform  and 
scientific  application  of  them,  when  actual  controversies  arise,  intro¬ 
duces  elements  of  uncertainty,  caprice,  and  deference  to  aggressive 
interests  which  defeat  the  general  security.  But  if  public  opinion 
affects  tribunals  through  the  rules  by  which  they  decide,  as  these  rules, 
once  established,  stand  till  abrogated  or  altered,  it  follows  that  the 
law  will  not  respond  quickly  to  new  conditions.  It  will  not  change 
until  ill  effects  are  felt — often  not  until  they  are  felt  acutely.  The 
economic  or  political  or  moral  change  must  come  first.  While  it  is 
coming  and  until  it  is  so  definite  and  complete  as  to  affect  the  law 
and  formulate  itself  therein,  divergence  between  law  and  a  growing 
public  opinion  is  likely  to  be  acute  and  to  create  much  dissatisfaction. 
We  must  pay  this  price  for  the  certainty  and  uniformity  demanded  by 
the  general  security.  It  should  be  said,  however,  that  consciousness 
of  this  inherent  difficulty  easily  leads  lawyers  to  neglect  the  impor¬ 
tance  of  reducing  this  difference  in  rate  of  growth  between  law  and 
public  opinion  so  far  as  possible. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  899 


3.  Popular  underestimation  of  the  difficulties  in  administering  jus¬ 
tice.  Much  popular  dissatisfaction  with  justice  according  to  law  arises 
from  a  popular  assumption  that  the  administration  of  justice  is  an 
easy  task  to  which  anyone  is  competent.  If  the  task  of  law  may  be 
described  in  terms  of  social  engineering,  laws  may  be  compared  to  the 
formulas  of  engineers.  They  sum  up  the  experience  of  many  courts 
with  many  cases  and  enable  the  magistrate  to  apply  that  experience 
without  being  aware  of  it.  In  the  same  way  the  formula  enables  the 
engineer  to  utilize  the  accumulated  experience  of  past  builders  even 
though  he  could  not  of  himself  work  out  a  step  in  its  evolution.  The 
lay  public  are  no  more  competent  to  construct  and  apply  the  one 
formula  than  the  other.  Each  requires  special  knowledge  and  special 
preparation.  But  the  notion  that  any  one  is  competent  to  understand 
what  justice  requires  in  the  intricate  controversies  and  complicated  re¬ 
lations  of  a  modern  urban  community  leads  to  all  manner  of  obstacles 
to  proper  standards  of  training  for  the  bar,  to  low  standards  of  qualifi¬ 
cation  for  judicial  office,  and  to  impatience  of  scientific  methods  and  a 
high  measure  of  technical  skill.  This  notion  was  especially  strong  in 
pioneer  America,  and  its  influence  may  be  seen  in  extravagant  powers 
of  juries,  lay  judges  of  probate,  and  legislative  or  judicial  attacks  upon 
the  authority  of  precedents  in  most  of  the  States  of  th^  South  and 
West.  In  criminal  law  it  is  usually  manifest  in  legislation  committing 
the  fixing  of  penalties  to  trial  juries,  not  perceiving  that  the  trier,  in 
order  to  determine  the  facts  fairly,  ought  not  to  know  certain  things 
without  which,  on  the  other  hand,  the  penalty  cannot  be  fixed  intelli¬ 
gently.  Popular  judgments  are  reached  by  labeling  acts  according  to 
certain  obvious  characteristics.  A  judge,  on  the  other  hand,  must 
examine  carefully  into  all  the  details  of  the  act,  the  conditions,  internal 
and  external,  under  which  it  was  done,  its  motive  and  its  conse¬ 
quences.  Hence  his  judgment  may  well  differ  from  that  of  the  man 
in  the  street,  although  they  apply  the  same  moral  standard.  The 
man  in  the  street  is  likely  to  regard  this  disagreement  as  proof  of 
defects  in  the  administration  of  justice.  Yet  courts  do  not  sit  to 
register  his  judgment  on  such  data  as  he  has  but  to  do  what  the 
sober  judgment  of  the  community  would  dictate  upon  the  basis  of 
all  the  facts.  .  # 

It  is  not  generally  realized  how  much  the  public  is  interested  in 
maintaining  the  highest  scientific  standards  in  the  administration  of 


900 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


justice.  It  is  the  most  certain  protection  against  corruption,  prejudice, 
class  feeling,  and  incompetence.  Publicity  is  important,  but  it  is  im¬ 
possible  to  invoke  public  indignation  in  every  case,  nor  is  it  always 
evoked  in  the  right  cases.  Our  main  reliance  must  be  put  in  the  train¬ 
ing  of  bench  and  bar,  whereby  the  judges  form  habits  of  seeking  and 
applying  principles  when  called  upon  to  act,  and  the  lawyers  are  able 
to  subject  their  decisions  to  expert  criticism.  The  latter  is  especially 
important.  The  daily  criticism  of  trained  minds,  the  knowledge  that 
nothing  which  does  not  conform  to  the  principles  and  received  doc¬ 
trines  of  scientific  law  will  escape  notice,  will  do  more  than  any  other 
agency  for  the  every-day  purity  and  efficiency  of  courts  of  justice. 
But  as  things  are  today  the  best  trained  element  of  the  bar  more  and 
more  does  its  chief  work  out  of  court,  and  wholly  avoids  criminal 
cases.  Thus  in  our  large  cities  the  most  effective  check  upon  the 
administration  of  justice  becomes  inoperative,  and  this  special  dif¬ 
ficulty  is  added  to  the  inherent  difficulty  involved  in  public  reluctance 
to  admit  the  necessity  of  scientific  justice  and  the  training  of  bench 
and  bar  which  it  presupposes. 

4.  Popular  impatience  of  restraint.  Law  involves  restraint  and 
regulation  with  the  sheriff  and  his  posse  or  the  police  force  in  the 
background  to  enforce  it.  As  a  society  becomes  more  complex,  as  it 
carries  further  the  division  of  labor,  as  it  becomes  more  crowded  and 
more  diversified  in  race  and  in  habits  of  life  and  thought,  the  amount 
of  restraint  and  regulation  must  increase  enormously.  But  however 
necessary  and  salutary  this  restraint,  men  have  never  been  reconciled 
to  it  entirely ;  and  most  American  communities  are  still  so  close  to  the 
frontier  that  pioneer  hostility  toward  discipline,  good  order,  and  obe¬ 
dience  is  still  often  a  latent  instinct  in  the  better  class  of  citizens. 
The  very  fact  that  the  restraint  of  the  legal  order  is  in  some  sort  a 
compromise  between  the  individual  and  his  fellows  makes  the  in¬ 
dividual,  who  must  abate  some  part  of  his  activities  in  the  interest  of 
his  fellows,  more  or  less  restive.  In  a  time  of  absolute  democratic 
theories  this  restiveness  may  be  acute.  The  feeling  that  each  individ¬ 
ual,  as  an  organ  of  the  sovereign  democracy,  is  above  the  law  which 
he  helps  to  make,  fosters  disrespect  for  legal  methods  and  legal  in- 
stitutions^and  a  spirit  of  resistance  to  them.  Thus  the  administration 
of  justice  according  to  law  is  made  more  difficult.  Whether  the  law 
is  enforced  or  is  not  enforced,  dissatisfaction  will  result. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  901 


Popular  impatience  of  restraint  is  aggravated  in  the  United  States 
by  political  and  legal  theories  of  "natural  law.”  As  a  political  doc¬ 
trine,  they  lead  individuals  to  put  into  action  a  conviction  that  con¬ 
formity  to  the  dictates  of  the  individual  conscience  is  a  test  of  the 
validity  of  a  law.  Accordingly,  jurors  will  disregard  statutes  in  per¬ 
fect  good  faith,  as  in  the  Sunday-closing  prosecutions  in  Chicago  in 
1908.  In  the  same  spirit  a  well-known  preacher  wrote  not  long  since 
that  a  prime  cause  of  lawlessness  was  enactment  of  legislation  at 
variance  with  the  law  of  nature.  In  the  same  spirit  a  sincere  and,  as 
he  believed,  a  law-abiding  labor  leader  declared  in  a  Labor  Day  ad¬ 
dress  that  he  would  not  obey  mandates  of  the  courts  which  deprived 
him  of  his  natural  "rights.”  In  the  same  spirit  the  business  man  may 
regard  evasion  of  statutes  which  interfere  with  his  carrying  on  business 
as  he  chooses  as  something  entirely  legitimate.  In  the  same  spirit 
public  officials  in  recent  addresses  have  commended  administrative 
violation  of  the  legal  rights  of  certain  obnoxious  persons,  and  one 
of  the  law  officers  of  the  federal  government  has  publicly  approved  of 
mob  violence  toward  such  persons.  Such  examples  at  the  top  of  the 
social  scale  do  not  make  for  respect  for  law  at  the  bottom. 

5.  Inherent  limitations  on  effective  legal  action.  There  are  certain 
limitations  inherent  in  the  administration  of  justice  through  legal 
machinery — at  least,  through  any  of  which  we  have  knowledge — 
which  prevent  the  law  from  securing  all  interests  which  ethical  con¬ 
siderations  or  social  Meals  indicate  as  proper  or  even  desirable  to  be 
secured.  Five  such  limitations  are  of  much  importance  in  connection 
with  the  criminal  law.  These  are :  ( 1 )  Difficulties  involved  in  ascer¬ 
tainment  of  the  facts  to  which  legal  rules  are  to  be  applied,  so  that, 
especially  in  certain  types  of  case,  it  is  difficult  to  discover  the  offender 
or  there  is  danger  of  convicting  the  innocent;  (2)  the  intangibleness 
of  certain  duties  which  morally  are  of  much  moment  but  legally  defy 
enforcement,  as,  for  instance,  many  duties  involved  in  the  family 
relation  to  which  courts  of  domestic  relations  or  juvenile  courts  seek 
to  give  effect;  (3)  the  subtlety  of  certain  modes  of  inflicting  injury 
and  of  modes  of  infringing  important  interests  which  the  legal  order 
would  be  glad  to  secure  effectively  if  it  might;  (4)  the  inapplicability 
of  the  legal  machinery  of  rule  and  sanction  to  many  human  relations 
and  to  some  serious  wrongs,  and  (5)  the  necessity  of  relying  upon 
individuals  to  set  the  law  in  motion. 


902 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Three  of  the  limitations  just  enumerated  call  for  some  notice.  In¬ 
trigue  may  seriously  disturb  the  peace  of  a  household.  The  subtle 
methods  by  which  grievous  wrongs  may  be  done  in  this  way  have  been 
the  theme  of  playwright  and  novelist  for  generations.  One  court, 
indeed,  has  tried  the  experiment  of  enjoining  a  defendant  from  flirting 
with  a  plaintiff’s  wife.  But  the  futility  of  legal  interference  in  such 
cases  is  obvious  and  is  generally  recognized.  In  no  other  cases  is 
self-redress  so  persistently  resorted  to  nor  so  commonly  approved  by 
the  public.  Again,  many  cases  are  too  small  for  the  ponderous  ma¬ 
chinery  of  prosecution  and  yet  may  involve  undoubted  and  serious 
wrongs  to  individuals.  How  to  deal  with  the  small  annoyances  and 
neighborhood  quarrels  and  petty  depredations  and  small-scale  preda¬ 
tory  activities  which  irritate  the  mass  of  an  urban  population  but  do 
not  seem  to  involve  enough  to  justify  the  expensive  process  of  the 
law  is  by  no  means  the  least  of  the  problems  of  the  legal  order  in  the 
modern  city.  Here  as  elsewhere  we  must  make  a  practical  com¬ 
promise,  and  whatever  the  compromise,  many  will  needs  be  dissatis¬ 
fied.  Finally,  law  will  not  enforce  itself.  We  must  in  some  way 
stimulate  individuals  to  go  to  the  trouble  of  vindicating  it ;  and  yet  we 
must  not  suffer  them  to  use  it  as  a  means  of  extortion  or  of  gratifying 
spite.  Our  rules  must  obtain  in  action,  not  merely  lie  dormant  in  the 
books.  But  if  they  are  to  obtain  in  action,  the  authority  which  pre¬ 
scribes  them  must  be  so  backed  by  social-psychological  power  as  to  be 
in  a  position  to  give  them  effect  as  motives  fbr  action  in  spite  of 
countervailing  individual  motives.  Hence  the  notorious  futility  of 
two  sorts  of  lawmaking  which  are  very  common:  (i)  Lawmaking 
which  has  nothing  behind  it  but  the  sovereign  imperative,  in  which 
the  mere  words  "be  it  enacted”  are  relied  upon  to  accomplish  the  end 
sought,  and  (2)  lawmaking  which  is  intended  to  "educate” — to  set 
up  an  ideal  of  what  men  ought  to  do  rather  than  a  rule  of  what  they 
shall  do.  To  a  large  extent  law  depends  for  its  enforcement  upon  the 
extent  to  which  it  can  identify  social  interests  with  individual  interests, 
and  can  give  rise  to  or  rely  upon  individual  desire  to  enforce  its  rules. 
In  criminal  law  the  desire  of  the  offender  to  escape  and  the  desire  of 
his  friends  and  relatives  that  he  escape,  are  strong  and  active.  Unless 
the  desires  of  other  individuals  may  be  enlisted  in  the  service  of  the 
law,  administrative  machinery  is  likely  to  fall  into  an  easy-going 
routine,  readily  manipulated  in  the  interest  of  offenders,  and  the  law 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  903 


in  the  books  to  become  wholly  academic,  while  something  quite  dif¬ 
ferent  obtains  in  action. 

Few  appreciate  the  far-reaching  operation  of  the  foregoing  limita¬ 
tions  upon  legal  action.  There  is  constant  pressure  upon  the  law  to 
"do  something,”  whether  it  may  do  anything  worth  while  or  not.  In 
periods  of  expansion  the  tendency  to  call  upon  law  to  do  more  than  it 
is  adapted  to  do  is  especially  strong.  The  result  is  sure  to  be  failure 
and  the  failure  affects  the  whole  legal  order  injuriously. 

Inherent  Difficulties  in  all  Criminal  Justice 

1.  Public  desire  for  vengeance.  Historically,  one  of  the  origins  of 
criminal  law  is  in  summary  community  self-help,  in  offhand  public 
vengeance  by  a  more  or  less  orderly  mob.  Regulation  of  this  public 
vengeance,  giving  rise  to  a  sort  of  orderly  lynch  law,  is  one  of  the 
earliest  forms  of  criminal  law.  The  spirit  which  gave  rise  to  this  in¬ 
stitution  of  summary  mob  self-help  in  primitive  society  is  still  active. 
It  has  its  roots  in  a  deep-seated  instinct,  and  must  be  reckoned  with 
in  all  administration  of  criminal  justice.  Moralists  and  sociologists 
no  longer  regard  revenge  or  satisfaction  of  a  desire  for  vengeance  as  a 
legitimate  end  of  penal  treatment.  But  jurists  are  not  agreed.  Many 
insist  upon  the  retributive  theory  in  one  form  or  another,  and  Anglo- 
American  lawyers  commonly  regard  satisfaction  of  public  desire  for 
vengeance  as  both  a  legitimate  and  a  practically  necessary  end.  This 
disagreement  is  reflected  in  all  our  criminal  legislation.  Statutes  en¬ 
acted  at  different  times  proceed  upon  different  theories.  Indeed,  the 
usual  course  is  that  adherents  of  one  theory  of  penal  treatment  will 
procure  one  measure,  and  adherents  of  a  different  theory  another, 
from  lawmakers  who  have  no  theory  of  their  own.  For  nothing  is 
done  with  so  little  of  scientific  or  orderly  method  as  the  legislative 
making  of  laws. 

Administration  is  necessarily  affected  by  the  fundamental  conflict 
with  respect  to  aims  and  purposes  which  pervades  our  penal  legisla¬ 
tion.  But  apart  from  this,  the  conflicting  theories  are  also  at  work 
in  administration.  One  magistrate  paroles  freely ;  another  may  con¬ 
demn  the  system  of  parole.  One  executive  pardons  freely,  another  not 
at  all.  One  jury  is  stern  and  as  like  as  not  acts  upon  the  revenge 
theory;  another  jury  is  soft-hearted.  One  judge  is  systematically 


904 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


severe  and  holds  that  crime  must  inevitably  be  followed  by  retribu¬ 
tion  ;  another  is  systematically  lenient,  and  many  others  have  no  sys¬ 
tem  or  policy  whatever.  Thus  the  fact  that  we  are  not  all  agreed,  nor 
are  we  ourselves  agreed  in  all  our  moods,  infects  both  legislation  and 
administration  with  uncertainty,  inconsistency,  and  in  consequence 
inefficiency.  All  attempts  to  better  this  situation  must  reckon  with  a 
deep-seated  popular  desire  for  vengeance  in  crimes  appealing  to  the 
emotions,  or  in  times  when  crimes  against  the  general  security  are 
numerous.  Lawyers  know  well  that  the  average  client  is  apt  to  be 
eager  to  begin  a  criminal  prosecution.  He  is  not  satisfied  to  sue 
civilly  and  obtain  compensation  for  an  injury.  He  insists  upon  some¬ 
thing  that  will  hurt  the  wrongdoer,  and  is  willing  to  pay  liberally  to 
that  end.  It  has  taken  a  long  time  to  eliminate  the  revenge  element 
from  the  civil  side  of  the  law.  Indeed,  traces  still  remain  there.  On 
the  criminal  side  this  element  is  still  vigorous.  The  general  security 
requires  us  to  repress  self-help,  especially  mob  or  mass  self-help.  Also 
we  must  strive  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  moral  sentiment  of  the 
community.  These  considerations  constrain  us  to  keep  many  things 
in  the  criminal  law  which  are  purely  retributive,  and  thus  serve  to 
preserve  a  condition  of  fundamental  conflict  between  different  parts 
of  the  system.  Undoubtedly  the  law  and  its  administration  should 
reflect  the  sober  views  of  the  community,  not  its  views  when  mo¬ 
mentarily  inflamed.  But  the  sober  views  of  the  average  citizen  are  by 
no  means  so  advanced  on  this  subject  as  to  make  a  wholly  scientific 
system  possible. 

2.  A  condition  of  internal  opposition  in  criminal  law  due  to  his¬ 
torical  causes.  As  has  been  said,  criminal  law  exists  to  maintain  social 
interests  as  such ;  "but  the  social  interest  in  the  general  security  and 
the  social  interest  in  the  individual  life  continually  come  into  conflict, 
and  in  criminal  law,  as  everywhere  else  in  law,  the  problem  is  one  of 
compromise ;  of  balancing  conflicting  interests  and  of  securing  as  much 
as  may  be  with  the  least  sacrifice  of  other  interests.  The  most  insistent 
and  fundamental  of  social  interests  are  involved  in  criminal  law. 
Civilized  society  presupposes  peace  and  good  order,  security  of  social 
institutions,  security  of  the  general  morals,  and  conservation  and 
intelligent  use  of  social  resources.  But  it  demands  no  less  that  free 
individual  initiative  which  is  the  basis  of  economic  progress,  that  free¬ 
dom  of  criticism  without  which  political  progress  is  impossible,  and 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  905 


that  free  mental  activity  which  is  a  prerequisite  of  cultural  progress. 
Above  all  it  demands  that  the  individual  be  able  to  live  a  moral  and 
social  life  as  a  human  being.  These  claims,  which  may  be  put  broadly 
as  a  social  interest  in  the  individual  life,  continually  trench  upon  the 
interest  in  the  security  of  social  institutions,  and  often,  in  appearance 
at  least,  run  counter  to  the  paramount  interest  in  the  general  security. 
Compromise  of  such  claims  for  the  purpose  of  securing  as  much  as  we 
may  is  peculiarly  difficult.  For  historical  reasons  this  difficulty  has 
taken  the  form  of  a  condition  of  internal  opposition  in  criminal  law 
which  has  always  impaired  its  efficiency.  As  a  result  there  has  been 
a  continual  movement  back  and  forth  between  an  extreme  solicitude 
for  the  general  security,  leading  to  a  minimum  of  regard  for  the  in¬ 
dividual  accused  and  reliance  upon  summary,  unhampered,  arbitrary, 
administrative  punitive  justice,  and  at  the  other  extreme  excessive 
solicitude  for  the  social  interest  in  the  individual  life,  leading  to  a 
minimum  of  regard  for  the  general  security  and  security  of  social 
institutions  and  reliance  upon  strictly  regulated  judicial  punitive  jus¬ 
tice,  hampered  at  all  points  by  checks  and  balances  and  technical 
obstacles.  In  England  the  medieval  legal  checks  upon  punitive  justice 
were  followed  by  the  rise  of  the  Star  Chamber  and  other  forms  of 
executive  criminal  administration.  This  was  followed  by  the  exag¬ 
gerated  legalism  of  a  common-law  prosecution.  The  latter,  carried  to 
an  extreme  in  nineteenth-century  America,  is  being  followed  hard  to¬ 
day  by  the  rise  of  administrative  justice  through  boards  and  commis- , 
sions.  The  over-technical  tenderness  for  the  offender  in  our  criminal 
law  of  the  last  century  is  giving  way  to  carelessness  of  violation  of  the 
constitutional  rights  of  accused  persons  and  callousness  as  to  adminis¬ 
trative  methods  of  dealing  with  criminals,  real  or  supposed,  in  the 
supposed  interest  of  efficient  enforcement  of  penal  laws.  .  .  . 

Criminal  law  has  its  origin,  historically,  in  legal  regulation  of  certain 
crude  forms  of  social  control.  Thus  it  has  two  sides  from  the  begin¬ 
ning.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  made  up  of  prohibitions  addressed  to  the 
individual  in  order  to  secure  social  interests.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
is  made  up  of  limitations  upon  the  enforcement  of  these  prohibitions 
in  order  to  secure  the  social  interest  in  the  individual  life.  In  Anglo- 
American  criminal  law,  as  a  result  of  the  contests  between  courts  and 
king  in  seventeenth-century  England,  the  accused  came  to  be  thought 
of  not  as  an  offender  pursued  by  the  justice  of  society,  but  as  a  pre- 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


906 

sumably  innocent  person  pursued  by  the  potentially  oppressive  power 
of  the  king.  The  common  law,  declared  in  bills  of  rights,  came  to  be 
thought  of  as  standing  between  the  individual  and  the  state,  and  as 
protecting  the  individual  from  oppression  by  the  agents  of  the  state. 
No  efficient  administration  of  criminal  law  in  a  large  urban  population 
is  possible  under  the  reign  of  such  a  theory.  But  we  have  abandoned 
it  in  places  only.  Despite  an  obvious  reaction,  it  still  determines  many 
features  of  American  criminal  prosecution.  Moreover,  we  must  not 
forget  that  it  is  but  a  historical  form  of  one  of  the  two  elements  of 
which  criminal  law  is  made  up. 

3.  The  close  connection  of  criminal  law  and  administration  with 
politics.  Criminal  law  has  a  much  closer  connection  with  politics  than 
the  civil  side  of  the  law,  and  this  operates  to  its  disadvantage,  particu¬ 
larly  in  respect  of  administration.  There  is  relatively  little  danger  of 
oppression  through  civil  litigation.  On  the  other  hand,  there  has  been 
constant  fear  of  oppression  through  the  criminal  law.  In  history  dras¬ 
tic  enforcement  of  severe  penal  laws  has  been  employed  notoriously  to 
keep  a  people  or  a  class  in  subjection.  Not  only  is  one  class  suspicious 
of  attempts  by  another  to  force  its  ideas  upon  the  community  under 
penalty  of  prosecution,  but  the  power  of  a  majority  or  even  a  plurality 
to  visit  with  punishment  practices  which  a  strong  minority  consider  in 
no  way  objectionable  is  liable  to  abuse.  Whether  rightly  or  wrongly 
used,  this  power  puts  a  strain  upon  criminal  law  and  administration. 
Also  criminal  prosecutions  are  possible  weapons  of  offense  and  defense 
in  class  and  industrial  conflicts.  Hence  suspicion  arises  that  one  side 
or  the  other  may  get  an  advantage  through  abuse  of  the  prosecuting 
machinery,  giving  rise  to  political  struggles  to  get  control  of  that 
machinery.  Thus  considerations  of  efficient  securing  of  social  interests 
are  pushed  into  the  background,  and  the  atmosphere  in  which  prosecu¬ 
tions  are  conducted  becomes  political.  In  practice  the  result  is,  when 
the  public  conscience  is  active  or  public  indignation  is  roused,  to  be 
spectacular  at  the  expense  of  efficiency.  When  the  public  conscience 
is  sluggish  and  public  attention  is  focused  elsewhere,  the  temptation  is 
to  be  lax  for  fear  of  offending  dominant  or  militant  political  groups. 

4.  The  inherent  unreliability  of  evidence  in  criminal  cases.  Inher¬ 
ent  unreliability  of  evidence  upon  which  tribunals  must  proceed  affects 
all  departments  of  judicial  administration  of  justice.  But  in  criminal 
law,  where  passions  are  aroused,  where  the  consequences  are  so  serious, 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  907 


where  unscrupulous  persons  are  so  apt  to  be  arrayed  on  one  side  or 
the  other,  the  difficulties  growing  out  of  the  necessity  of  relying  upon 
human  testimony  are  grave.  Psychologists  have  demonstrated  abun¬ 
dantly  the  extent  to  which  errors  of  observation  and  unsuspected  sug¬ 
gestion  affect  the  testimony  of  the  most  conscientious.  Undoubtedly 
there  is  much  practical  psychology  and  trained  intuition  behind  the 
common-law  rules  of  evidence;  but  they  are  based  largely  on  the 
psychology  of  the  jury  rather  than  on  that  of  the  witness.  The  prob¬ 
lem  of  lying  witnesses,  defective  observation,  and  suggestion,  as  affect¬ 
ing  proof  in  criminal  cases,  has  yet  to  be  studied  scientifically  by 
American  lawyers.  The  maxims  and  presumptions  in  which  we  ex¬ 
press  our  practical  experience  in  these  connections  are  too  much  of  the 
rule-of-thumb  type,  and  are  apt  to  be  merely  pieces  to  move  in  the 
procedural  game  between  prosecutor  and  accused. 

Moreover,  in  the  administration  of  criminal  law  the  inherent  unre¬ 
liability  of  oral  evidence  of  witnesses  is  aggravated  by  three  circum¬ 
stances.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  bad  influence  of  police  esprit 
de  corps.  The  unfortunate  convictions  of  Beck  and  Edalji  in  England, 
which  will  long  remain  classical  examples  of  convictions  of  the  inno¬ 
cent  in  modern  times,  were  clearly  traceable  to  determination  of  the 

police  to  convict  innocent  men  whom  they  had  erroneously  assumed 

•  _ 

to  be  guilty.  The  testimony  of  experienced  trial  lawyers  who  have 
written  memoirs  or  reminiscences  is  uniform  to  the  effect  that  the 
testimony  upon  which  prosecutors  must  chiefly  rely  is  apt  to  be  so 
colored  and  warped  as  to  be  subject  to  grave  doubt.  Serjeant  Ballan- 
tine,  whose  long  experience  in  prosecuting  and  defending  entitled  him 
to  speak  with  authority,  says  that  esprit  de  corps,  antipathy  toward 
the  criminal  classes,  the  habit  of  testifying  so  that  it  ceases  to  be  re¬ 
garded  as  a  serious  matter,  and  the  temptation  which  besets  police 
officers  to  communicate  opinions  or  theories  to  the  press,  thus  "pledg¬ 
ing  themselves  to  views  which  it  is  damaging  to  their  sagacity  to  re¬ 
tract, ”  so  operate  as  to  cause  serious  and  even  fatal  miscarriages  of 
justice.  The  student  of  criminology  may  verify  this  abundantly  by 
study  of  American  criminal  trials.  Yet  from  the  nature  of  the  case 
such  testimony  is  the  best  available. 

In  some  part  police  esprit  de  corps  is  counteracted  by  the  activity  of 
habitual  defenders  of  criminals  and  activity  of  friends  and  relatives 
of  the  accused.  But  these  are  often  more  available  and  more  efficacious 


908 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


in  the  service  of  the  guilty  than  of  the  innocent.  Getting  witnesses 
out  of  the  way  or  silencing  them  or  modifying  their  testimony  by 
importunity,  social  pressure,  intimidation,  appeals  to  race  solidarity, 
or  sympathy  are  thoroughly  familiar  matters  to  the  observer  of  crim¬ 
inal  justice  in  action,  and  the  memoirs  and  reminiscences  of  criminal 
trial  lawyers  show  that  nothing  new  in  these  respects  has  been  devised 
in  the  modern  American  city.  Caleb  Quirk,  Esq.,  of  Alibi  House,  in 
the  early  part  of  the  last  century,  would  be  quite  at  home  in  any  of 
our  cities  today. 

We  are  dealing  here  with  an  inherent  difficulty.  Yet  much  may  be 
done  to  mitigate  it  which  we  are  not  doing.  ( i )  If  scientific  methods 
of  criminal  investigation  were  employed  at  the  very  beginning  and  the 
preparation  of  the  general  run  of  criminal  cases  in  the  prosecutor’s 
office  were  as  thorough  and  systematic  as  the  preparation  of  the  civil 
cases,  for  example,  of  a  public  service  company,  the  opportunities  for 
subornation  that  have  made  the  alibi  notorious  and  the  opportunity 
for  suppression  of  evidence  would  be  much  lessened.  (2)  If  the  ad¬ 
ministration  of  oaths  and  the  formalities  of  reception  of  evidence  in 
all  stages  of  a  criminal  proceeding  and  before  all  tribunals  were  such 
as  to  impress  those  who  take  part  with  the  seriousness  of  what  is  going 
on,  some  part  of  the  notorious  perjury  which  attends  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  justice  might  be  precluded.  (3)  A  better  organized  and’better 
trained  and  better  disciplined  bar  might  eliminate  the  type  of  practi¬ 
tioner  that  promotes  subornation  and  grows  rich  on  systematic  and 
scientific  suppression  of  evidence  and  silencing  of  witnesses.  It  is 
noteworthy  that  incorporation  of  the  lower  branch  of  the  legal  pro¬ 
fession  in  England  had  the  effect  of  driving  out  a  low  type  of  solicitor 
which  still  thrives  in  large  numbers  with  us.  But  for  the  most  part 
we  must  hope  that  study  of  the  psychology  of  testimony  will  reveal 
better  methods  of  ascertaining  facts  in  criminal  prosecutions  than 
those  which  are  now  available.  Until  such  methods  come  we  must 
reckon  with  unreliability  of  evidence  as  a  formidable  inherent  difficulty. 

5.  The  wider  scope  for  administrative  discretion  required  in  crim¬ 
inal  law.  As  compared  with  the  adjustment  of  civil  relations,  criminal 
law  involves  a  much  greater  scope  for  discretion.  Much  that  may  be 
done  mechanically  in  matters  of  property  and  contract,  and  hence 
with  assurance  that  improper  influences  are  excluded  by  the  perfection 
of  the  machinery,  must  be  done  by  the  individual  judgment  of  judges 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  909 


or  public  officers  when  we  are  dealing  with  human  conduct,  and  hence 
is  open  to  all  the  disturbing  influences  that  may  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  individual  human  being.  It  is  one  of  the  difficult  problems 
of  all  law  to  maintain  a  due  proportion  between  detailed  rules  and 
judicial  or  administrative  discretion.  In  criminal  law  the  dangers  in¬ 
volved  in  such  discretion  are  obvious.  The  power  which  it  involves  is 
large  and  is  peculiarly  liable  to  abuse.  Moreover,  the  consequences  of 
abuse  are  serious,  involving  life  and  liberty,  where  on  the  civil  side  of 
the  law  the  effects  extend  rather  to  property.  But  there  are  two  cir¬ 
cumstances  in  criminal  law  that  require  a  wide  discretion  on  the  part 
of  prosecutors  and  magistrates :  ( 1 )  In  the  administration  of  criminal 
law  the  moral  or  ethical  element  plays  a  large  part,  and  purely  moral 
or  ethical  matters  do  not  lend  themselves  to  strict  rules.  (2)  As  we 
now  think,  penal  treatment  is  to  fit  the  criminal  rather  than  punish¬ 
ment  to  fit  the  crime.  Hence  whether  there  shall  be  a  prosecution  and 
what  shall  be  done  to  and  with  the  convicted  offender  after  prosecution 
must  be  left  largely  to  the  discretion  of  someone.  Even  when  we 
sought  to  make  the  punishment  fit  the  crime  the  impossibility  of  a 
mathematically  constructed  system  of  penalties  became  manifest,  and 
sentence,  within  wide  limits,  was  a  matter  for  the  discretion  of  the 
trial  judge.  In  those  days  notorious  inequalities  in  sentences  bore 
constant  witness  to  the  liability  of  unfettered  discretion  to  abuse,  even 
in  the  best  of  hands.  In  England,  review  of  sentences  by  the  Court 
of  Criminal  Appeal  is  relied  upon  to  meet  this  particular  danger.  In 
the  United  States  the  tendency  is  to  entrust  the  nature  and  duration 
of  penal  treatment  to  some  administrative  board.  But  whichever 
course  is  taken  the  beginning  and  continuation  as  well  as  the  details 
of  the  ultimate  result  of  a  criminal  prosecution  must  be  left  largely  to 
the  discretion  of  someone,  with  all  which  that  may  imply. 

6.  Inherent  inadequacy  of  penal  methods.  On  the  civil  side  of  the 
law  the  modes  of  enforcement  have  become  very  efficacious.  If  A 
dispossesses  B  of  land,  the  sheriff  may  put  A  out  and  B  back  in  posses¬ 
sion.  If  A  dispossesses  B  of  a  chattel,  the  sheriff  may  take  it  from 
A  and  give  it  back  to  B.  If  A  does  not  convey  to  B  as  he  promised, 
an  officer  of  the  court  may  make  a  deed  to  which  the  law  gives  the 
effect  of  the  promised  conveyance.  If  A  does  not  pay  a  debt  he  owes 
B,  the  sheriff  may  sell  A’s  goods  and  pay  B  out  of  the  proceeds.  No 
such  thoroughgoing  remedies  are  available  in  criminal  law.  To  guard 


9io 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


against  further  harm  from  a  particular  offender,  and  to  guard  against 
others  who  might  repeat  the  offense,  society  relies  upon  fear  as  a  de¬ 
terrent.  It  attempts  to  create  a  wide-spread  fear  of  punishment  and 
to  bring  this  fear  home  to  the  particular  offender.  Preventive  justice, 
in  such  matters  as  are  dealt  with  by  the  criminal  law,  must  be  confined 
within  narrow  limits,  since  it  involves  undue  interference  with  the  free¬ 
dom  of  action  of  individuals.  Accordingly,  in  the  great  mass  of  cases 
the  criminal  law  can  only  step  in  after  an  offense  has  been  committed. 
But  the  system  of  protecting  society  by  creating  a  general  fear  of 
punishment  encounters  two  inherent  difficulties :  ( i )  Experience  has 
shown  that  fear  is  never  a  complete  deterrent.  The  venturesome  will 
believe  they  can  escape.  The  fearless  will  be  indifferent  whether  they 
escape.  The  crafty  will  believe  they  can  evade,  and  enough  will  suc¬ 
ceed  to  encourage  others.  (2)  Threats  of  punishment  are  often  likely 
to  defeat  themselves.  The  zeal  of  lawmakers  frequently  imposes  pen¬ 
alties  to  which  juries  will  not  agree  that  offenders  should  be  subjected. 
It  sometimes  defines  acts  as  criminal  for  which  juries  will  not  agree 
to  see  men  punished.  Thus  we  get  so-called  dead-letter  laws,  which 
weaken  the  authority  of  law  and  destroy  the  efficacy  of  fear  as  a 
deterrent.  Sometimes,  indeed,  it  has  happened  that  courts  did  not 
have  sympathy  with  over-severe  laws  or  extreme  penalties  and  warped 
the  law  to  prevent  conviction.  Our  criminal  procedure  still  suffers 
from  the  astuteness  of  judges  in  the  past  to  avoid  convictions  at  a 
time  when  all  felonies  were  punishable  with  death.  However  efficient 
the  administration  of  criminal  law,  it  will  be  necessary  to  make  some 
allowance  for  this  inherent  difficulty. 

7.  The  tendency  to  put  too  great  a  burden  on  the  criminal  law. 
It  is  a  great  disadvantage  to  the  criminal  law  that  it  is  so  interesting 
in  action  to  the  layman.  Criminal  law  is  the  type  of  law  which  figures 
chiefly  in  the  morning  papers ;  hence  when  the  layman  thinks  of  law, 
he  is  almost  certain  to  think  of  criminal  law.  Moreover,  because  of  a 
well-known  human  instinct,  the  layman’s  short  and  simple  cure  for  all 
ills  is  to  hurt  somebody.  Hence  every  lay  lawmaker  turns  instinctively 
to  the  criminal  law  when  he  comes  to  provide  a  sanction  for  his  new 
measure,  and  every  new  statute  adds  one  more  to  the  mass  of  pre¬ 
scribed  penalties  for  which  a  criminal  prosecution  may  be  invoked. 
It  is  impossible  for  any  legal  machinery  to  do  all  which  our  voluminous 
penal  legislation  expects  of  it.  Serious  study  of  how  to  make  our  huge 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  91 1 


annual  output  of  legislation  effective  for  its  purpose  without  prosecu¬ 
tions  and  giving  up  the  naive  faith  that  finds  expression  in  the  common 
phrase,  "there  ought  to  be  a  law  against  it,”  as  an  article  in  the  legis¬ 
lative  creed,  would  do  much  for  the  efficiency  of  criminal  law. 

123.  General  Difficulties1 

Prevalence  0}  Dis satis j action  with  Criminal  Law  and  Its 

Administration 

Dissatisfaction  with  criminal  law  and  its  administration  is  neither 
a  local  nor  an  American  phenomenon.  It  was  world  wide  at  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  second 'decade  of  the  present  century.  For  the  past  seven 
years  other  matters  have  occupied  men’s  thoughts.  But  there  are 
signs  already  that  agitation  for  improvement  is  breaking  out  again  or 
will  soon  break  out  again  in  many  lands.  In  Italy  a  commission  is 
now  at  work  upon  a  new  criminal  code  and  promises  a  thoroughgoing 
reform,  especially  in  procedure.  Certain  causes  operating  throughout 
the  civilized  world,  and  affecting  all  administration  of  criminal  justice 
in  the  present  generation,  must  be  taken  into  account  in  any  critical 
appraisal  of  the  workings  of  the  criminal  law  in  a  particular  locality. 

New  Demands  upon  Law 

Law,  it  has  been  said,  "is  but  the  skeleton  of  social  order.”  It  must 
be  "clothed  upon  with  the  flesh  and  blood  of  morality.”  In  a  time  of 
unrest  and  doubt  as  to  the  very  foundations  of  belief  and  of  conduct, 
when  absolute  theories  of  morals  and  supernatural  sanctions  have 
much  less  hold  upon  the  mass  of  the  people  than  when  our  institutions 
were  formative,  and  as  a  consequence  conscience  and  individual  re¬ 
sponsibility  are  relaxed,  law  is  strained  to  do  double  duty,  and  much 
more  is  expected  of  it  than  in  a  time  when  morals  as  a  regulating 
agency  were  more  efficacious.  In  an  era  of  secularization  in  which  the 
law  is  looked  to  for  much  that  was  formerly  conceived  as  in  the  domain 
of  the  church  and  the  home,  in  an  urban,  industrial  society  in  which, 
for  example,  truancy  and  incorrigibility  of  children  may  be  matters  for 
a  court  rather  than  for  household  discipline,  we  must  expect  that  the 
legal  administration  of  justice  will  be  affected  sensibly. 

1Roscoe  Pound,  in  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland ,  pp.  583-589- 


912 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


i.  J'he  problem  of  enforcement.  In  the  present  century  new  de¬ 
mands  upon  law  and  new  social  conditions  involved  in  our  urban, 
industrial  civilization  have  made  enforcement  of  law  a  conspicuous 
problem  in  legal  science.  In  a  simpler,  more  homogeneous,  less 
crowded  society  it  was  assumed  that  the  enforcing  machinery  and  the 
efficiency  of  its  operation  were  not  matters  of  concern  to  the  lawyer. 
He  might  think  of  law  as  the  declared  will  of  the  State.  In  that  event 
he  would  say  that  his  business  was  to  know  and  interpret  and  apply 
the  declaration  of  the  State’s  will.  If  the  precepts  in  which  that  will 
was  declared  were  not  enforced,  the  trouble  lay,  not  in  the  law,  but  in 
the  supineness  or  incompetency  or  corruption  of  the  executive  officials 
whose  duty  it  was  to  execute  the  law.  Or  he  might  think  of  law  as  a 
body  of  principles  of  justice,  discovered  by  human  experience  of  con¬ 
duct  and  decision,  and  only  formulated  by  legislator  or  court  or  jurist. 
In  that  event,  if  they  were  not  enforced,  he  was  inclined  to  say  that  it 
was  because  they  ought  not  to  be  enforced ;  because  they  were  not 
sound  or  accurate  formulations  of  the  principles  revealed  by  history 
and  tested  by  experience.  Or,  again,  he  might  think  of  law  as  a  formu¬ 
lation  of  moral  or  ethical  principles,  deriving  their  real  authority  from 
their  inherent  justice.  In  that  case  he  was  likely  to  think  that  they 
would  largely  enforce  themselves  because  of  their  appeal  to  the  con¬ 
science  of  the  individual.  Nor  was  this  wholly  untrue  at  a  time  when 
the  program  of  law  was  relatively  simple  and  the  reasons  behind  the 
relatively  few  laws  were  apparent  on  the  surface  to  almost  any 
thoughtful  man.  But  when  the  area  of  legal  interference  becomes 
greatly  enlarged,  as  it  must  be  in  the  complex  urban  industrial  society 
of  today ;  when  law  has  an  ambitious  program  of  interposing  in  almost 
every  field  of  human  activity  and  regulating  human  conduct  in  all  its 
forms  and  relations,  the  reasons  behind  the  multitude  of  legal  precepts 
contained  in  our  voluminous  criminal  codes  and  administrative  regu¬ 
lations  are  not  readily  apparent,  and  often  may  well  be  disputed  by 
those  who  are  able  to  perceive  them.  The  lawyer,  trained  in  ideas 
which  were  appropriate  to  the  simple  legal  program  of  the  past,  is 
likely  to  assume  today  that  enforcement  of  the  law  is  nothing  of  which 
he  need  think.  Accordingly,  when  in  the  endeavor  to  secure  newly 
pressing  interests  ambitious  but  inexpert  reformers  turn  to  penal  legis¬ 
lation  and  add  new  sections  to  the  overburdened  penal  code,  or  the 
public  become  alarmed  in  a  time  of  reconstruction  and  unrest  and 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  913 


threaten  an  orgy  of  drastic  penal  legislation,  the  lawyer  whose  habit 
has  been  to  study  the  justice  of  rules,  rather  than  the  enforcement  of 
them,  is  in  no  position  to  give  effective  assistance.  Much  of  popular 
distrust  of  the  legal  profession  is  due  to  this  change  in  the  conditions 
to  which  legal  theories  are  to  be  applied,  while  the  theories  still  obtain. 

2.  The  demand  for  concrete  justice.  In  the  nineteenth  century, 
with  a  simple  program  of  preserving  the  general  security  in  a  primarily 
rural  agricultural  society,  we  were  wont  to  think  of  justice  in  terms  of 
the  abstract  claims  of  abstract  human  beings.  Today  emphasis  is  put 
rather  upon  concrete  justice  in  the  individual  case.  We  are  not  so 
ready  to  admit,  as  an  excuse  for  failure  of  justice  in  particular  cases, 
that  "John  Doe  must  suffer  for  the  commonwealth’s  sake.”  It  is  felt 
that  abstractly  just  rules  do  not  justify  results  that  fall  short  of  justice, 
and  that  injury  to  John  Doe  may  be  avoided  if  we  bestir  ourselves  to 
find  more  effective  legal  and  administrative  devices.  Hence  today 
legal  proceedings  are  judged  by  their  results  in  action,  not  by  their 
conformity  to  some  abstract,  ideal  scheme.  Features  of  the  adminis¬ 
tration  of  justice  which  were  regarded  patiently  in  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  are  spoken  of  now  with  impatience  in  a  community 
in  which  conservation  of  time  and  effort  has  become  important,  and 
men  have  learned  from  modern  business  and  industrial  engineering  to 
think  in  terms  of  results.  The  lawyer  has  been  trained  to  think  of  the 
general  or  average  result  reached  in  a  type  or  class  of  cases,  and  the 
demand  of  the  present  century  for  results  in  individual  cases  conflicts 
with  his  traditional  ideas.  Adjustment  of  legal  thinking  and  judicial 
methods  to  this  demand  for  concrete  justice — to  a  large  extent  a  legiti¬ 
mate  demand  in  the  conditions  of  today — must  go  forward  slowly  in 
the  nature  of  things,  and  will  long  contribute  to  an  unsatisfactory 
administration  of  law  in  certain  types  of  case  in  which  the  demand  is 
particularly  insistent  and  the  legal  tradition  is  specially  averse  thereto. 

3.  The  demand  for  individualization.  One  of  the  most  insistent 
demands  of  today  is  for  individualization  of  criminal  justice — for  a 
criminal  justice  that  will  not  turn  recidivists  through  the  mill  of  justice 
periodically  at  regular  intervals,  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  divert  the 
youthful  occasional  offender  into  a  habitual  criminal  by  treating  the 
crime,  in  his  person,  rather  than  the  criminal.  The  nineteenth  century 
was  hostile  to  individualization  and  to  administrative  discretion,  which 
is  the  chief  agency  of  individualization,  seeking  to  reduce  the  whole 


914 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


administration  of  justice  to  abstractly  just,  formal,  rigid  rules,  me¬ 
chanically  administered.  This  was  true  the  world  over.  It  was  spe¬ 
cially  true,  and  true  to  an  exaggerated  degree,  in  America,  because  of 
the  political  ideas  of  the  Puritan,  who  believed  men  should  be  "with 
one  another,  not  over  one  another,”  of  politico-legal  ideas  that  grew 
out  of  contests  between  courts  and  crown  in  seventeenth-century  Eng¬ 
land,  of  experience  of  the  American  colonists  with  executive  and 
legislative  justice,  and  of  pioneer  jealousy  of  administrative  and  gov¬ 
ernmental  action.  The  result  was  to  impose  shackles  of  detailed  rules 
and  rigid  procedure  upon  every  sort  of  judicial,  administrative,  and 
governmental  activity.  In  practice  there  was  a  general  policy  of 
"can’t.”  No  agency  of  government  was  to  be  allowed  to  do  anything 
beyond  a  necessary  minimum.  Hence  we  got  rigid,  detailed  procedure 
and  hard  and  fast  schemes  of  penal  treatment,  lest  prosecutor  or 
court  or  prison  authorities  do  something  spontaneously  in  view  of  the 
exigencies  of  a  particular  case — we  got  a  procedure  governed  by  a 
code,  rather  than  by  rule  and  custom  of  the  court,  as  at  common  law ; 
we  got  in  some  states  a  police  discipline  shackled  by  checks  that  de¬ 
prived  it  of  all  real  efficacy,  and  we  got  in  many  states  constitutional 
obstacles  to  legislation  in  the  form  of  detailed  requirements  as  to  the 
generality  of  laws,  as  to  what  should  appear  in  legislative  journals, 
and  as  to  title  and  repeal.  It  should  be  emphasized  that  this  spirit, 
which  hampers  effective  criminal  justice  so  seriously,  has  no  necessary 
connection  with  an  economic  policy  of  laissez  faire.  Whatever  the 
policy  of  a  society  may  be  as  to  interference  with  or  regulation  of 
men’s  general  activities  or  economic  activities  or  business  relations,  it 
is  no  part  of  a  laissez  faire  policy  to  leave  individual  criminal  activity 
as  free  as  possible  to  follow  its  own  course.  The  spirit  of  hampering 
judicial  and  administrative  agencies  was  due  rather  to  faith  in  abstract 
rules  and  in  machinery  as  inherently  efficacious,  and  to  lack  of  faith 
in  official  action  as  such  for  any  purpose,  than  to  any  economic  policy. 
Without  regulating  many  things,  the  law  may  yet  set  out  to  deal 
effectively  with  what  it  does  attempt  to  regulate  or  to  prevent. 

Changed  Ideas  as  to  the  End  of  Criminal  Law 

i.  The  passing  of  the  retributive  theory.  Our  traditional  criminal 
law  thinks  of  the  offender  as  a  free  moral  agent  who,  having  before 
him  the  choice  whether  to  do  right  or  wrong,  intentionally  chose  to  do 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  915 


wrong.  In  the  nineteenth  century  we  believed  that  justice  consisted  in 
imposing  upon  this  wilful  wrongdoer  a  penalty  exactly  corresponding 
to  his  crime.  It  was  not  a  question  of  treatment  of  this  offender,  but 
of  the  exact  retribution  appropriate  to  this  crime.  We  know  today 
that  the  matter  is  much  more  complicated  than  this  simple  theory 
assumes.  We  know  that  criminals  must  be  classified  as  well  as  crimes. 
We  know  that  the  old  analysis  of  act  and  intent  can  stand  only  as  an 
artificial  legal  analysis  and  that  the  mental  element  in  crime  presents 
a  series  of  difficult  problems.  We  recognize  that  in  order  to  deal  with 
crime  in  an  intelligent  and  practical  manner  we  must  give  up  the  re¬ 
tributive  theory.  But  this  means  that  we  must  largely  make  over  our 
whole  criminal  law,  which  was  rebuilt  around  that  theory  in  the  last 
two  centuries,  and  that  work  is  going  on  slowly  all  over  the  world. 
The  condition  of  criminal  law  calls  for  continuous  intelligent  bringing 
to  bear  upon  the  problem  of  securing  social  interests  by  law  and  upon 
the  detailed  applications  of  that  problem — for  the  bringing  to  bear 
upon  them  of  every  resource  of  legal  and  social  and  medical  science. 
We  shall  achieve  lasting  results  neither  by  some  analytical  scheme  or 
rigid  system  worked  out  logically  in  libraries  on  the  sole  basis  of  books 
and  law  reports,  as  some  lawyers  seem  to  hope,  nor  by  abandoning  the 
experience  of  the  past,  preserved  in  the  law  reports,  and  turning  ex¬ 
clusively  to  administrative,  non-legal,  expert  agencies,  which  is  the 
hope  of  many  laymen.  Pending  this  making  over  of  criminal  law  we 
must  expect  that  many  features  of  the  administration  of  criminal  jus¬ 
tice  will  remain  unsatisfactory. 

2.  Increased  regard  for  human  personality.  Today  we  feel  that 
when  the  law  confers  or  exercises  a  power  of  control  the  legal  order 
should  safeguard  the  human  existence  of  the  person  controlled.  Thus 
the  old-time  sea  law,  with  its  absolute  power  of  the  master  over  the 
sailor,  described  in  action  by  Dana  in  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast , 
the  old-time  ignominious  punishments  that  treated  the  human  offender 
like  a  brute,  that  did  not  save  his  human  dignity — all  such  things 
have  been  disappearing  as  we  come  to  take  account  of  the  social  in¬ 
terest  in  the  individual  human  life  and  to  weigh  that  interest  against 
the  social  interest  in  the  general  security  on  which  the  last  century 
insisted  so  exclusively.  This  feeling  for  the  human  dignity,  the  human 
life,  of  the  offender  is  somewhat  different  from  the  feeling  for  abstract 
individual  liberty  and  consequent  system  of  checks  upon  prosecution 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


916 

and  safeguards  of  accused  persons  and  loopholes  for  escape  which 
developed  in  Anglo-American  criminal  law  for  historical  reasons  from 
the  seventeenth  to  the  nineteenth  century.  Until  it  crystallizes  in  well- 
settled  and  well-understood  legal  and  administrative  policies,  until 
proper  compromises  between  the  interest  in  the  individual  human  life 
and  the  general  security,  security  of  social  institutions,  and  general 
morals  are  worked  out  at  many  points,  there  is  likely  to  be  vacillation, 
uncertainty,  and  inefficiency  in  the  administration  of  criminal  justice. 
This  will  be  true  especially  at  the  two  extremes  of  a  prosecution — the 
beginning  in  police  discretion  when  an  offense  has  been  committed, 
and  the  end  in  penal  treatment  of  the  convicted  offender.  Cleveland 
has  seen  in  somewhat  acute  form  a  phenomenon  that  is  to  be  seen  in 
criminal  justice  throughout  the  world,  and  is  merely  an  incident  of 
changing  ideas  as  to  what  we  are  doing  through  the  criminal  law  and 
why  we  are  doing  it.  The  effect  in  unsettling  the  administration  of 
criminal  law  is  unfortunate.  Discontent  with  the  results  of  some 
of  the  newer  methods  of  penal  treatment  is  not  unlikely  to  lead  to 
temporary  reaction  to  older  methods,  which  will  but  aggravate  the  dif¬ 
ficulty.  Partly  these  newer  methods  and  their  results  have  been  misun¬ 
derstood  and  misrepresented.  Partly  results  which  are  justly  objected 
to  are  due  to  the  inevitable  crude  fumblings  involved  in  all  application 
of  new  methods.  Naturally  the  public  is  impatient.  But  we  can  no 
more  return  to  the  old  methods  than  we  can  return  to  horse-cars  or 
ox-teams  or  flails  or  sickles.  We  must  go  forward  scientifically  and 
not  vacillate  between  extreme  experiments  along  new  lines  and  reac¬ 
tionary  reversions  to  methods  that  belong  wholly  to  the  past. 

3.  New  developments  in  psychology  and  psychopathology.  Medi¬ 
cal  science  has  all  but  undergone  a  rebirth  within  a  generation.  Within 
a  generation  psychology  has  risen  to  a  practical  science  of  the  first 
importance,  with  far-reaching  applications  on  every  side.  Psycho¬ 
pathology  has  overturned  much  that  the  criminal  law  of  the  past  had 
built  upon.  Indeed,  the  fundamental  theory  of  our  orthodox  criminal 
law  has  gone  down  before  modern  psychology  and  psychopathology. 
The  results  are  only  beginning  to  be  felt.  One  result  is  a  just  dissatis¬ 
faction  on  the  part  of  the  medical  profession  with,  what  they  observe 
in  judicial  administration  of  justice  and  legal  treatment  of  criminals. 
In  prevention,  in  criminal  investigation  as  a  preliminary  to  prosecu¬ 
tion,  in  the  trial  of  issues  of  fact  and  in  penal  treatment  we  have  much 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  917 

to  learn  from  the  physician  and  psychologist  and  psychopathologist. 
But  during  the  period  of  transition  in  which  we  are  learning  it  and  are 
learning  how  to  use  it  there  will  be  much  experimenting  and  some 
fumbling  and  much  dissatisfaction. 

.  The  Present  Condition  of  Criminal  Law 

As  a  result  of  the  several  causes  suggested  above,  the  criminal  law 
of  today,  throughout  the  world,  is  made  up  more  or  less  of  successive 
strata  of  rules,  institutions,  traditional  modes  of  thought,  and  legisla¬ 
tive  provisions  representing  different  and  inconsistent  ideas  of  the  end 
of  criminal  law,  the  purpose  of  penal  treatment,  and  the  nature  of 
crime.  This  is  true  especially  in  Anglo-American  criminal  law.  With 
us  ail  stages  of  development  and  all  theories  and  all  manner  of  combi¬ 
nations  of  them  are  represented  in  rules  and  doctrines  which  the  courts 
are  called  upon  to  administer.  Indeed,  all  or  many  of  them  may  be 
represented  in  legislative  acts  bearing  the  same  date.  The  result  is 
that  our  criminal  law  is  not  internally  consistent,  much  less  homoge¬ 
neous  and  well  organized.  Even  if  the  administrative  machinery  were 
all  that  it  should  be  and  the  personnel  of  administration  were  all  that 
it  should  be,  the  condition  of  criminal  law  of  itself  would  impede 
satisfactory  administration. 

Unfortunately,  criminal  law  never  attained  the  systematic  perfec¬ 
tion  that  marks  the  civil  side  of  the  law  in  Roman  law,  and  is  begin¬ 
ning  to  be  found  on  the  civil  side  of  Anglo-American  law.  Until  the 
criminal  law  is  studied  as  zealously  and  scientifically  and  is  regarded 
by  teachers,  students,  lawyers,  and  judges  as  being  as  worthy  of  their 
best  and  most  intelligent  efforts  as  is  the  civil  side  of  the  law,  the 
administration  of  criminal  justice  will  continue  to  fall  short  of  public 
expectation. 

124.  American  Difficulties1 

Conditions  for  Which  American  Criminal  Law  and  Procedure 

Were  Shaped 

To  understand  the  administration  of  criminal  justice  in  American 
cities  today  we  must  first  perceive  the  problems  of  administration  of 
justice  in  a  homogeneous,  pioneer,  primarily  agricultural  community 

1Roscoe  Pound,  in  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland ,  pp.  590--611. 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


918 

of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  the  difficulties  involved 
in  meeting  those  problems  with  the  legal  institutions  and  legal  doc¬ 
trines  inherited  or  received  from  seventeenth-century  England.  We 
must  then  perceive  the  problems  of  administration  of  justice  in  a 
modern  heterogeneous,  urban,  industrial  community  and  the  diffi¬ 
culties  involved  in  meeting  those  problems  with  the  legal  and  judicial 
machinery  inherited  or  received  from  England  and  adapted  and  given 
new  and  fixed  shape  for  pioneer  rural  America. 

Professor  Sumner  called  attention  to  the  importance  of  an  under¬ 
standing  of  frontier  or  pioneer  conditions  in  the  study  of  American 
politics.  "Some  of  our  worst  political  abuses,”  he  said,  "come  from 
transferring  to  our  now  large  and  crowded  cities  maxims  and  usages 
which  were  convenient  and  harmless  in  backwoods  country  towns.” 
This  is  no  less  true  of  our  most  serious  legal  abuses.  It  must  be  re¬ 
membered  that  our  judicial  organization  and  the  great  body  of  our 
legal  institutions  and  common  law  are  the  work  of  the  last  quarter  of 
the  eighteenth  century  and  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
For  practical  purposes  American  legal  and  judicial  history  begins  after 
the  Revolution.  In  colonial  America  the  administration  of  justice  was 
at  first  executive  and  legislative.  American  law  reports  begin  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  America  for  which  seventeenth- 
century  English  legal  institutions  and  eighteenth-century  English  law 
were  received  and  made  over  was  not  at  all  the  America  in  which 
those  institutions  and  that  law  must  function  today.  Our  great  cities 
and  the  social  and  legal  problems  to  which  they  give  rise  are  of  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Many  are  of  the  last  quarter  of 
that  century.  Our  largest  city  now  contains  in  three  hundred  and 
twenty-six  square  miles  a  larger  and  infinitely  more  diversified  popula¬ 
tion  than  the  whole  thirteen  States  when  the  federal  judicial  organiza¬ 
tion  which  has  served  so  generally  as  a  model  was  adopted.  The  last 
State  of  the  Union  was  opened  to  settlement  by  the  white  man  within 
a  generation.  Except  perhaps  in  the  narrow  fringe  of  original  settle¬ 
ments  along  the  Atlantic  coast,  rural  conditions  prevailed  everywhere 
within  the  memory  of  those  now  living,  and  in  any  part  of  the  country 
one  need  do  little  more  than  scratch  the  surface  in  order  to  come  upon 
the  pioneer.  Thus  our  law  and  our  legal  institutions  got  the  stamp  of 
the  pioneer  while  they  were  formative.1 

1  See  R.  W.  Kelso,  History  of  Public  Poor  Relief  in  Massachusetts. —  Ed. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  919 

Our  Anglo-American  judicial  and  prosecuting  organization,  criminal 
law,  and  criminal  procedure,  as  they  grew  up  and  took  shape  in  the  fore 
part  of  the  last  century,  presuppose  a  homogeneous  people,  jealous  of 
its  rights,  zealous  to  keep  order,  and  in  sympathy  with  institutions  of 
government  which  it  understands  and  in  which  it  believes — a  people 
which,  in  all  matters  of  moment,  will  conform  to  the  precepts  of  law 
when  they  are  ascertained  and  made  known,  which  may  be  relied  upon 
to  set  the  machinery  of  the  law  in  motion  of  its  own  initiative  when 
wrong  has  been  done,  and  to  enforce  the  law  intelligently  and  stead¬ 
fastly  in  the  jury-box.  In  other  words,  they  presuppose  an  American 
farming  community  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  We 
are  employing  them  to  do  justice  in  a  heterogeneous,  diversified, 
crowded  city  population,  containing  elements  used  to  being  trodden  on 
by  those  in  authority,  ignorant  of  our  institutions,  at  least  in  all  but 
form,  with  good  reason  suspicious  of  government  as  they  have  known 
it,  and  hence  often  imbued  with 'distrust  of  all  government,  loth  to  in¬ 
voke  legal  machinery,  of  which  they  think  in  terms  of  the  social  condi¬ 
tions  in  another  part  of  the  world,  and  inclined  to  think  of  a  jury  trial 
as  some  sort  of  man  hunt,  not  knowing  the  nature  of  the  proceedings 
that  have  gone  before  nor  appreciating  the  manifold  guarantees  by 
which  at  common  law  an  accused  person  is  assured  every  facility  for  a 
full  defense. 

The  Administration  of  Criminal  Justice  in  the  First  Half 

of  the  Nineteenth  Century 

1.  The  criminals  and  conditions  of  crime.  At  the  outset  we  must 
notice  the  different  type  of  criminal  and  different  conditions  of  crime 
for  which  our  formative  institutions  were  shaped.  The  occasional 
criminal,  the  criminal  of  passion,  and  the  mentally  defective,  were  the 
chief  concern  of  the  criminal  law,  and  its  task  was  to  restrain  them  in 
a  homogeneous  community  under  pioneer  or  rural  conditions,  in  a 
society  little  diversified  economically  and  for  the  most  part  restrained 
already  by  deep  religious  conviction  and  strict  moral  training.  So  far 
as  it  was  necessary  to  deal  with  vice  it  was  the  rough,  virile  vice  of  a 
vigorous  stock  that  lived  out-of-doors.  Organized  professional  crim¬ 
inality  on  a  large  scale,  operating  over  the  whole  country,  was  un¬ 
known.  The  occasional  band  of  robbers  or  of  cattle  thieves  could  be 
dealt  with  by  a  sheriff  and  a  posse.  Commercialized  vice  on  a  large 


920 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


scale,  extending  its  operations  over  many  localities,  was  unknown. 
Large  cities  with  a  diversified,  shifting  industrial  population,  with 
extreme  divergencies  of  economic  condition,  with  rapid  and  easy  com¬ 
munications  with  other  like  centers,  with  a  population  moving  back 
and  forth  daily  in  swarms  to  a  business  center  and  crowding  a  great 
volume  of  business  into  a  few  hours,  did  not  afford  opportunities  for 
specialized  professional  crime.  Such  conditions  have  come  upon  us 
slowly  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  but  with  extreme  rapidity  in 
others,  as  in  Cleveland.  In  either  event  they  have  come  upon  an  ad¬ 
ministrative  and  judicial  machinery  made  for  rural  communities  and 
simply  added  to  or  patched  from  time  to  time  to  meet  special  emer¬ 
gencies.  The  professional  criminal  and  his  advisers  have  learned 
readily  to  use  this  machinery  and  to  make  devices  intended  to  temper 
the  application  of  criminal  law  to  the  occasional  offender  a  means  of 
escape  for  the  habitual  offender.  Experience  has  shown  this  in  all 
our  cities.1 

2.  Administrative  machinery.  We  inherited  from  England  a  me¬ 
dieval  system  of  sheriffs,  coroners,  and  constables,  devised  originally 
for  a  rural  society  and  easily  adapted  to  pioneer  rural  conditions.  The 
town  marshal  was  a  constable  with  no  civil  functions  and  some  added 
powers  and  duties.  He  went  out  of  office  with  every  political  change. 
He  kept  order  and  did  an  occasional  bit  of  detection  in  the  event  of  a 
sensational  crime.  A  police  force,  as  we  now  know  it,  is  an  institution 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and,  unhappily,  our  police  organization  and 
administration  have  been  affecf:d  to  no  small  extent  by  ideas  derived 
from  the  older,  pre-urban  regime.  What  is  particularly  noticeable 
about  the  nineteenth-century  Anglo-American  administrative  system 
is  its  lack  of  organization,  decentralized  responsibility,  and  abun¬ 
dant  facilities  for  obstruction  in  comparison  with  means  for  effective 
achievement  of  results.  As  a  rule,  none  of  these  officials  was  answer- 
able  to  any  one  but  the  electorate.  He  cooperated  with  other  officials 
or  thwarted  them  as  his  fancy  or  the  exigencies  of  politics  might  dic¬ 
tate.  Each  locality  had  its  own  administrative  officer,  acting  on  his 
own  judgment,  and  responsible  to  no  superior,  and  the  execution  or 
non-execution  of  laws  therein  was  its  own  affair. 

This  decentralization,  division  of  power,  and  hampering  of  admin¬ 
istration  was  part  of  the  system  of  checks  and  balances  to  which  we 

1  Pound  and  Frankfurter,  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland ,  pp.  91,  93,  and  95. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  921 

pinned  our  faith  in  the  last  century.  It  has  been  said  that  our  institu¬ 
tions  were  the  work  of  men  who  believed  in  original  sin  and  were 
unwilling  to  leave  open  any  door  for  the  intrinsically  sinful  official 
which  they  could  possibly  close.  To  this  Puritan  jealousy  of  adminis¬ 
tration  we  added  a  pioneer  jealousy  of  administration.  "The  unthink¬ 
ing  sons  of  the  sagebrush,”  says  Owen  Wister,  "ill  tolerate  anything 
which  stands  for  discipline,  good  order,  and  obedience ;  and  the  man 
who  lets  another  command  him  they  despise.”  Such  has  always  been 
the  spirit  of  the  pioneer,  and  institutions  shaped  by  that  spirit  are 
well  adapted  to  a  pioneer  society.  But  in  a  crowded  urban  society, 
in  holding  down  the  potentially  sinful  administrative  official  we  give 
the  actually  sinful  professional  criminal  his  opportunity,  and  in  in¬ 
suring  a  latitude  of  free  individual  self-assertion  beyond  what  they  re¬ 
quire  for  the  upright,  we  give  a  dangerous  scope  to  the  corrupt.  The 
local  conditions  of  cities  demand  centralization  and  organization  of 
administrative  agencies,  coordination  of  responsibility  with  power,  and 
reliance  upon  personality  rather  than  upon  checks  and  balances  as 
emphatically  as  a  pioneer,  rural  community  demands  decentraliza¬ 
tion,  division  of  power,  independent  magistracies,  and  checks  upon 
administration. 

3.  English  criminal  law  at  the  Revolution.  When,  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  we  began  to 
build  an  American  criminal  law  with  received  English  materials,  the 
memory  of  the  contests  between  courts  and  crown  in  seventeenth- 
century  England,  of  the  abuse  of  prosecutions  by  Stuart  kings,  and  of 
the  extent  to  which  criminal  law  might  be  used  as  an  agency  of  re¬ 
ligious  persecution  and  political  subjection,  was  still  fresh.  Hence  a 
hundred  years  ago  the  problem  seemed  to  be  how  to  hold  down  the 
administration  of  punitive  justice  and  protect  the  individual  from  op¬ 
pression  under  the  guise  thereof,  rather  than  how  to  make  criminal 
law  an  effective  agency  for  securing  social  interests.  English  criminal 
law  had  grown  out  of  royal  regulations  of  summary  local  self-redress 
and  had  been  developed  by  judicial  experience  to  meet  violent  crimes 
in  an  age  of  force  and  violence.  Later  the  necessities  of  more  civilized 
times  had  led  to  the  development  in  the  court  of  Star  Chamber  of  what 
is  now  the  common  law  as  to  misdemeanors.  Thus  one  part  of  the 
English  law  of  crimes  as  we  found  it  at  the  Revolution  was  harsh  and 
brutal,  as  befitted  a  law  made  to  put  down  murder  by  violence,  rob- 


922 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


bery,  rape,  and  cattle-stealing  in  a  rough  and  ready  community.  The 
legislation  in  New  York  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  which 
abolished  the  death  penalty  for  felonies  other  than  murder,  and  the 
English  legislation  of  the  legislative  reform  movement  in  the  fore  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  chiefly  concerned  in  doing  away  with 
the  brutalities  of  the  old  law  as  to  felonies.  Another  part  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  law  of  crimes  at  the  Revolution  seemed  to  involve  dangerous 
magisterial  discretion,  as  might  have  been  expected  of  a  body  of  law 
made  in  the  council  of  Tudor  and  Stuart  kings  in  an  age  of  abso¬ 
lute  government  and  extreme  theories  of  royal  prerogative.  Puritan 
jealousy  of  subordination  and  administration,  pioneer  self-reliance, 
and  inherited  fear  of  political  oppression  by  governmental  agencies, 
since  the  colonists  had  had  experience  of  the  close  connection  of  law 
with  politics,  were  decisive  of  our  shaping  of  this  body  of  criminal  law 
at  the  time  when  it  was  formative.  In  particular  these  things  had 
three  important  results : 

1.  They  led  nineteenth-century  American  law  to  exaggerate  the 
complicated,  expensive,  and  time-consuming  machinery  of  a  common- 
law  prosecution,  lest  some  safeguard  of  individual  liberty  be  over¬ 
looked. 

2.  They  led  to  curtailings  of  the  power  of  the  judge  to  control  the 
trial  and  hold  the  jury  to  its  province,  and  to  conferring  of  excessive 
power  upon  juries.  These  had  their  origin  in  colonial  America,  before 
true  courts  and  judicial  justice  had  developed,  when  juries  were  a 
needed  check  upon  the  executive  justice  of  royal  governors.  They 
were  added  to  through  the  need  of  checks  .upon  royal  judges.  They 
were  carried  still  further  during  the  hostility  to  courts  and  lawyers  and 
English  legal  institutions  that  prevailed  immediately  after  the  Revolu¬ 
tion.  Finally,  they  got  their  fullest  development  in  frontier  communi¬ 
ties  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

3.  Both  had  the  result  of  enfeebling  the  administration  of  criminal 
law.  But  these  enfeeblings  did  not  work  much  evil  in  a  time  when 
crime  was  relatively  rare  and  abnormal ;  when  the  community  did  not 
require  the  swift-moving  punitive  justice  adjusted  to  the  task  of 
enforcing  a  voluminous  criminal  code  against  a  multitude  of  offenders 
which  we  demand  today.  Unfortunately,  when  the  conditions  that  call 
for  a  more  effective  criminal  justice  became  acute,  we  had  ceased  to 
take  the  same  interest  in  criminal  law  that  had  been  taken  early  in  the 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  923 


nineteenth  century,  when  the  leaders  of  the  legal  profession  achieved 
their  most  conspicuous  triumphs  in  criminal  cases,  and  in  consequence 
there  has  been  no  such  systematic  expert  consideration  of  how  to  give 
efficacy  to  criminal  justice  in  the  present  as  was  devoted  to  the  work  of 
enfeebling  it  in  the  past. 

4.  English  criminal  procedure  at  the  Revolution.  As  the  substan¬ 
tive  criminal  law  had  been  brutal  in  the  spirit  of  a  substitute  for  lynch 
law,  so  English  criminal  procedure  had  been  brutal  and  unfair  to  the 
accused.  The  trial  methods  of  seventeenth-century  prosecutors  and 
the  conduct  of  seventeenth-century  trial  judges,  imitated  by  some 
royal  judges  in  eighteenth-century  America,  led  to  stringent  provisions 
in  our  bills  of  rights  for  the  protection  of  accused  persons  and  for 
securing  them  a  fair  trial.  Except  in  political  prosecutions,  criminal 
prosecutions  in  the  English  polity  w^ere  privately  conducted.  Also 
there  was  no  review  of  convictions  except  for  error  on  the  face  of  the 
formal  record  and  no  granting  of  new  trials  to  the  convicted.  Both  of 
these  conditions  were  changed  in  American  law.  A  local  public  prose¬ 
cutor  was  set  up  in  each  locality.  The  practice  of  review  of  adminis¬ 
trative  convictions  before  colonial  legislatures  and  granting  of  new 
trials  by  colonial  legislatures  after  judicial  judgments  made  us  familiar 
with  review  of  criminal  proceedings  and  led  to  a  system  of  criminal 
appellate  procedure.  But  the  local  prosecutor,  the  model  whereof  is 
the  federal  district  attorney  of  the  Judiciary  Act  of  1789,  while  sug¬ 
gested  by  the  French  procureur  du  roi,  was  not  made  part  of  an 
organized  administrative  system,  but  instead  was  given  complete  in¬ 
dependence  as  a  sort  of  attorney  general  in  petto.  In  the  federal 
system  a  certain  control  is  had  through  the  federal  department  of 
justice.  In  the  States  there  is  no  such  power.  The  local  prosecutor 
and  the  attorney  general  may  cooperate  or  may  ignore  each  other  or 
may  clash  as  their  dispositions  or  their  politics  lead  them.  The  wide 
powers  of  local  prosecutors,  the  lack  of  control  over  them,  and  the 
extent  to  which  they  may  determine  the  whole  course  of  law  enforce¬ 
ment,  without  leaving  a  tangible  record  of  what  they  have  done  and 
what  they  have  undone,  are  beginning  to  attract  attention. 

No  officer  in  our  large  cities  has  so  much  real  power  with  so  little 
ostensible  power.  The  easiest  path  to  improper  influence  upon  crim¬ 
inal  justice  is  through  the  office  of  the  public  prosecutor,  and  there  is 
much  evidence  that  professional  defenders  of  professional  criminals 


924 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


and  professional  extortioners  from  occasional  offenders  in  more  than 
one  American  city  understand  this  thoroughly.  In  a  rural  pioneer 
community  with  a  small  local  bar,  a  small  criminal  docket,  and  only 
occasional  terms  of  court,  the  public  prosecutor  had  relatively  little 
power.  Grand  juries  had  ample  time  to  deliberate  and  did  their  work 
critically.  What  the  public  prosecutor  did  or  failed  to  do  was  evident 
to  and  subject  to  criticism  by  alert  and  expert  critics  actively  engaged 
in  the  courts.  In  the  modern  city,  with  congested  criminal  dockets,  a 
crowded  bar,  the  leaders  of  which  seldom  or  never  go  into  the  criminal 
courts,  and  continuous  sessions  of  court  almost  throughout  the  year, 
he  is  watched  only  by  alert  and  expert  professional  defenders  who 
often  know  the  game  of  criminal  justice  better  than  he  does.  There  is 
no  effective  check  upon  him.  The  series  of  mitigating  agencies  which 
were  introduced  into  our  criminal  justice  under  different  conditions 
offer  abundant  opportunity  to  cover  up  his  tracks,  and  the  pressure 
of  judicial  business  makes  the  common-law  check  of  judicial  approval, 
when  required,  a  perfunctory  ceremony.  The  chief  pressure  upon 
him  is  political,  and  this  sort  of  pressure  is  easily  exerted  by  politician- 
criminal-law  practitioners  as  a  means  of  defeating  enforcement  of  the 
law.  No  feature  of  our  administration  of  criminal  justice  calls  for 
thoroughgoing  study  so  urgently  as  the  public  prosecutor.1 

Review  of  convictions  and  granting  of  new  trials  by  appellate  courts 
were  called  for  especially  in  America  because  of  the  need  for  judicial 
finding  and  shaping  of  the  law  which  we  were  receiving  from  England 
and  adapting  to  our  conditions.  When  James  Kent  went  upon  the 
bench  in  New  York  in  1791  he  tells  us  that  there  were  no  State  law 
reports  and  nobody  knew  what  was  the  law.  Later  there  was  need  of 
judicial  interpretation  of  the  criminal  codes  which  became  common 
in  the  United  States  after  the  model  of  the  French  penal  code  of  1810. 
But  this  institution  had  the  effect  of  enfeebling  the  administration  of 
criminal  law  in  that  settlement  of  the  law  was  then  more  important 
than  punishment  of  the  individual  offender.  Thus,  in  the  second  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  the  law  had  become  settled,  new  trials 
were  granted  constantly  on  academic  legal  points  although  no  doubt 
of  guilt  could  exist.  There  has  been  a  marked  change  in  this  respect 

1  Mr.  Bettman’s  pioneer  study  of  a  prosecutor’s  office  in  action  in  an  urban 
community  should  be  pondered  by  every  thoughtful  lawyer.  Criminal  Justice  in 
Cleveland,  Part  IT. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  925 


in  the  past  two  decades.  Yet  the  function  of  finding  the  law  for  a 
pioneer  community  whose  criminal  law  is  formative,  as  the  real  func¬ 
tion  of  a.criminal  appellate  tribunal  rather  than  reviewing  guilt  or  in¬ 
nocence  of  the  accused,  has  impressed  its  spirit  upon  our  whole  system 
of  review  of  convictions.  How  much  it  still  affects  our  administration 
of  justice  may  be  seen  by  comparing  the  reported  decisions  of  an  Amer¬ 
ican  supreme  court  with  those  of  the  English  Court  of  Criminal  Appeal. 

It  will  have  been  noted  that  all  three  of  our  American  innovations 
upon  seventeenth-century  English  criminal  procedure  were  in  the 
direction  of  mitigation  and  afforded  additional  incidental  opportunities 
for  the  guilty  to  escape.  Accordingly,  as  English  criminal  justice  is 
notoriously  more  feeble  than  criminal  justice  upon  the  Continent, 
American  criminal  justice  is  more  feeble  than  English.1 

5.  The  system  of  courts  at  the  Revolution.  English  judicial  organi¬ 
zation  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  was  too  arbitrary  and  involved 
to  be  taken  as  a  model  to  be  followed  in  detail  in  this  country.  Yet  by 
eliminating  the  more  obvious  anomalies,  a  general  outline  could  be 
perceived  which  was  the  model  of  our  system  of  courts.  For  the  pur¬ 
poses  of  criminal  justice,  beginning  at  the  bottom,  this  was :  ( 1 )  Local 
peace  magistrates  and  local  inferior  courts  with  jurisdiction  to  examine 
and  bind  over  for  felonies  and  a  petty  jurisdiction  over  misdemeanors, 
subject  to  appeal  to  and  retrial  in  the  court  of  general  jurisdiction; 
(2)  a  central  court  of  general  jurisdiction  at  law  and  over  crimes,  with 
provision  for  local  trial  of  causes  at  circuit;  (3)  a  supreme  court  of 
review.  The  defect  in  that  scheme  that  appealed  to  the  formative 
period  of  judicial  organization  was  not  its  lack  of  unity,  the  multi¬ 
plicity  of  courts  or  the  double  appeals,  but  its  over-centralization  for 
the  needs  of  a  sparsely  settled  community  that  sought  to  bring  justice 
to  every  man.  In  a  community  of  long  distances  in  a  time  of  slow 
communication  and  expensive  travel  central  courts  entailed  intolerable 
expense  upon  litigants.  Judicial  organizations  were  devised  with  a 
view  to  bringing  justice  to  every  man’s  door.  But  the  model  was 
English  at  a  time  when  English  judicial  organization  was  at  its  worst. 
For  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  English  had  not  yet  overhauled  their 
system  of  courts.  It  had  grown  up  by  successive  creation  or  evolution 
of  new  courts  when  new  types  of  work  arose  or  old  tribunals  ceased  to 

1What  this  means  to  the  habitual  offender  is  suggested  by  the  statistics  in 
chap,  i  of  the  report  on  Police  Administration,  in  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland. 


926 


PROBLEM  OE  CRIMINALITY 


function  efficiently,  so  that  some  seventy-four  courts  existed,  seventeen 
of  which  did  the  work  now  done  in  England  by  three.  Thus  we  took 
an  archaic  system  for  our  model,  and  the  circumstances  of  the  time  in 
which  our  courts  were  organized  tended  to  foster  a  policy  of  multi¬ 
plication.  As  a  result,  we  go  on  creating  new  courts  at  a  time  when 
the  conditions  of  our  large  cities  call  for  unification. 

A  contributing  factor  in  this  decentralized  judicial  organization  was 
the  need  of  judicial  ascertainment  of  the  law  in  a  new  community 
already  adverted  to.  We  had  to  devise  a  body  of  substantive  criminal 
law  in  a  time  of  rapid  expansion.  For  more  than  a  century  the  main 
energies  of  our  judicial  system  were  devoted  to  the  working  out  of  a 
consistent,  logical,  minutely  precise  body  of  precedents.  To  us  the 
important  part  of  the  system  was  not  the  trial  judge  who  tried  and 
sentenced  the  accused,  but  the  judge  of  the  appellate  court  who  availed 
himself  of  the  occasion  given  by  the  prosecution  to  develop  the  law. 
We  judged  the  judicial  system  rather  by  the  written  opinions  filed  in 
its  highest  court  than  by  the  efficient  functioning  of  its  prosecuting 
machinery.  Our  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  task  of  providing  rules.  It 
is  no  wonder  that  our  failure  to  devote  equal  attention  to  application 
and  enforcement  of  rules  too  often  allowed  the  machinery  designed  to 
give  effect  to  the  rules  to  defeat  the  purposes  of  law  in  their  actual 
operation.  If  one  reads  the  report  upon  the  courts  in  Cleveland  with 
this  historical  background  in  mind,  he  will  understand  many  things. 
The  rise  of  special  problems,  such  as  those  which  come  before  juvenile 
courts  and  our  urban  courts  of  domestic  relations,  the  great  increase 
in  police  regulations,  especially  of  traffic  regulations  since  the  advent 
of  the  automobile,  the  increased  opportunities  for  professional  crime 
and  consequent  large-scale  organization  of  criminal  enterprises,  the 
presence  in  our  cities  of  large  groups  of  aliens,  as  well  as  of  citizens  of 
foreign  birth  and  no  little  race  solidarity,  the  resulting  colonies  in  our 
cities  of  large  numbers  of  persons  not  trained  in  the  ideas  which  our 
legal  polity  presupposes,  and  the  complex  economic  organization,  with 
its  incidental  results  of  recurring  times  of  unemployment  and  con¬ 
tinual  inflow  and  outflow  of  laborers — all  these  things  affect  court 
organization  as  well  as  police  and  prosecutor.  They  call  for  strong 
peace  magistrates,  well  organized  and  provided  with  ample  facilities. 
They  call  for  a  single  court  of  criminal  jurisdiction,  in  which  the  steps 
in  a  prosecution  may  be  reduced  to  a  minimum — a  court  well  organ- 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  927 

ized  and  continually  in  session.  AH  this  is  very  far  from  the  system 
we  inherited  from  the  nineteenth  century. 

6.  The  bench  at  the  Revolution  and  in  the  nineteenth  century .  As 
has  been  said,  the  administration  of  justice  in  colonial  America  was  at 
first  executive  and  legislative,  rather  than  judicial.  Legislative  new 
trials  persisted  until  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  legislative 
appellate  jurisdiction  until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
legislative  divorces  until  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Judicial  justice  was  only  just  establishing  itself  at  the  time  of  the 
Revolution,  and  came  to  its  own  in  the  last  decades  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth.  In  the  colonies  the 
courts  were  manned  by  laymen,  with  the  occasional  exception  of  the 
chief  justice,  and  in  some  of  the  colonies  the  royal  chief  justices  did 
not  so  conduct  themselves  as  to  inspire  confidence  in  lawyers  as  judi¬ 
cial  magistrates.  At  the  time  of  the  Revolution  it  was  beginning  to  be 
thought  advisable  to  have  judges  learned  in  the  law.  But  many  of  the 
States  relied  upon  judges  without  legal  training  until  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century.  Thus,  two  of  the  three  justices  in  New  Hamp¬ 
shire  after  the  Revolution  were  laymen,  and  the  Chief  Justice  of  Rhode 
Island-from  1819  to  1826  was  a  farmer. 

Three  factors  brought  about  a  wholly  different  attitude  toward  the 
bench  from  that  which  has  obtained  in  England  since  1688.  Here,  as 
in  so  many  cases  in  American  legal  and  political  institutions,  we  derive 
from  seventeenth-centur}^  rather  than  from  eighteenth-century  Eng¬ 
land.  The  politics-ridden  bench  of  the  Stuarts  rather  than  the  inde¬ 
pendent  judiciary  of  modern  England  was  the  original  model.  The 
federal  constitution  and  the  federal  judiciary  act  of  1789  set  a  better 
model  and,  on  the  whole,  the  federal  courts  have  kept  to  the  best 
traditions  of  a  common-law  bench.  Also  the  appointive  State  courts, 
with  permanent  tenure,  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  in 
the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  were  manned  by  judges  of  the 
highest  type,  who  made  that  period  a  classical  one  in  the  history  of 
Anglo-American  law.  But  the  hostility  to  courts  and  lawyers  due  to 
economic  causes  after  the  Revolution,  and  the  radical  democratic 
movement  of  the  next  generation,  with  its  leveling  tendencies,  its 
tendency  to  carry  out  abstract  political  theory  to  its  logical  conclu¬ 
sions,  and  its  cult  of  incompetency,  which  is  so  often  a  by-product  of 
democracy,  combined  to  work  a  gradual  change.  Hostility  to  Fed- 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


928 

eralist  judges,  some  of  whom,  it  must  be  admitted,  followed  the  ex¬ 
ample  of  political  judges  in  England  too  closely,  had  much  to  do  with 
the  first  experiments  with  an  elective  bench.  Thus  a  complete  change 
took  place  in  the  mode  of  choice  and  tenure  of  judges  which  became 
general  after  1850. 

In  rural  pioneer  America  the  elective  short-term  judge  did  not  work 
badly,  although  it  is  significant  that  the  great  names  which  are  the 
ornaments  of  American  judicial  history  belong,  with  scarcely  an  ex¬ 
ception,  to  the  era  of  appointed  judges  with  permanent  tenure.  Today 
judges  in  rural  jurisdictions  chosen  at  the  polls  and  for  relatively  short 
terms  are,  on  the  whole,  reasonably  satisfactory.  But  the  elected  short 
term  bench  has  not  achieved  what  its  adherents  expected  of  it,  and  has 
achieved  some  other  things  which  have  a  bad  influence  upon  the  ad¬ 
ministration  of  justice. 

It  may  be  shown  from  the  debates  in  constitutional  conventions  by 
which  elective  judges  were  provided  for  that  the  advocates  of  that 
system  expected  to  put  the  judges  into  the  closest  touch  with  the 
people,  to  make  them  responsive  to  public  opinion,  to  subject  them  to 
the  pressure  of  popular  criticism,  and  to  liberalize  the  administration 
of  justice.  English  law,  which  we  were  receiving  and  making  over, 
was  looked  upon  with  suspicion  by  a  large  part  of  the  community  and 
it  was  thought  that  a  permanent  judiciary  was  over-technical.  This 
feeling  had  some  justification  in  the  obstinacy  with  which  some  strong 
judges  adhered  to  English  rules  and  practices  simply  as  such,  and  in 
the  impossibility  of  administering  justice  in  the  nineteenth  century  by 
the  formal,  involved,  artificial  common-law  procedure  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  But  what  the  new  system  of  choosing  judges  actually  did 
was  to  subject  the  bench  to  professional  political  pressure,  to  make 
judges  responsive  to  political  considerations  rather  than  to  public 
opinion,  and,  in  the  long  run,  to  insure  at  most  a  mediocre  bench 
which  has  proved  more  narrowly  technical  and,  on  the  whole,  less 
liberal  in  practice  than  appointed  judges  with  permanent  tenure  in  the 
few  jurisdictions  which  retained  that  system.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  judges  elected  for  short  terms  soon  lost  effective  control  over  the 
administration  of  justice,  and  common-law  traditions  of  legal  proceed¬ 
ing  became  seriously  impaired.  Lack  of  control  over  the  trial  bar  on 
the  part  of  judges  who  cannot  afford  to  antagonize  and  cannot  insist 
upon  expedition  and  high  ethical  forensic  standards  of  conduct  without 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  929 

imperiling  their  positions  is  a  chief  cause  of  the  unnecessary  con¬ 
tinuances  and  postponements,  the  difficulties  in  obtaining  juries,  the 
wranglings  of  counsel,  and  the  ill  treatment  of  witnesses  which  have 
cast  discredit  upon  American  criminal  trials.  It  is  significant  that 
these  things  are  almost  unknown  in  jurisdictions  in  which  judicial 
tenure  is  permanent  and  secure. 

Moreover,  the  putting  of  the  bench  into  politics  and  the  modes  of 
thought  of  the  pioneer  resulted  in  breaking  down  the  common-law 
standards  of  decorum  and  of  judicial  propriety.  How  far  this  de¬ 
cadence  of  dignity  and  decorum  may  go  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the 
report  on  Criminal  Courts.  The  habitual  presence  of  the  higher  type 
of  lawyer  in  the  civil  courts  has  prevented  such  things  as  are  of  com¬ 
mon  occurrence  in  inferior  criminal  tribunals.  But  the  judicial  Bar- 
num  and  even  the  judicial  mountebank  are  well-known  characters  in 
most  American  jurisdictions  today,  and  they  are  fostered  by  a  system 
under  which,  in  the  large  city,  a  magistrate  must  keep  in  the  public 
eye  in  order  to  hold  his  place.  Even  more  serious  is  the  careless,  slip¬ 
shod  despatch  of  business  which  develops  in  courts  conducted  without 
regard  for  decorum.1  The  nadir  is  reached  when  campaign  funds  for 
judges  are  raised  by  subscription  from  those  who  practice  or  have 
litigation  before  them. 

That  the  public  should  see  and  feel  that  justice  is  done  is  scarcely 
less  important  than  the  actual  doing  of  justice.  Order,  decorum,  and 
judicial  dignity,  in  fact,  promote  the  despatch  of  business.  More  than 
this,  they  promote  respect  for  law  and  confidence  in  the  work  of  the 
courts.  No  one  should  wonder  at  the  prevalence  of  perjury  in  courts 
so  conducted  as  to  make  the  administration  of  oaths  and  the  giving  of 
testimony  perfunctory  acts,  done  offhand  in  the  midst  of  Babel.  No 
one  should  wonder  at  the  lack  of  public  confidence  in  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  justice  by  courts  which  appear  to  be  conducted  by  whispered 
confidential  communications  with  politicians  and  criminal-law  practi¬ 
tioners  of  doubtful  repute,  rather  than  by  solemn  public  proceedings 
in  open  court.  All  these  things  are  natural  results  of  putting  the  bench 
into  politics  under  the  conditions  of  the  modern  city.  One  of  the  chief 
items  in  any  program  of  improvement  must  be  to  free  the  court-rooms 

1 A  method  which  lends  itself  to  such  things  as  are  described  in  chap,  iii  of  the 
report  on  Prosecution,  and  chap,  v  of  the  report  on  Criminal  Courts,  in  Crimi¬ 
nal  Justice  in  Cleveland. 


930 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


*  of  our  lower  tribunals  from  the  atmosphere  of  crudity  and  coarseness 
given  them  by  the  "Jefferson  Brick”  era  of  American  politics,  con¬ 
firmed  in  them  by  the  pioneer,  and  accentuated  by  the  press  of  work, 
mixed  population,  and  crowd  of  low-grade  lawyers  in  the  large  city. 

7.  The  bar  at  and  after  the  Revolution .  At  the  Revolution  the  bar 
was  hardly  more  than  beginning  in  this  country.  The  colonies  had 
little  need  of  lawyers  until  after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
With  the  rise  of  judicial  justice  administered  by  courts  in  place  of 
executive  justice  and  legislative  justice  which  prevailed  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  colonial  period,  a  tendency  to  go  to  England  for 
legal  education  began  to  appear,  and  there  were  a  few  good  lawyers  in 
more  than  one  colony  at  the  Revolution.  After  the  Revolution  law 
and  lawyers  were  in  much  disfavor;  the  law,  because  it  could  not 
escape  the  odium  of  its  English  origin  in  the  period  of  bitter  feelings 
after  the  war,  lawyers,  because  they  alone  seemed  to  thrive  in  the 
economic  disorganization  and  disturbed  conditions  that  followed  peace. 
These  circumstances  and  the  radical  democratic  notions  of  the  Jeffer¬ 
sonian  era  determined  our  professional  organization. 

In  England,  as  now,  the  legal  profession  was  organized  in  two 
branches.  The  upper  branch,  barristers  or  counselors,  were  alone 
eligible  for  judicial  office  and  had  exclusive  exercise  of  the  function  of 
advocacy.  This  branch  was  well  organized  in  societies  coming  down 
from  the  Middle  Ages,  had  high  professional  traditions,  professional 
discipline,  control  of  admission  to  its  ranks,  and  a  decayed  system  of 
legal  education  which,  nevertheless,  was  capable  of  being  modernized 
and  made  effective.  The  lower  branch,  attorneys,  solicitors,  did  the 
work  of  client-caretaking  and  acted  as  agents  for  their  clients  in  liti¬ 
gation.  Although  some  American  jurisdictions  made  a  distinction  be¬ 
tween  counselors  and  attorneys,  it  soon  came  to  little  in  practice,  and 
"attorney  and  counselor”  became  the  American  rule.  But  the  at¬ 
torney  furnished  the  model  rather  than  the  counselor.  The  profession 
was  not  organized  in  any  real  sense.  As  in  the  case  of  attorneys  and 
solicitors  in  England,  each  court  had  its  roll  of  practitioners,  there 
was  no  professional  discipline,  the  power  of  the  courts  to  remove  from 
the  roll  was  exercised  in  flagrant  cases  only,  and  the  training  was 
wholly  by  apprenticeship.  Thus  the  bar  was  largely  deprofessional- 
ized.  In  rural  circuits  the  close  daily  contact  of  a  small  bar,  each  well 
known  to  his  fellows,  served  to  maintain  traditional  professional 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  931 


standards.  But  with  the  obsolescence  of  the  practice  of  going  circuit 
and  the  rise  of  large  urban  bars,  containing  numbers  who  are  wholly 
unknown  to  their  fellow  practitioners,  it  ceased  to  be  possible  to  keep 
up  traditional  standards  in  this  way.  Gradually  also  a  differentiation 
took  place  and  three  well-defined  groups  became  set  off  from  the  main 
body  of  the  bar,  namely,  a  well-educated,  well-trained  stratum  at  the 
top,  an  uneducated,  untrained,  or  ill-trained  stratum  at  the  bottom, 
and  a  small  group  of  none  too  scrupulous  politician-lawyers.  The 
practice  of  criminal  law  came  to  be  almost  exclusively  the  domain  of 
the  two  last. 

Readers  of  English  fiction  of  the  fore  part  of  the  last  century  will 
remember  the  condition  of  the  lower  branch  of  the  profession  in  Eng¬ 
land  at  that  time  as  there  portrayed.  Sampson  Brass,  Dodson  &  Fogg, 
and  Quirk,  Gammon  &  Snap  are  types  that  we  recognize  perfectly 
today.  In  England  incorporation  of  the  lower  branch  of  the  profes¬ 
sion,  with  the  consequent  introduction  of  discipline,  professional  feel¬ 
ing,  and  requirements  of  education  and  professional  training,  have 
effected  a  reform.  We  have  moved  more  slowly.  In  the  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  the  rise  of  bar  associations  was  the  beginning 
of  better  things.  These  associations  have  done  much  for  professional 
organization,  professional  ethics,  and  professional  discipline.  But  they 
are  voluntary  organizations,  and  it  has  happened  in  some  cities,  and 
may  happen  anywhere,  that  the  lower  strata  of  the  bar,  seeing  the 
advantages  of  voluntary  organization,  have  formed  organizations  and 
exercised  a  sinister  influence  upon  the  administration  of  justice. 

Three  stages  may  be  perceived  in  the  development  of  the  American 
bar.  The  first  stage  is  marked  by  the  leadership  of  the  trial  lawyer. 
The  great  achievements  of  the  bar  were  in  the  forum,  and  the  most 
conspicuous  success  was  success  before  juries  in  the  trial  of  criminal 
cases.  The  bench  and  the  legislature  were  recruited  from  the  trial 
bar.  The  law  was  largely  fashioned  to  be  a  body  of  rules  for  use  in 
the  trial  of  causes.  This  stage  lasted  until  the  Civil  War  and  still 
persists  in  some  rural  communities.  In  a  second  stage  leadership 
passed  to  the  railroad  lawyer.  The  proof  of  professional  success  was 
to  represent  a  railroad  company.  The  leaders  of  the  bar  were  perma¬ 
nently  employed  as  defenders  in  civil  causes  and  their  energies,  their 
ingenuity,  and  their  learning  were  exercised  in  defeating  or  thwarting 
those  who  sought  relief  against  public  service  companies  in  the  courts. 


932 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


But  where  the  bench  was  elective,  because  of  popular  suspicion  of 
those  companies,  judges  and  legislators  were  seldom  chosen  from  these 
leaders.  Hence  criminal  law  became  the  almost  exclusive  field  of  the 
lower  stratum  of  the  bar,  and  the  recognized  leaders  in  ability  and 
learning  ceased  to  be  the  official  leaders  as  judges,  prosecutors,  and 
lawmakers.  Today  leadership  seems  to  have  passed  to  the  client- 
caretaker.  The  office  of  a  leader  of  the  bar  is  a  huge  business  organi¬ 
zation.  Its  function  is  to  advise,  to  organize,  to  reorganize,  and  direct 
business  enterprises,  to  point  out  dangers  and  mark  safe  channels  and 
chart  reefs  for  the  business  adventurer,  and  in  our  older  communities 
to  act,  as  one  might  say,  as  a  steward  for  the  absentee  owners  of  our 
industries.  The  actual  administration  of  justice  in  the  courts  interests 
him  only  as  it  discloses  reefs  or  bars  or  currents  to  be  avoided  by  the 
pilot  of  business  men.  Thus  the  leaders  of  the  bar  in  the  cities  are 
coming  to  be  divorced  not  only  from  the  administration  of  criminal 
justice,  but  from  the  whole  work  of  the  courts,  and  the  most  effective 
check  upon  judicial  administration  of  justice  is  ceasing  to  be  operative. 

It  may  be  conceded  that  the  economic  causes  which  have  turned  the 
energies  of  the  ablest  and  best  trained  in  the  profession  into  client¬ 
caretaking  are  inexorable,  and  that  we  may  not  hope  to  divert  the 
leaders  to  less  remunerative  work  and  work  of  less  magnitude  with 
respect  to  the  economic  interests  involved.  But  it  does  not  follow  that 
those  who  practise  chiefly  in  the  courts,  and  especially  those  who  do 
the  bulk  of  the  work  in  criminal  cases,  should  be  uneducated,  ill 
trained,  and  undisciplined. 

Corporate  organization  of  the  bar,  as  at  common  law,  and  as  both 
branches  of  the  legal  profession  are  now  organized  in  England,  and 
proper  educational  standards,  both  preliminary  and  professional,  are 
items  of  the  first  moment  in  any  plan  for  improving  the  administration 
of  justice  in  our  large  cities.  In  such  cities  there  must  be  many  lawyers 
of  foreign  birth  or  foreign  parentage.  To  confine  the  practice  of  law 
to  any  group,  racial  or  linguistic  or  economic,  would  be  to  exclude 
other  groups  from  their  just  share  in  making,  interpreting,  and  apply¬ 
ing  the  law,  and  thus  to  deprive  them  of  their  just  share  in  a  polity 
which  is  primarily  legal.  But  it  is  vital  that  these  lawyers  should 
know  the  spirit  of  our  polity ;  and  that  is  the  spirit  of  our  common 
law.  The  mere  rule-of-thumb  training  in  local  law  and  procedure  or 
in  meager  generalities  of  definition  and  abstract  principle  which  most 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  933 


of  them  now  get  in  night  law  schools  gives  no  adequate  conception  of 
our  law  nor  of  our  legal  institutions.  However  good  their  intentions, 
they  cannot  use  the  machinery  of  a  common-law  prosecution  intelli¬ 
gently  with  such  training,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  our  legal  system 
functions  badly  in  their  hands.1 

8.  Penal  treatment  at  the  end  oj  the  eighteenth  century.  Modern 
criminal  science  begins  in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
after  the  classical  treatise  of  Beccaria  on  crimes  and  punishments. 
But  the  movement  for  a  rational  and  humane  penal  treatment  which 
that  treatise  began  did  not  affect  our  law  till  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  legislation  began  to  provide  imprisonment  rather  than 
death  as  a  punishment  for  all  but  a  few  felonies.  Thus  our  penal 
treatment  was  grafted  on  a  system  that  proceeded  on  radically  dif¬ 
ferent  ideas.  The  jail  system,  inherited  from  England,  did  not  work 
badly  in  small  country  county-seats  in  the  fore  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  but  became  intolerable  in  the  large  city  of  the  present  cen¬ 
tury.  The  American  Prison  Congress  was  not  organized  till  1870, 
and  the  American  Institute  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology  not 
until  1910.  In  other  words,  our  system  of  penal  treatment,  experi¬ 
mental  in  its  inception  and  grafted  on  a  bad  system,  has  had  not 
much  more  than  a  century  in  which  to  develop,  has  been  studied 
scientifically  for  not  much  more  than  a  generation,  and  before  it  was 
much  more  than  worked  out  for  the  conditions  of  agricultural  America 
has  had  to  be  applied,  as  well  as  we  might,  to  the  predominantly  urban 
America  of  today.  These  facts  explain  much. 

The  Problems  of  Criminal  Justice  in  the  American  City  of  T oday 

1.  Reshaping  of  the  substantive  criminal  law.  From  the  foregoing 
discussion  it  will  have  been  seen  that  before  our  criminal  justice  may 
function  satisfactorily  the  chaotic,  internally  inconsistent,-  to  a  large 
extent  anachronistic,  condition  of  our  substantive  criminal  law  must 
be  taken  in  hand.  Both  the  report  on  Prosecution  and  the  report  on 
the  Criminal  Courts  bring  out  the  relative  disproportion  in  the  time 
devoted  to  civil  as  compared  with  criminal  litigation.  It  is  not  that 

1  Chap,  iii  of  the  report  on  Prosecution,  in  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland ,  dis¬ 
closing  methods  at  variance  not  only  with  justice,  but  with  the  whole  spirit  of 
our  institutions,  should  be  read  with  these  things  in  mind. 


934 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


the  former  receives  too  much  judicial  attention,  but  that  we  have 
acquired  a  habit  of  neglecting  the  latter.  This  is  true  no  less  of  the 
substance  of  the  law.  We  have  made  great  strides  in  the  civil  side  of 
the  law  in  a  generation.  Much  has  been  done  in  civil  procedure  in  the 
last  two  decades.  But  criminal  law  has  stood  still,  and  with  a  few 
notable  exceptions  in  one  or  two  localities  criminal  procedure  remains 
what  it  was  fifty  years  ago.  Thus  the  neglect  of  the  criminal  law  by 
the  leaders  of  the  bar,  reflected  in  neglect  of  it  in  our  law  schools,  bears 
fruit  in  a  backward  condition  which  is  full  of  advantage  to  the  law 
breaker  and  to  those  who  make  their  livelihood  by  representing  him. 
What  we  have  to  do  is  nothing  less  than  to  reshape  the  substantive 
criminal  law  so  as  to  maintain  the  general  security  and  the  security 
of  social  institutions,  and  at  the  same  time  maintain  the  social  interest 
in  the  human  life  of  every  individual,  under  the  circumstances  of  the 
modern  city ;  and  we  must  do  this  upon  the  basis  of  traditional  rules 
and  principles  in  which  the  latter  was  chiefly  regarded,  and  yet  were 
warped  in  their  application  by  those  who  regarded  only  the  former. 

This  is  too  large  a  subject  for  the  city.  As  things  are  it  calls  for 
nothing  less  than  a  ministry  of  justice,  at  least  in  each  of  our  larger 
States ;  for  our  so-called  departments  of  justice  are  but  offices  for  legal 
advice  to  State  officers,  for  representation  of  the  State  in  its  civil 
litigation,  and  for  advocacy  in  the  courts  of  review  in  criminal  causes. 
In  the  federal  government  the  Department  of  Justice  is'  more.  There 
it  is  a  well-organized  prosecuting  bureau.  But  nowhere  is  it  organized 
to  study  the  functioning  of  our  legal  institutions,  the  application  and 
enforcement  of  law,  the  cases  in  which  and  reasons  for  which  it  fails 
to  do  justice  or  to  do  complete  justice,  the  new  situations  which  arise 
continually  and  the  means  of  meeting  them,  what  legislation  achieves 
its  purpose  and  what  not  and  why,  and  thus  to  give  expert  and  in¬ 
telligent  guidance  to  those  who  frame  and  those  who  administer  our 
laws.  In  the  rural,  agricultural  society  of  the  past,  the  judiciary  com¬ 
mittees  of  the  two  houses  of  the  legislature  could  do  efficiently  so 
much  of  this  as  was  needed.  Today,  even  if  our  crowded  legislative 
sessions  allowed  the  time,  no  legislative  committee  is  competent  to 
[do]  the  highly  specialized  work  required.  In  consequence,  commissions 
are  provided  from  time  to  time  to  study  particular  subjects.  But  their 
work  is  not  coordinated,  there  is  no  continuity  in  what  they  do  nor 
in  what  successive  legislatures  do,  and  the  whole  process  is  wasteful, 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  935 


expensive,  and  ineffective.  A  ministry  of  justice  in  the  foregoing  sense 
was  proposed  by  Jeremy  Rentham  during  the  English  legislative  re¬ 
form  movement  of  the  last  century.  It  was  approved  by  the  Confer¬ 
ence  of  Bar  Association  Delegates  at  the  meeting  of  the  American  Bar 
Association  in  1917.  It  was  recommended  in  1918  by  a  Parliamentary 
Commission  headed  by  Lord  Haldane  as  one  of  the  chief  items  in  a 
plan  for  reconstruction  of  the  British  administrative  system.1  It  de¬ 
serves  to  be  kept  in  mind  by  American  lawyers  as  one  of  the  things  to 
be  provided  in  the  inevitable  reconstruction  of  our  administrative 
system  in  a  country  in  which  the  center  of  gravity  has  definitely 
shifted  to  the  city. 

2.  Organization  of  the  administration  of  justice.  It  is  no  less  urgent, 
and  more  immediately  practicable,  to  organize  the  administration  of 
justice  as  a  whole  and  in  all  its- branches,  to  prune  the  accumulation  of 
checks  and  mitigating  agencies  which  discourage  prosecuting  witnesses 
and  afford  opportunity  of  escape  to  the  guilty  without  profiting  the 
innocent  (see,  for  example,  the  manner  in  which  preliminary  examina¬ 
tions  are  conducted  in  the  Municipal  Court,  as  disclosed  in  the  report 
on  Prosecution),  to  coordinate  responsibility  and  power,  putting  both 
in  a  few  conspicuous  officials  charged  with  authority  to  supervise  and 
direct  and  plan  and  enforce  their  policies,  and  with  responsibility  for 
the  due  functioning  of  criminal  justice,  and  to  correlate  the  judicial 
and  administrative  agencies,  so  that,  instead  of  acting  independently, 
and  sometimes  in  conflict,  they  will  operate  with  one  known  policy  in 
all  things  and  will  not  be  able  to  shift  responsibility  from  one  to  the 
other  or  let  it  fall  down  between  them,  as  in  the  Raleigh  prosecution. 
Only  in  this  way  is  it  possible  to  insure  an  efficient  machine  to  dispose 
of  the  great  volume  of  prosecution  required  in  the  modern  city  and 
enforce  the  great  mass  of  police  regulation  demanded  by  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  urban  life. 

Specifically,  three  points  are  to  be  urged  : 

a.  Unification  of  courts.  The  system  of  courts  should  be  unified. 
An  administrative  head  should  be  provided  with^  large  powers  of  or¬ 
ganizing  judicial  business,  of  systematizing  the  assignment  of  cases 
to  judges  and  judges  to  types  of  work,  of  applying  the  judicial  force 
where  the  exigencies  of  the  work  demand,  and  of  applying  it  upon 

!See  Judge  Cardozo’s  "Ministry  of  Justice,”  in  Harvard  Law  Review , 
Vol.  XXXV,  p.  1 13. 


936 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


that  work  to  the  best  advantage.  Thus,  in  place  of  rotation  of  judges 
dictated  by  political  exigencies,  the  personnel  of  the  bench  would  be 
employed  systematically  and  intelligently,  as  the  size  and  importance 
of  the  work  demand.  Also  he  should  have  power,  in  connection  with 
a  council  of  judges,  to  initiate  and  determine  policies  so  that  the 
unseemly  spectacle  of  two  judges  of  coordinate  jurisdiction  applying 
the  same  law  in  two  wholly  different  ways  in  two  adjoining  rooms  shall 
come  to  an  end,  and  he  should  be  responsible  for  the  due  functioning 
of  the  judicial  system  in  all  these  respects.1 

b.  Organization  of  the  prosecuting  system.  The  prosecuting  sys¬ 
tem  should  be  unified.  The  administrative  head  of  the  system  should 
have  full  power  to  control  and  responsibility  for  the  acts  of  his  subor¬ 
dinates.  He  should  be  required  to  keep  proper  records  of  all  that  goes 
on  in  the  course  of  a  prosecution  from  the  beginning,  with  recorded 
reasons  for  his  action  in  t}^pes  of  proceeding  where  the  law,  made  for 
simpler  conditions,  now  requires  what  has  become  a  perfunctory  ap¬ 
proval  by  the  court.  He  should  be  a  part  of  an  organized  general 
prosecuting  system  of  the  State,  not  a  wholly  independent  functionary. 
Note,  for  example,  in  the  report  on  Prosecution  the  extent  to  which 
the  public  prosecutor  may,  if  he  chooses,  neglect  to  assist  the  court  of 
review  with  proper  briefs  or  arguments.  No  publicity  attends  his 
neglect  of  that  duty,  and  he  has  it  in  his  power  to  present  the  State’s 
side  of  a  criminal  appeal  or  not,  wholly  as  he  likes.  In  the  same  way 
he  may  cooperate  with  or  operate  independently  or  even  thwart  the 
police,  and  they  are  in  a  like  position  with  respect  to  him.  Criminal 
investigation  and  preparation  of  causes  for  trial  have  reached  a  high 
degree  of  development.  But  our  prosecuting  system  is  not  adapted  to 
the  one,  and  except  in  sensational  cases,  its  methods  with  respect  to 
the  other  are  usually  crude  in  comparison  with  those  employed  in  civil 
litigation.  If  nothing  else  were  to  be  considered,  the  mere  waste  of 
energy  involved  in  an  unorganized  prosecuting  system  ought  not  to  be 
tolerated  in  view  of  the  volume  of  criminal  business  in  the  courts  of  a 
modern  city.  To  no  small  extent  the  effectiveness  of  English  criminal 
justice  is  due  to  the  centralized  administrative  supervision  exercised 
by  the  Director  of  Public  Prosecutions.  His  vigilant  scrutiny  of  what 
is  done  and  what  is  not  done  by  local  prosecuting  agencies  has  no 
parallel  in  our  State  prosecuting  organization. 

1  See  the  files  of  the  Journal  of  the  American  Judicature  Society. —  Ed. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  937 


c.  Organization  of  administrative  agencies.  All  administrative  agen¬ 
cies,  including  the  work  now  done  in  connection  with  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  justice  by  sheriffs,  coroners,  clerks,  bailiffs,  and  probation 
officers,  should  be  unified  and  organized  under  a  responsible  head,  put 
in  proper  relation  to  the  head  of  the  judicial  system,  so  as  to  eliminate 
friction  and  insure  uniform  policies  in  judicial  and  administrative 
action.  This  administrative  head  should  have  the  power  to  determine 
the  details  of  organization  as  circumstances  require,  to  systematize  and 
supervise,  to  initiate  and  enforce  policies,  and  to  set  up  such  technical 
and  expert  adjuncts  to  the  court  as  the  business  before  it  may  require. 
He  should  be  responsible  for  the  proper  functioning  of  this  part  of  the 
administration  of  justice.  He  could  easily  save  enough  by  proper 
organization  and  improved  administrative  methods  to  justify  his  posi¬ 
tion  on  that  score  alone.  If  for  no  other  reasons,  organization  of  the 
administrative  agencies  of  our  judicial  system  is  demanded  by  con¬ 
siderations  of  expense.  The  cost  of  administering  criminal  justice  in 
the  modern  city  by  methods  devised  for  wholly  different  conditions 
precludes  doing  many  things  as  they  should  be  done,  while  wasting 
money  in  doing  other  things  that  need  not  be  done,  or  in  doing  them 
in  clumsy  and  expensive  fashion.  The  enormous  sums  of  money  which 
we  spend  each  year  in  the  judicial  administration  of  justice  and  its 
administrative  incidents  must  eventually  invite  scrutiny  of  the  mode 
in  which  those  sums  are  employed.  Through  the  fault  of  no  person, 
but  because  of  the  system  made  for  other  times  and  different  condi¬ 
tions,  they  are  not  employed  to  the  best  advantage.  Nor  can  they  be 
so  long  as  city  and  county  administration  of  justice  go  on  parallel  and 
independent  in  the  same  urban  area,  overlapping  in  many  things, 
duplicating  machinery  unnecessarily,  and  without  effective  correlation 
of  activities.  Other  functions  of  government  are  requiring  and  will 
continue  to  require  increased  expenditures  and  exacting  taxation. 
Every  source  of  expense  that  competes  with  them  must  justify  itself 
by  economy  and  efficiency.  Here  as  elsewhere  these  things  are  not  to 
be  had  through  a  decentralized  congeries  of  independent  functionaries, 
but  by  organization,  system,  supervision,  and  concentrated  responsible 
authority. 

3.  Adequate  provision  for  petty  prosecutions.  Comparison  of  the 
facilities  provided  for  and  time  spent  upon  small  civil  causes  as  com¬ 
pared  with  small  criminal  causes  calls  for  serious  reflection.  The 


93§ 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


statistics  on  this  head  in  the  report  on  Prosecution  and  the  report  on 
Criminal  Courts  may  be  duplicated  in  almost  any  metropolitan  area, 
and  are  a  reproach  to  American  administration  of  justice.  It  is  at  this 
point  that  the  administration  of  criminal  justice  touches  immediately 
the  greatest  number  of  people.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  great  mass 
of  an  urban  population,  whose  experience  of  law  is  too  likely  to  have 
been  only  an  experience  of  arbitrary  discretion  of  police  officers  and 
off-hand  action  of  magistrates,  tempered  by  political  influence,  might 
be  taught  the  spirit  of  our  institutions  and  made  to  feel  that  the  law 
was  a  living  force  for  securing  their  interests.  Such  extra-legal  pro¬ 
ceedings  as  those  by  summons  in  the  municipal  prosecutor’s  office, 
proceedings  with  no  warrant  in  law  and  hence  no  legal  safeguards  that 
may  easily  degenerate  into  violation  of  constitutional  rights  under 
color  of  legal  authority,  should  give  way  to  a  proper  administrative 
organization  whereby  the  courts  in  our  large  cities  could  function 
legally  as  bureaus  of  justice.  The  legal’ profession  as  a  whole  has  little 
interest  in  petty  prosecutions.  But  for  the  very  reason  that  these 
proceedings  are  in  consequence  withdrawn  from  the  field  of  active 
scrutiny  by  the  bulk  of  the  profession  our  bar  association  should  be 
zealous  to  see  that  adequate  provision  is  made  for  them.  Few  of  the 
leaders  of  the  profession  are  aware  of  the  actual  situation,  and  when 
the  facts  are  stated  publicly,  some  of  the  best,  most  public-spirited, 
and  most  respected  members  of  the  bar  are  not  unlikely  to  assume  that 
such  things  cannot  be  true  and  to  denounce  those  who  reveal  them  as 
agitators  or  muck-rakers. 

4.  Preventive  methods.  Preventive  justice  is  no  less  important  than 
preventive  medicine.  If  we  think  of  the  legal  order  in  terms  of  social 
engineering,  it  must  be  evident  that  sanitary  engineering  is  not  the 
least  important  feature.  Prevention  at  the  source  rather  than  penal 
treatment  afterward  must  be  a  large  item  in  dealing  with  crime. 
Cleveland  is  well  awake  to  this,  and  has  well-organized  institutions  for 
social  work.  But  no  survey  would  be  complete  that  did  not  emphasize 
the  importance  of  correlating  these  institutions  and  agencies  with 
police,  prosecution,  judicial  organization,  and  agencies  of  penal  treat¬ 
ment.  There  ought  to  be  no  possibility  of  misunderstanding,  friction, 
or  cross-purposes.  And  this  requires  that  the  administrative  agencies 
connected  with  the  administration  of  justice  be  unified  and  organized 
under  a  responsible  head. 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  939 


5.  Justice  in  j amity  relations .  Conditions  of  crowded  urban  life, 
periodical  unemployment,  shifting  of  labor  from  city  to  city,  and 
economic  pressure  threaten  the  security  of  the  social  institutions  of 
marriage  and  the  famity  and  call  for  special  consideration  in  organiz¬ 
ing  the  courts  of  our  large  cities.  Administration  of  justice  in  relations 
of  family  life  is  difficult  for  two  reasons :  one  is  that  it  involves  ques¬ 
tions  on  the  borderline  between  law  and  morals,  where,  from  its  very 
nature,  law  is  least  efficacious ;  the  other  is  that  proper  judicial  adjust¬ 
ment  of  controversies  involving  those  relations  calls  for  wide  discretion 
and  yet  they  involve  matters  more  tender  than  any  that  can  come 
before  tribunals.  Such  questions  must  be  dealt  with  as  a  whole,  not 
piecemeal,  partly  in  criminal  prosecutions,  partly  in  juvenile  courts, 
partly  in  petty  proceedings  before  magistrates,  and  partly  in  courts 
having  jurisdiction  to  appoint  guardians.  They  must  be  dealt  with 
by  strong  judges  with  large  experience  and  trained  intuitions.  Any¬ 
thing  less  is  a  denial  of  justice  to  the  mass  of  the  population  which 
cannot  afford  protracted  legal  proceedings  in  many  courts.  Anything 
less  is  a  menace  to  the  most  fundamental  of  social  institutions.  To 
achieve  these  things  the  courts  and  administrative  agencies  connected 
therewith  must  be  unified  so  that  causes  may  be  disposed  of  as  a 
whole,  without  repeated  partial  threshings  over  of  the  same  straw  in 
separate  proceedings,  and  so  that  causes  that  call  for  strong  judges 
may  receive  the  treatment  they  deserve  without  regard  to  the  sums 
of  money  involved. 

6.  Unshackling  of  administration.  Above  all,  effective  administra¬ 
tion  of  criminal  justice  in  the  modern  American  city  calls  for  an  un¬ 
shackling  of  administration  from  the  bonds  imposed  when  men  who 
had  little  experience  of  popular  government  and  much  experience  of 
royal  government  sought  to  make  rules  do  the  whole  work  of  the  legal 
order.  The  principle  involved  in  the  constitutional  separation  of 
powers  is  really  no  more  than  the  principle  involved  in  all  specializa¬ 
tion.  Certain  things  which  involve  special  training  or  special  com¬ 
petency  or  special  attention  are  done  better  by  those  who  devote 
thereto  their  whole  time  or  their  whole  attention  for  the  time  being. 
Hence  if  the  officers  of  a  court  may  best  gather  and  study  statistics  of 
judicial  administration  to  the  end  that  such  administration  be  im¬ 
proved  ;  if  they  may  best  conduct  psychological  laboratories  or 
psychopathological  examinations  or  laboratories  for  the  study  of  crim- 


940 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


inals,  there  is  really  nothing  in  the  nature  of  a  court  to  prevent.  There 
is  no  reason  why  the  courts  in  metropolitan  areas  may  not  be  so  or¬ 
ganized  as  to  permit  these  things,  although  they  are  not  needed  or  are 
less  needed  in  rural  areas  and  hence  are  not  provided  for  therein. 
The  nineteenth-century  political  idea  of  uniformity  over  geographic 
areas,  thinking  in  feudal  terms  of  soil  rather  than  of  human  beings 
peopling  the  soil,  is  not  applicable  to  States  of  today  in  which  popu¬ 
lations  greater  than  those  in  whole  States  when  this  idea  took  root  in 
our  State  constitutions  are  compressed  within  a  few  square  miles  of 
municipal  jurisdiction.  A  unification  of  administrative  agencies  with 
power  to  adapt  administration  to  the  peculiar  needs  of  particular 
localities  must  supersede  rigid  uniformity  over  areas  laid  out  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  exigencies  of  the  map.  Regulation  of  public  utilities,  fac¬ 
tory  inspection,  tenement  house  inspection,  building  laws,  and  a  score 
of  things  of  the  sort  have  accustomed  us  to  administrative  boards  and 
commissions  with  wide  powers  to  organize  their  business  and  large 
administrative  discretion.  There  are  no  such  checks  upon  these  boards 
and  commissions  as  are  operative  in  the  case  of  courts.  And  yet,  for 
historical  reasons,  we  are  loth  to  confer  upon  judicial  administrative 
agencies  the  latitude  which  we  freely  concede  to  newly  created  execu¬ 
tive  agencies.  Undoubtedly  one  of  the  tasks  of  American  lav/  today  is 
to  work  out  an  adequate'  system  of  administrative  law.  But  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  judicial  administration  is  not  as  adequate 
to  this  task  as  executive  administration. 


I 

State  and  City 


For  the  larger  part  of  what  it  needs  in  the  way  of  machinery  to  cope 
with  crime  the  city  must  depend  upon  action  by  the  State  legislature 
or  even  amendments  of  the  State  constitution.  The  State  may  do  any¬ 
thing  not  prohibited  by  the  federal  constitution.  The  State  legisla¬ 
ture  may  do  anything  not  prohibited  by  federal  and  State  constitutions. 
The  city  may  do  only  what  the  State  empowers  it  to  do.  Hence  in 
order  to  adapt  the  institutions  devised  for  rural  conditions  of  the  past 
to  the  rapidly  changing  urban  conditions  of  today,  it  must  first  induce 
action  by  those  who  live  under  quite  different  conditions,  to  whom  the 
methods  and  agencies  developed  for  rural  communities  of  the  last  cen¬ 
tury  seem  entirely  adequate.  When  there  are  several  large  cities  in  a 


CRIMINAL  JUSTICE  AND  THE  AMERICAN  CITY  941 


State,  each  with  its  own  problems,  and  a  large  agricultural  population 
with  preponderant  political  power,  proper  provision  for  the  special 
needs  of  criminal  justice  in  the  city  becomes  a  matter  of  much  diffi¬ 
culty.  Here  again  a  unified  judicial  organization  for  the  whole  State 
and  organization  of  the  administrative  agencies  of  justice  for  the  whole 
State,  under  a  head  responsible  for  insuring  an  adequate  functioning 
of  the  legal  system  in  each  locality,  and  clothed  with  power  to  make 
the  proper  adjustments  to  that  end,  may  bring  about  the  right  com¬ 
promises  between  urban  and  rural  needs  from  time  to  time  as  occasion 
requires,  and  preserve  the  balance  as  changes  take  place,  without  dis¬ 
turbance  of  the  fundamental  organization. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS 
125.  The  Origins  of  the  Modern  Prison1 

While  prisons,  as  places  for  the  holding  of  human  beings  in  con¬ 
finement,  have  existed  since  the  days  of  primitive  cannibalism,  the 
prison,  as  a  distinct  institution  for  the  confinement  of  persons  con¬ 
victed  of  crime,  is  an  institution  which  has  developed  almost  entirely 
within  the  last  hundred  and  forty  years.  Down  to  about  1780,  in 
both  Europe  and  America,  the  jails  or  prisons  existed  primarily  for 
the  confinement  of  heretics  and  debtors  or  for  the  safekeeping  of  those 
accused  of  crime  pending  their  trial.  Such  as  were  convicted  were 
normally  sentenced  either  to  corporal  punishment,  or,  as  became  com¬ 
mon  after  the  colonial  expansion  began,  to  deportation. 

The  introduction  of  the  notion  of  employing  confinement  within  a 
prison,  as  the  general  method  of  punishing  crime,  was  due  to  William 
Penn  and  the  Quakers  of  West  Jersey,  who  provided  for  a  system  of 
workhouses  in  the  penal  code  they  drew  up  in  1681.  Four  years 
later  William  Penn  introduced  the  same  system  into  his  Pennsylvania 
colony.  It  is  believed  that  Penn  derived  this  novel  practice,  which  he 
brought  to  West  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  from  the  English  workhouse 
as  employed  in  poor  relief,  and  from  his  observation  of  the  operation 
of  the  Dutch  system  of  workhouses  as  applied  to  the  treatment  of 
youthful  and  aged  paupers  and  vagrants.  To  this  possible  source  of 
imitation  there  should,  of  course,  be  added  the  natural  and  inevitable 
tendency  of  any  Quaker  government  to  desire  to  avoid,  as  far  as  pos¬ 
sible,  the  cruel  and  bloody  types  of  corporal  punishment  then  in  vogue, 
and  to  substitute  therefor  a  more  humane  method  of  treating  the  con¬ 
victed  offender.  But,  interesting  as  these  early  historic  instances  may 

xBy  Harry  Elmer  Barnes,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  the  History  of  Thought  and 
Culture  in  Clark  University.  Adapted  from  "Some  Leading  Phases  of  the  Evo¬ 
lution  of  Modern  Penology,”  Political  Science  Quarterly ,  Vol.  XXXVII,  No.  2, 
pp.  257-266.  Copyright,  1922,  by  the  editors  of  the  Political  Science  Quarterly. 

942 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  943 


be  to  the  student,  in  neither  colonial  Jersey  nor  provincial  Pennsyl¬ 
vania  was  this  Quaker  method  of  imprisonment  employed  with  any 
degree  of  permanence  or  uniformity.  Its  only  effect  upon  posterity 
was  to  furnish  a  respectable  precedent  to  which  Quakers  could  turn 
a  century  later  when  they  were  groping  about  to  discover  some  method 
of  improving  the  barbarous  prevailing  methods  of  treating  the  criminal. 

The  real  beginning  of  the  systematic  introduction  of  imprisonment 
as  the  prevailing  method  of  punishment  of  the  delinquent  came  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  being  prepared  by  the  moral  re¬ 
vival  led  by  Wesley  and  Whitfield,  the  humanitarianism  of  the  English 
and  American  Quakers,  and  the  progress  of  rational  and  enlightened 
jurisprudence  in  the  works  of  Montesquieu,  Beccaria,  Blackstone,  and 
Bentham.  Between  1773  and  1791  John  Howard  not  only  did  much 
to  improve  the  condition  of  imprisoned  debtors  in  England,  but  also 
made  a  very  thorough  study  of  similar  conditions  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  and  brought  back  to  England  a  vast  amount  of  interesting 
penological  information  which  served  to  interest  and  instruct  his  con¬ 
temporaries.  Twenty  years  after  Howard’s  death  a  Quaker  humani¬ 
tarian,  Elizabeth  Gurney  Fry,  began  her  work  among  the  horribly 
treated  women  prisoners  in  London.  In  this  same  generation  follow¬ 
ing  1775  there  were  distinct  advances  in  certain  local  English  jails 
which  definitely  anticipated  the  modern  prison'  system.  Little  could 
be  done  in  England,  however,  to  produce  a  prison  system  until,  be¬ 
tween  1815  and  1835,  Romilly,  Mackintosh,  Peel,  and  Buxton  had 
succeeded  in  having  repealed  the  barbarous  English  criminal  laws  and 
in  securing  a  substitution  of  imprisonment  for  corporal  punishment  or 
banishment  as  the  most  approved  method  of  dealing  with  the  criminal. 
In  the  period  of  the  first  Revolution,  France  also  made  certain  marked 
advances  towards  substitutions  of  imprisonment  for  corporal  punish¬ 
ment.  Yet,  in  spite  of  these  European  advances  which  have  been 
mentioned,  and  in  spite  of  the  earlier  or  contemporary  progress  made 
in  the  Papal  prison  at  Rome  and  that  of  Ghent  in  Belgium,  the 
real  center  from  which  the  modern  prison  and  its  accompanying  sys¬ 
tem  of  discipline  and  administration  has  spread  was  the  system  intro¬ 
duced  in  Philadelphia  by  the  Quakers  following  1776. 

In  1776  the  Philadelphia  Friends  formed  an  association,  entitled 
the  Philadelphia  Society  for  Assisting  Distressed  Prisoners,  for  .the 
purpose  of  relieving  the  conditions  of  the  debtors  and  accused  persons 


944 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


confined  in  the  jail  at  Third  and  High  Streets.  After  the  Revolution¬ 
ary  War  this  society  was  reorganized  in  the  German  School  House 
at  Philadelphia,  as  the  Philadelphia  Society  for  Alleviating  the  Mis¬ 
eries  of  Public  Prisons.  Between  1786  and  1795  the  Society  had 
secured  the  abolition  of  the  barbarous  criminal  laws  of  Pennsylvania 
and  the  substitution  of  imprisonment  for  corporal  punishment  in  the 
case  of  all  crimes  except  murder.  This  necessitated  the  provision  of 
a  system  of  penal  institutions  which  would  make  the  confinement  of 
the  offender  possible,  and  there  was  thus  produced  the  modern  prison. 
The  Quakers  derived  their  doctrines  and  reform  proposals  in  part 
from  the  earlier  precedents  of  Penn  and  his  associates  and  in  part 
from  correspondence  with  Howard  and  other  contemporary  European 
reformers. 

The  Pennsylvania  system.  The  Quakers  in  this  manner  not  only 
originated  the  general  practice  of  prison  discipline,  but  they  also 
brought  into  being  a  system  of  prison  discipline  which  has  had  a 
tremendous  influence  upon  the  subsequent  history  of  penal  adminis¬ 
tration  and  of  the  theory  of  penology.  Struck  by  the  filth  and  de¬ 
bauchery  which  were  then  to  be  observed  in  all  of  the  so-called 
congregate  or  promiscuous  jails  of  the  time,  they  conceived  the  notion 
that  the  prevention  of  further  depravity  through  evil  association,  as 
well  as  the  probable  future  reformation  of  the  culprit,  would  be  most 
surely  obtained  through  the  solitary  confinement  of  the  convict  in  an 
isolated  cell,  where  he  might  in  solitude  and  at  his  leisure  contemplate 
the  evils  of  his  past  life,  and  be  thereby  led  to  resolve  "in  the  spiritual 
presence  of  his  Maker”  to  reform  his  future  conduct.  To  provide 
such  a  beneficent  moral  environment  the  Philadelphia  reformers  were 
able  to  persuade  the  Pennsylvania  legislature  to  remodel  the  Walnut 
Street  jail  in  1 790-1 791,  so  as  to  permit  of  the  solitary  confinement  of 
the  worst  types  of  offenders.  With  the  growth  of  the  population  of 
the  state  it  became  necessary  to  provide  more  commodious  penal  in¬ 
stitutions,  and,  in  1818-1821,  laws  were  enacted  authorizing  the  erec¬ 
tion  of  two  state  penitentiaries  on  the  system  of  solitary  confinement. 
The  Western  Penitentiary  was  opened  at  Pittsburg  in  1826,  and  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  at  Philadelphia  in  1829.  This  Eastern,  or  Cherry 
Hill  Penitentiary,  immediately  became  the  world’s 'most  famous  penal 
institution,  visited  by  prison  reformers  from  every  point  of  the 
Western  World. 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  945 


The  originators  and  defenders  of  the  system  of  solitary  confinement 
alleged  that  it  possessed  the  following  virtues :  the  protection  against 
possible  moral  contamination  through  evil  association;  the  unusual 
invitation  to  self-examination  and  self-reproach  in  solitude;  the  im¬ 
possibility  of  being  visited  by  anyone  except  an  officer,  a  clergyman, 
or  a  reformer ;  great  ease  of  administration  of  the  government  and 
discipline;  the  possibility  of  an  unusual  degree  of  individuality  in 
treatment ;  little  need  for  disciplinary  measures ;  the  absence  of  any 
possibility  of  mutual  recognition  of  prisoners  after  discharge ;  and  the 
fact  that  the  horrors  of  loneliness  made  the  prisoners  unusually  eager 
to  engage  in  productive  labor,  during  which  process  they  might  be 
taught  a  useful  trade,  preparatory  to  their  attaining  freedom.  But, 
whatever  its  incidental  advantages,  the  element  uniformly  and  most 
vigorously  emphasized  by  the  founders  of  the  Pennsylvania  system 
was  the  allegation  that  solitude  was  most  certain  to  be  productive  of 
earnest  self-examination  and  a  consequent  determination  to  reform. 

Distinguished  visitors  from  abroad  came  to  view  this  new  system 
of  penal  administration  and  to  recommend  with  general  success  its 
adoption  in  their  home  countries.  In  the  decade  of  the  1830’s  Sir  Wil¬ 
liam  Crawford  from  England,  Dr.  N.  H.  Julius  from  Prussia,  and 
Frederic  Auguste  Demetz  from  France  came  to  Philadelphia  and 
recommended  the  immediate  adoption  of  the  Pennsylvania  system  in 
their  respective  countries.  In  America,  however,  the  Pennsylvania 
system  was  much  less  popular  than  in  Europe.  In  spite  of  temporary 
adoption  in  other  states,  most  notably  New  Jersey  and  Rhode  Island, 
the  Pennsylvania  system  made  little  headway  in  the  United  States.  It 
was  even  abandoned  by  the  state  of  Pennsylvania  in  the  Western  Peni¬ 
tentiary  in  1869  and  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  in  1913,  though  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  had  practically  ceased  to  exist  in  the  Eastern  Peni¬ 
tentiary  half  a  century  before  it  was  legally  and  formally  abandoned. 

The  Auburn  system.  The  reason  for  the  relative  lack  of  popularity 
of  the  Pennsylvania  system  in  America  was  primarily  the  rise  in  this 
country  of  another  and  a  rival  system  of  prison  administration, 
namely,  the  Auburn  system  of  combined  isolation  and  association 
which,  owing  mainly  to  the  indefatigable  labors  of  Louis  Dwight,  came 
generally  to  dominate  American  penal  administration  until  its  popu¬ 
larity  was  threatened  by  the  introduction  of  the  Elmira  system  a  half- 
century  later. 


946 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Auburn  system  became  the  great  his¬ 
torical  rival  of  the  Pennsylvania  system,  it  was  in  reality  but  a  deriva¬ 
tive  or  variant  from  the  Pennsylvania  type  of  prison  administration. 
Imitating  the  precedent  of  Pennsylvania  by  substituting  imprison¬ 
ment  for  corporal  punishment,  New  York  state  reformed  its  penal 
code  in  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  thereby  created 
the  necessity  for  a  system  of  prisons.  The  older  institutions  proved 
so  unequal  to  the  task  of  housing  the  larger  number  of  prisoners  con¬ 
fined  under  the  new  method  of  punishment  that  by  1810  the  Governor 
had  to  pardon  as  many  prisoners  annually  as  were  committed.  The 
legislature,  in  1816,  authorized  the  building  of  a  new  prison  at  Auburn. 
Between  1817  and  1824  the  system  of  discipline  here  enforced  alter¬ 
nated  between  the  old  congregate  system  and  the  solitary  or  Penn¬ 
sylvania  system,  but,  by  1824,  under  the  guidance  of  Elam  Lynds, 
Gershom  Powers,  and  John  Cray,  the  Auburn  system  of  solitary  con¬ 
finement  by  night  and  associated  labor  by  day  had  come  into  exist¬ 
ence.  This  type  of  discipline  and  administration  was  soon  introduced 
in  the  new  Sing  Sing  prison,  and  into  the  state  prisons  of  Connecticut 
and  Massachusetts  at  Wethersfield  and  Charlestown  respectively. 

This  method  of  prison  discipline  and.  administration  was  alleged  by 
its  supporters  to  be  superior  to  the  Pennsylvania  practice  because  of 
the  greater  cheapness  of  erecting  a  prison  of  the  Auburn  plan ;  its 
greater  adaptabilit}^  to  the  economic  advantages  of  associated  labor 
and  mechanical  methods  of  manufacturing;  and  the  fact  that  it  did 
not  render  the  prisoner  liable  to  what  the  exponents  of  the  Auburn 
system  regarded  as  the  deleterious  effects,  both  moral  and  physical, 
of  complete  solitude.  It  was  believed  that  the  Auburn  practice  of 
complete  isolation  at  night  and  of  silent  association  during  the  day 
was  ample  both  to  provoke  moral  reflection  and  to  prevent  contamina¬ 
tion  through  evil  association.  But  it  is  doubtful  if  the  advantages, 
real  and  alleged,  of  the  Auburn  system  would  have  been  sufficient  to 
secure  its  remarkable  success  had  it  not  received  the  vigorous  support 
of  the  greatest  figure  in  early  American  prison  reform,  Louis  Dwight, 
the  active  and  alert  secretary  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of 
Boston.  Possessing  a  firm  conviction  that  the  Auburn  system  was 
incomparably  the  best  that  human  ingenuity  had  as  yet  devised,  he 
gave  unsparingly  of  his  own  energy  and  made  what  at  times  bordered 
on  an  unscrupulous  use  of  the  authority  and  prestige  of  his  Society 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  947 


in  order  to  urge  everywhere  and  always  the  adoption  of  the  Auburn 
system.  So  well  did  his  efforts  succeed  that  for  a  half-century  after 
1830  the  Aubuun  system  of  prison  administration  was  practically  iden¬ 
tical  with  American  penal  institutions. 

In  spite  of  their  great  prestige  and  reputation  and  their  undoubted 
historical  significance  in  the  evolution  of  penology,  however,  both  the 
Pennsylvania  and  the  Auburn  systems  must  be  regarded  as  important 
chiefly  through  having  originated  the  modern  prison.  Neither  marks 
more  than  the  first  crude  step  taken  in  the  effort  to  render  more 
humane  and  more  scientific  the  treatment  of  the  violator  of  the  law. 
In  spite  of  the  exaggerated  pretentions  and  claims  of  their  supporters, 
both  of  these  methods  of  prison  administration  lacked  almost  entirely 
the  provision  of  those  deeper  moral,  psychological,  and  social  im¬ 
pulses  and  motives  which  must  lie  at  the  foundation  of  any  effective 
reformation  of  the  offender.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  whatever 
claims  have  been  brought  forward  to  the  contrary,  neither  system 
actually  advanced  the  cause  "of  reformation  to  any  degree  comparable 
to  the  part  that  it  played  in  carrying  out  the  other  conventional  aims 
assigned  to  imprisonment,  namely,  social  protection,  revenge  or  re¬ 
taliation,  and  deterrence.  It  is  to  that  series  of  progressive  reforms 
which  culminated  in  the  Elmira  system  that  one  must  look  for  the 
first  appearance  of  any  even  moderately  successful  mechanism  de¬ 
signed  to  supply  the  chief  impulses  which  are  necessary  if  it  is  hoped 
to  create  any  wide-spread  determination  to  reform  in  the  minds  of 
any  large  number  of  prisoners. 

The  Elmira  Reformatory  system.  In  his  two  works,  The  Peniten¬ 
tiary  Systems  of  Europe  and  America  (1828)  and  The  Theory  of 
Imprisonment  (1836),  M.  Charles  Lucas  had  clearly  taken  the  ad¬ 
vanced  position  that  a  curative  reformatory  type  of  prison  discipline 
ought  to  be  substituted  for  the  contemporary  repressive  prison  system. 
It  was  a  long  time,  however,  before  this  aspiration  was  adequately 
realized.  It  was  only  achieved,  and  then  imperfectly,  in  the  Elmira 
Reformatory  system  introduced  into  New  York  State  following  1870. 

A  number  of  significant  currents  of  reform  in  penology  converged 
in  producing  this  system.  An  important  element  was  contributed  by 
the  new  methods  of  prison  discipline  introduced  in  the  British  penal 
colony  in  Australia.  Captain  Alexander  Maconochie  came  to  Norfolk 
Island  in  Australia  in  1840,  and  was  able  to  bring  about  a  tremendous 


948 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


improvement  in  penal  methods  by  eliminating  the  old  flat-time  sen¬ 
tence  and  introducing  the  beginnings  of  commutation  of  sentence  for 
good  behavior.  Every  convict,  according  to  the  seriousness  of  his 
offense,  instead  of  being  sentenced  to  a  given  term  of  years,  had  a 
certain  number  of  marks  set  against  him  which  he  had  to  redeem 
before  he  was  liberated.  These  marks  were  to  be  earned  by  deport¬ 
ment,  labor,  and  study,  and  the  more  rapidly  they  were  acquired  the 
more  speedy  the  release. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  notion  of  an  indeterminate  time  sen¬ 
tence  was  originated  and  given  popularity  through  the  writings  of 
Archbishop  Whately  of  Dublin,  the  Scotchman  George  Combe,  and 
especially  the  English  reformers,  Frederick  and  Matthew  Davenport 
Hill.  Its  supplement,  the  famous  parole  system,  while  anticipated  by 
a  number  of  other  reformers,  was  most  systematically  and  effectively 
advocated  by  the  French  publicist,  Bonneville  de  Marsangy.  Macono- 
chie’s  system  of  determining  the  period  of  incarceration  upon  the  basis 
of  the  behavior  of  the  convict  was  combined  with  the  notion  of  the 
indeterminate  sentence  and  parole  in  the  famous  Irish  system  of 
prison  administration,  which  was  introduced  by  Sir  Walter  Crofton  in 
the  decade  following  1853.  To  these  earlier  progressive  innovations 
he  added  the  practice  of  classifying  convicts  in  graded  groups,  through 
which  each  convict  had  to  pass  before  obtaining  his  freedom  on  parole, 
his  advancement  being  determined  by  his  conduct. 

The  notion  of  productive  and  instructive  prison  labor,  which  goes 
back  to  the  Pennsylvania  Quakers,  was  also  developed  by  a  number  of 
progressive  penologists  during  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  especially  by  Montesinos  in  Spain  and  Obermaier  in  Bavaria. 

All  of  these  liberal  and  progressive  innovations,  which  have  been 
all  too  briefly  and  casually  mentioned  above,  attracted  the  attention  of 
the  leading  American  reformers,  most  notably  Theodore  W.  Dwight 
and  E.  C.  Wines  of  the  New  York  Prison  Association,  F.  B.  Sanborn 
of  Concord,  Massachusetts,  Z.  R.  Brockway,  Superintendent  of  the 
Detroit  House  of  Correction,  and  Gaylord  Hubbell,  Warden  of  Sing 
Sing  Prison.  All  of  these  men  prepared  able,  vigorous,  and  widely 
read  public  reports  or  private  monographs,  urging  the  adoption  of 
these  advanced  methods  in  the  American  prison  system,  but  they  were 
able  only  to  secure  the  introduction  of  these  innovations  for  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  younger  first  offenders.  A  law  authorizing  the  creation  of 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  949 


such  an  institution  at  Elmira,  New  York,  was  passed  in  1869,  and  the 
institution  was  opened  in  1877,  with  Mr.  Brockway  as  its  first  super¬ 
intendent.  A  decent  preliminary  approximation  to  the  principle  of 
the  indeterminate  sentence  was  secured,  and  the  inmates  were  divided 
into  classes  or  grades  through  which  they  might  advance  to  ultimate 
parole  by  virtue  of  good  conduct,  if  they  did  not  desire  to  remain  in 
the  institution  for  the  maximum  sentence. 

The  great  advance  which  the  Irish  and  Elmira  systems  mark  over 
Pennsylvania  and  Auburn  systems  was  the  fact  that  in  these  later 
types  of  penal  discipline  the  term  of  incarceration  was  at  least  roughly 
.  made  to  depend  upon  the  observable  progress  made  by  the  prisoner  on 
the  road  to  ultimate  reformation.  It  was,  thus,  a  system  which  chiefly 
stressed  reformation  rather  than  either  retaliation  or  deterrence.  As 
far  as  its  application  in  the  United  States  is  concerned,  however,  even 
this  method  of  discipline  possessed  serious  and  grave  defects.  In  the 
first  place,  it  was  scarcely  at  all  introduced  into  the  prisons  which 
confined  the  adult  offenders,  thus  not  being  applied  to  the  great  bulk 
of  the  prison  population.  In  the  second  place,  while  it  was  based  pri¬ 
marily  upon  the  idea  of  effecting  the  reformation  of  the  convicts,  it 
failed  signally  to  provide  the  right  sort  of  psychological  surroundings 
to  expedite  this  process.  The  whole  system  of  discipline  was  repres¬ 
sive,  and  varied  from  benevolent  despotism,  in  the  best  instances,  to 
tyrannical  cruelty  in  the  worst.  There  was  little,  if  anything,  done  to 
introduce  into  the  mind  of  the  individual  convict,  or  into  the  groups 
of  the  convicts  generally,  any  sense  of  individual  or  collective  respon¬ 
sibility  for  the  conduct  of  the  prison  community,  nor  was  any  signifi¬ 
cant  attempt  made  to  provide  any  education  in  the  elements  of  group 
conduct  and  the  responsibilities  of  the  citizen.  There  was  little,  if 
.  any,  grasp  of  that  fundamental  fact  which  is  basic  in  the  newer  pe¬ 
nology,  namely,  that  a  prisoner  can  be  fitted  for  a  life  of  freedom  only 
by  some  training  in  a  social  environment  which  bears  some  fair  resem¬ 
blance  in  point  of  liberty  and  responsibility  to  that  which  he  must 
enter  upon  obtaining  his  release.  Finally,  there  was  no  wide  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  present  position  that  the  general  body  of  delinquents 
cannot  be  treated  as  a  single  unified  group.  There  was  no  general 
recognition  that  criminals  must  be  dealt  with  as  individuals  or  as  a 
number  of  classes  of  individuals  of  different  psychological  and  biologi¬ 
cal  types  that  must  be  scientifically  differentiated  through  a  careful 


950 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


psychiatric  study,  as  well  as  a  detailed  sociological  study  of  their 
environment,  preliminary  to  the  major  part  of  their  treatment  while 
incarcerated.  These  last  conditions  have  only  been  very  recently  and 
very  incompletely  realized  in  systems  of  convict  self-government, 
such  as  those  which  Mr.  Thomas  Mott  Osborne  has  introduced,  and  in 
such  careful  psychiatric  studies  of  the  criminal  class  as  were  at¬ 
tempted  in  the  psychiatric  clinic  introduced  in  the  Sing  Sing  prison 
by  Drs.  Thomas  W.  Salmon  and  Bernard  Glueck. 

126.  Evils  of  the  Present  Prison  System1 

The  main  counts  in  the  indictment  I  should  draw  on  behalf  of  the 
prisoner  against  the  State  of  New  York  (and  however  the  prisons  in 
other  states  may  differ  in  superficial  details,  all  of  them,  so  far  as  I 
can  learn,  rest  upon  practically  the  same  unsound  foundations)  would 
be  these : 

■  t  '  * 

1 .  The  constant  confinement  for  many  hours  of  the  day,  and  some¬ 
times  for  even  whole  days  at  a  time,  in  small,  unhealthy  cells, — 
utterly  unfit  for  human  habitation ;  where  physical  degeneration  is 
inevitable — and  mental  and  moral  degeneration  as  well.  Most  of  the 
cells  in  Auburn  measure  7^  feet  by  3^,  and  7  feet  high; — mere  holes 
in  a  stone  wall.  At  Sing  Sing  the  cells  are  6  inches  lower,  6  inches 
shorter,  and  3  inches  narrower !  In  both  prisons, — but  especially 
Sing  Sing,  the  dampness  is  so  great  that  on  many  days  you  can  scrape 
the  moisture  off  the  walls  into  the  hollow  of  your  hand.  Rheumatism 
and  tuberculosis  are  rife. 

Into  these  dens  men  have  been  locked,  frequently  two  in  a  cell,  for 
fourteen — fifteen — sixteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four;  all  day 
Sunday,  except  a  few  moments  to  empty  buckets  and  eat  breakfast, 
and  an  hour  or  so  for  chapel  service ;  &nd  all  day  long  on  holidays. 
When  a  Sunday  and  a  holiday  come  together,  the  prisoners  call  it  a 
"double-header.”  It  is  significant  that  most  fights  in  prison  occur 
on  Monday  mornings. 

2.  The  vice  which  naturally  results  from  the  constant  confinement. 
Under  the  best  possible  prison  conditions  there  is  bound  to  be  im¬ 
morality.  The  only  thing  the  head  of  such  an  institution  as  a  prison 

3  By  Thomas  Mott  Osborne.  Adapted  from  Society  and  Prisons,  pp.  140-152. 
Copyright,  1916,  by  the  Yale  University  Press. 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  951 

can  do,  is  to  use  his  utmost  endeavor  to  foster  conditions  which  will 
reduce  such  immorality  to  a  minimum ;  to  expect  to  eradicate  the  evil 
altogether  is  to  expect  the  impossible. 

But  in  addition  to  the  immorality  which  springs  from  the  very 
nature  of  the  institution,  there  is  the  additional  vice  which  comes  from 
long  or  constant  confinement,  from  a  life  of  drear  monotony,  from 
overwrought  nerves.  When  a  man  is  locked  alone  or  with  one  other 
man  in  a  small  cell,  and  is  denied  all  exercise — has  nothing  to  think 
of  but  himself  and  his  grievances — what  can  be  expected? 

But  unnatural  vice  is  not  the  only  evil  that  has  flourished  under  the 
old  system.  Shut  in  all  day  Sunday,  the  cells  close  and  miserably  cold 
in  winter,  close  and  stifling  hot  in  summer,  with  the  stench  from  hun¬ 
dreds  of  buckets  poisoning  the  atmosphere,  men  so  craved  relief  from 
the  intolerable  conditions  that  they  turned  to  the  use  of  drugs. 

My  first  acquaintance  with  Sing  Sing  prison  began  some  fifteen  or 
more  years  ago,  when  I  became  interested  in  the  case  of  a  young  boy 
sentenced  to  prison  for  twenty  years  at  the  age  of  thirteen.  Fie  had 
been  four  years  in  Sing  Sing  when  I  secured  a  commutation  of  his 
sentence ;  and,  placed  in  the  George  Junior  Republic,  he  was  soon 
found  to  be  a  "dope-fiend.”  No  wonder  a  convict  friend  of  his  had 
implored  me  to  obtain  his  release.  "Get  that  boy  out,  if  you  can,”  he 
had  said  to  me;  "he  will  be  ruined,  body  and  soul,  if  he  stays  here.” 

How  was  it  possible  for  such  things  to  exist  under  the  strictness  of 
the  old  regime?  That  was  one  of  the  absurdities  of  the  situation. 
Take  a  warden  and  a  handful  of  officials  and  guards,  poorly  paid  and 
the  more  important  of  them  selected  not  for  their  skill  in  dealing  with 
’the  prison  problem  but  for  political  purposes ;  place  them  in  charge 
of  the  cleverest  and  most  daring  crooks  and  sharpers  of  the  under¬ 
world  ;  and  what  will  naturally  result  ?  The  administration  of  some  of 
our  prisons  has  been  a  succession  of  scandals,  the  worst  of  which  have 
failed  to  arouse  public  attention  simply  because  decent  people  do  not 
talk  nor  wish  to  hear  of  such  things.  But  it  is  time  that  decent  people 
woke  up  to  the  truth  and  realized  that  they  are  vitally  concerned  in 
the  matter. 

In  Sing  Sing  prison,  for  five  years — from  1910 -1914  inclusive,  there 
were  but  two  punishments  inflicted  for  immorality ;  sure  proof  that  it 
ran  riot.  Not  only  has  vice  reigned — practically  unchecked,  but  many 
of  the  guards,  themselves,  have  been  concerned  in  the  drug  and  liquor 


952 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


traffic  which  has  been  a  perfectly  well-recognized  part  of  the  game. 
Even  where  the  utmost  strictness  prevailed,  the  cleverness  of  the 
prisoners  would  win  out.  In  Auburn  prison  two  years  ago,  shortly 
after  the  formation  of  the  Mutual  Welfare  League,  ten  prisoners  were 
rearranging  the  store-room.  They  were  watched  by  four  officers ;  and 
under  the  very  eyes  of  these  careful  guardians  the  prisoners  made  off 
with  three  cases  of  condensed  milk — one  hundred  and  twenty  cans. 
A  search  was  made  through  the  prison ;  and  in  one  cell,  where  thirty- 
seven  cans  were  lying  hidden,  the  search  revealed  nothing.  Then  the 
League  was  called  in ;  and  soon  the  convict  Sergeant-at-Arms  had 
restored  to  the  prison  authorities  over  eighty  cans ;  the  remainder  had 
passed  "down  the  yard”  and  the  contents  so  promptly  consumed  that 
they  were  irrecoverable.  No  trace  of  the  missing  tins  was  ever  found. 

3.  The  ill-organized  and  inefficient  system  of  labor,  which  lacks  any 
incentive  to  honest,  steady  work.  Men  are  assigned  to  jobs  entirely 
regardless  of  preference  or  capacity ;  they  are  kept  at  their  unattrac¬ 
tive  tasks  by  fear  of  punishment ;  they  receive  no  return  for  their 
labor, —  (the  cent  and  a  half  a  day,  graciously  allowed  by  the  State 
of  New  York,  being  a  joke).  Such  labor  is  mere  slavery;  and  slave 
labor  has  always  been  inefficient  and  always  will  be.  It  is  hopeless  to 
expect  men  to  do  good  work  unless  they  can  see  some  advantage  to 
themselves  in  doing  it.  Men  outside  prison  are  not,  as  a  rule,  afflicted 
with  what  Kipling  calls  "a  morbid  passion  for  work”;  and  human 
nature  prevails  inside  the  prison  in  this  respect,  if  in  no  other. 

4.  The  enforcement  of  silence.  Even  if  there  were  suitable  indus¬ 
trial  reward  for  good  work,  prison  labor  would  still  be  miserably  in¬ 
efficient  under  such  a  restraint.  How  students  of  penology  could  argue ' 
themselves  into  ignoring  the  fact  that  speech  is  the  one  thing  that  lifts 
man  above  the  level  of  the  brute ;  how  they  could  imagine  that  human 
beings  can  be  healthy  in  body,  mind,  or  soul,  except  by  natural  rela¬ 
tions  through  the  power  of  speech  with  their  fellow  human  beings, 
passes  understanding.  Presumably  put  in  force  to  prevent  the  cor¬ 
ruption  of  the  less  dangerous  criminals  by  the  more  dangerous,  the 
rule  of  silence  acts  with  precisely  the  contrary  effect^  for  men,  if  they 
cannot  talk  to  their  friends  will  talk  to  their  enemies — rather  than 
keep  perpetually  silent.  The  denial  of  the  right  of  speech  does  not 
prevent  communication,  it  only  renders  it  more  difficult.  It  does  not 
hinder  conspiracy  and  wickedness — those  get  by ;  it  is  the  pleasant 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  953 


word  of  hope  and  encouragement  that  is  stopped, — the  cheery  "  good- 
morning,”  the  kindly  greeting  of  friendship.  It  is  exactly  as  if  an 
engineer  were  forbidden  to  put  oil  on  his  machinery  for  fear  that  he 
might  be  tempted  to  throw  in  sand. 

Another  comic  element  in  the  situation  is  the  incredible  foolishness 
which  accompanies  the  efforts  made  to  enforce  such  impossible  rules. 
For  instance,  in  Auburn  prison  there  are  eight  cells  in  the  " cooler”; 
each  one  with  a  grated  door  opening  out  into  the  vaulted  room.  Any  * 
man  talking  from  his  cell  can  be  heard  distinctly  in  all  the  other  cells. 
Half  the  punishments  on  the  books  of  the  prison  were  for  talking  or 
whispering ;  and  for  these  offences  a  man  was  sent  to  the  one  place  in 
prison  where  he  could  talk  all  he  pleased  with  perfect  impunity ! 

5.  Added  to  the  terrible  silence,  the  no  less  terrible  monotony.  In 
prison  so  few  things  ever  happen.  Day  after  day,  week  after  week, 
month  after  month,  year  after  year,  the  same  grinding,  dreary,  deadly 
monotony.  Cell-block,  buckets,  breakfast,  -work ;  dinner,  work, 
buckets,  cell-block.  Once  a  week,  bath ;  on  Sunday,  religious  services. 
(Religious  services!  And  the  rest  of  the  Lord’s  day  locked  in  a 
cell  7  feet  by  39  inches ! ) 

Every  day  or  so  one  or  more  gray  figures  drop  out  of  line  and  others 
take  their  places.  Every  month  or  so  a  horrible  wave  of  nervousness 
sweeps  the  prison  from  end  to  end,  and  leaves  the  gray  community 
quivering ;  an  execution  is  to  take  place.  Some  unfortunate  who  has 
been  hidden  away  for  months  or  years  from  the  eyes  of  men,  fattening 
for  the  slaughter,  is  to  be  killed  in  the  electric  chair.  The  day  before 
the  event  you  can  see  the  dreadful  anticipation  registered  in  the  eyes 
of  every  man  in  prison.  No  word  is  spoken ;  but  behind  the  mask  of 
every  gray-clothed  figure  you  know  the  thought  is  there.  And  the 
next  day,  after  the  killing  is  over,  every  man  is  limp  from  the  nervous 
reaction. 

6.  The  constant  espionage  which  the  system  makes  necessary.  If 
men  are  forbidden  to  talk  or  act  naturally,  of  course  they  must  be 
watched  to  see  that  they  do  not  transgress  the  stupid  rules.  A  strict 
and  constant  observation  of  every  inmate  becomes  necessary,  day  and 
night.  As  it  is  obviously  impossible  to  carry  this  out  completely 
without  a  guard  for  every  man,  the  prisoners  find  frequent  pleasure  in 
violating  the  rules.  But  no  one  who  has  not  endured  it  can  realize  the 
nervous  strain  of  constant  subjection  to  the  prying  eyes  of  the  keepers. 


954 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


From  morning  until  night,  and  again  from  night  until  morning,  the 
eye  of  the  guard  is  upon  you — on  the  gallery,  on  the  march,  at  meals, 
at  work,  in  your  cell ;  no  right  to  a  moment’s  privacy,  night  or  day. 
The  result  is  a  state  of  unstable  nervous  equilibrium  that  the  slightest 
jar  may  destroy.  A  guard  must  be  constantly  prepared  to  meet  a 
murderous  assault  upon  himself,  or  by  one  inmate  upon  another, 
caused  by  grudges  arising  from  the  most  trifling  causes.  "Many  a 
time,  as  I  have  stood  here,”  said  one  of  the  Sing  Sing  officers  to  me 
last  winter,  "have  I  seen  two  men  working  side  by  side;  one  would 
accidentally  jog  the  other  with  his  elbow  and  quick  as  a  flash  a  knife 
would  be  grabbed  from  somewhere  or  other  and  stuck  in  the  fel¬ 
low’s  back.  Such  things  were  of  every-day  occurrence  under  the  old 
method.” 

7.  The  system  of  "stool-pigeons,”  which  the  dangerous  condition  of 
constant  nervous  unrest  brings  about.  The  authorities  feel  it  neces¬ 
sary  to  know  what  is  going  on  among  their  charges ;  and  rightly  so. 
The  only  way  to  do  this  is  to  employ  spies  and  informers;  so  the 
prison  community  is  honey-combed  with  suspicion.  Lying  and  deceit 
— baseness  of  all  kinds,  even  vice  in  its  most  loathsome  form,  becomes 
a  part  of  the  prison  system.  In  every  shop  or  company  is  a  "runner” 
or  "trusty,” — the  officer’s  errand-boy,  boot-black,  valet,  and  general 
factotum.  He  has  access  at  all  times  to  his  master  and  can  whisper 
in  his  ear  any  accusations  he  pleases  against  any  inmate  for  whom  he 
gets  a  dislike.  This  convict  favorite  often  becomes  a  peculiarly  ob¬ 
noxious  species  of  tyrant. 

A  prisoner  friend  of  mine  once  offended  the  runner  of  his  company ; 
and  the  next  thing  he  knew  he  was  suddenly  called  before  the  captain 
and  charged  with  having  a  knife  in  his  locker.  He  indignantly  denied 
it ;  but  upon  the  locker  being  examined,  a  knife  was  found — presum¬ 
ably  put  there  by  the  trusty  who  had  reported.  My  friend  narrowly 
escaped  severe  punishment  and  was  thereafter  regarded  with  doubt 
and  dislike. 

Suspicion,  fear,  and  hatred  are  the  inevitable  accompaniments  of 
the  system  of  espionage.  The  air  is  always  filled  with  charges  against 
one  man  or  another.  Tale-bearing  is  encouraged ;  privileges  and 
rewards  go  to  the  successful  purveyors  of  gossip  and  scandal.  Side 
by  side  with  wonderful  loyalty  and  fine  heroism  are  the  most  despic¬ 
able  treachery  and  double-dealing.  In  one  case  a  young  boy  of  twelve 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  955 


in  a  juvenile  institution  committed  murder.  He  had  been  persuaded 
to  join  a  plan  of  escape ;  and  then  his  companion  had  turned  traitor 
and  gained  credit  and  privileges  thereby.  The  killing  of  the  "rat” 
followed  as  a  natural  result. 

It  is  bad  enough  in  prison  to  be  subject  to  the  whims  and  moods  of 
an  officer;  but  to  be  subject  to  the  officer’s  stool-pigeon  is  often  un¬ 
endurable. 

8.  The  brutality  which  is  a  perfectly  natural  consequence  of  the 
system.  The  nervous  condition  of  the  men,  caused  by  the  silence,  the 
monotony,  and  the  espionage,  carries  with  it  an  equally  nervous  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  guards.  "We  stand  on  a  volcano,”  said  one  of  the  officers 
of  Dartmoor  prison  to  a  writer  from  the  London  Times .  "If  our  con¬ 
victs  here  had  opportunity  to  combine  and  could  trust  one  another, 
the  place  would  be  wrecked  in  an  hour.”  This  nervousness  of  the 
guard  makes  him  irritable  and  severe.  He  is  afraid ;  and  his  fear 
engenders  brutality ;  and  brutality  breeds  revenge ;  the  feeling  of 
revenge  and  hatred  for  the  prison  authorities  brings  about  more  nerv¬ 
ousness  and  greater  fear ;  and  so  the  vicious  circle  is  complete. 

Every  generation  or  so  there  is  a  revelation  of  prison  tortures ;  and 
a  scandalized  community  forces  the  legislature  to  pass  a  law  forbid¬ 
ding  some  special  form  of  punishment  that  the  diabolical  ingenuity  of 
man  has  invented ;  only  to  have  some  new  cruelty  devised  to  take 
its  place. 

9.  Underlying  all  the  rest  of  the  prison  system — all  the  brutality 
and  imbecility,  is  the  denial  of  initiative — of  any  responsibility  on 
the  part  of  a  man  either  for  his  own  acts  or  the  acts  of  others. 

The  theory  would  seem  to  be  this :  that  these  prisoners,  having  shown 
by  their  conduct  in  the  outside  world  that  they  cannot  be  trusted  to  act 
rightly,  will  be  made  righteous  by  closing  all  avenues  to  wrong  action. 
The  authorities,  being  presumably  exceedingly  wise  and  good  men, 
shall  lay  down  rules  of  conduct ;  and  the  criminal  will  tread  the 
straight  and  narrow  path — because  all  possibilities  of  straying  will  be 
walled  up.  Thus  shall  wicked  men  become  good  by  mere  force  of 
inertia. 

Of  course  a  system  based  on  any  such  theory  could  be  nothing  else 
than  an  utter  failure ;  a  hopeless,  futile  absurdity.  It  is  not  possible 
to  close  all  avenues  of  wickedness ;  nor  if  it  were  possible,  would  it 
bring  about  the  desired  result.  No  men  can  be  made  good  through 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


956 

force  of  inertia,  any  more  than  they  can  be  made  good  by  giving  them 
nothing  to  think  about,  in  the  hope  that  they  will  thereby  learn  to 
think  straight.  If  a  man  is  sound  at  heart, — if  he  feels  right,  he  will 
both  think  right  and  act  right ;  but  the  process  does  not  work  back¬ 
wards.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  morality  without  righteousness — a 
state  of  being  obtained  only  when  the  conscience  is  in  good  working 
order.  Like  the  mental  and  physical  machinery  of  man,  the  spiritual 
machinery  has  to  be  kept  in  constant*  exercise.  If  it  is  called  upon 
only  in  the  hour  of  stress,  it  is  bound  to  fail. 

127.  Systems  of  Convict  Labor1 

There  are  six  general  systems  under  which  convicts  are  found  at 
work  in  the  United  States:  (1)  the  lease  system,  (2)  the  contract 
system,  (3)  the  piece-price  system,  (4)  the  public-account  system, 
(5)  the  State-use  system,  (6)  the  public  works  and  ways  system. 

1.  Lease  system.  Under  this  system  the  State  (by  which  is  meant 
the  State  proper  or  its  minor  subdivisions)  enters  into  a  contract  with 
a  lessee,  who  agrees  to  receive  the  convict,  to  feed,  clothe,  house,  and 
guard  him,  to  keep  him  at  work,  and  to  pay  the  State  a  specified 
amount  for  his  labor.  The  State  reserves  the  right  to  make  rules  for 
the  care  of  the  convict  and  to  inspect  the  convict’s  quarters  and  place 
of  work.  No  institution  is  maintained  by  the  State  other  than  a 
place  of  detention,  where  the  convicts  can  be  held  until  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  lessee  and  in  which  to  confine  convicts  who  are  unable 
to  work. 

2.  Contract  system.  This  system  differs  radically  from  the  lease 
system.  Under  this  system  the  State  feeds,  clothes,  houses,  and  guards 
the  convict.  To  do  this  the  State  maintains  an  institution  and  a  force 
of  guards  and  other  employees.  A  contractor  engages  with  the  State 
for  the  labor  of  the  convicts,  which  is  performed  in  or  near  the  insti¬ 
tution.  The  contractor  pays  the  State  a  stipulated  amount  per  capita 
for  the  services  of  the  convict,  supplies  his  own  raw  material,  and 
superintends  the  work. 

3.  Piece-price  system.  This  system  differs  from  the  contract  sys¬ 
tem  only  as  to  superintending  the  work  and  determining  the  speed  at 

1From  "Convict  Labor,”  Twentieth  Annual  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of 
Labor ,  1905,  pp.  15-20.  Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1906. 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  957 


which  convicts  must  work.  The  State  maintains  the  institution  and 
feeds,  clothes,  and  guards  the  convicts.  The  contractor  supplies  the 
raw  material  and  pays  the  State  an  agreed  amount  for  the  work  done 
on  each  piece  or  article  manufactured  by  the  convicts.  The  super¬ 
vision  of  the  work  is  generally  performed  by  a  prison  official,  although 
sometimes  by  the  contractors.  The  officials  of  the  prison  not  only 
maintain  discipline,  but  dictate  the  quantity  of  work  required. 

4.  Public-account  system .  So  far  as  the  convict  is  concerned,  this 
system  does  not  differ  from  the  piece-price  system,  but  for  the  institu¬ 
tion  it  is  an  entirely  different  system.  In  the  piece-price  system  the 
contractor  finances  the  business  and  assumes  all  the  chances  of  profit 
and  loss.  In  the  public-account  system  the  State  enters  the  field  of 
manufacturing  on  its  own  account.  It  buys  the  raw  material,  manu¬ 
factures,  and  puts  the  product  on  the  market,  and  assumes  all  the  risk 
of  conducting  a  manufacturing  business.  The  State  has  the  entire 
care  and  control  of  the  convicts,  and  with  them  conducts  an  ordinary 
factory. 

5.  State-use  system.  Under  this  system  the  State  conducts  a  busi¬ 
ness  of  manufacture  or  production,  as  in  the  public-account  system, 
but  -the  use  or  sale  of  the  goods  produced  is  limited  to  the  same  in¬ 
stitution  or  to  other  State  institutions.  The  principle  of  the  system 
is  that  the  State  shall  produce  for  its  own  consumption  only. 

6.  Public  works  and  ways  system.  This  system  is  very  nearly  like 
the  State-use  system.  It  might  not  improperly  be  included  therewith. 
Under  this  system  the  labor  is  not  applied  to  the  manufacture  of  the 
common  marketable  articles  of  merchandise,  but  to  the  construction 
and  repair  of  prison  or  other  public  buildings,  public  roads,  parks, 
breakwaters,  etc. 

In  each  institution  investigated  an  effort  was  made  to  secure  the 
opinion  of  officials  and  employers  of  convicts  as  to  the  merits  a*d 
demerits  of  the  several  systems  under  which  convicts  worked.  The 
opinions  expressed  in  reply  to  this  inquiry  are  here  briefly  summarized. 

The  only  argument  that  can  be  offered  in  support  of  the  lease  sys¬ 
tem  for  the  employment  of  convicts  is  the  poverty  of  the  State  and  its 
inability  to  provide  quarters,  food,  and  guards  for  its  convicts,  and 
suitable  work  to  keep  them  employed. 

If  the  convenience  and  immediate  financial  interest  of  the  State  are 
the  paramount  consideration  in  dealing  with  prisoners,  then,  un- 


95$ 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


doubtedly,  the  easiest  and  cheapest  way  to  dispose  of  convicts  is  to 
turn  them  over,  immediately  after  conviction,  to  lessees,  who  will  take 
them  in  charge,  employ  them,  and  pay  the  State  something  for  their 
labor.  This  system  relieves  the  State  of  the  expense  of  providing 
prison  buildings  and  of  feeding,  clothing,  and  guarding  the  convicts, 
all  of  which  responsibilities  are  assumed  by  the  lessees.  But,  aside 
from  its  being  convenient  and  cheap,  the  lease  system  has  nothing 
in  its  favor  and  every  consideration  of  humanity  and  criminology  is 
against  it.  Its  general  effect  has  been  demoralizing  not  only  on  the 
convict  but  on  the  body  politic  as  well. 

For  the  purpose  of  protecting  the  convict  while  under  lease,  the 
State  maintains  more  or  less  supervision  over  the  lessees’  convict 
camps,  and  provides  rules  for  the  care  of  the  convict  and  the  direction 
of  his  work.  The  lessee  has  the  immediate  charge  of  the  convict,  and, 
as  the  lessee  conducts  his  business  for  the  money  which  may  be  de¬ 
rived  from  it,  it  is  evident  that  he  will  give  the  convict  no  better  care 
than  is  necessary  to  keep  him  fit  for  work,  and  will  force  all  of  the  work 
possible  out  of  him,  or  will  approach  these  conditions  as  nearly  as  the 
law  will  permit.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  lessee  will  have  ordi¬ 
narily  any  particular  interest  in  the  moral  and  intellectual  welfare  of 
the  convict,  or  put  forth  any  particular  effort  to  effect  his  reformation. 

To  the  credit  of  the  States  in  which  the  lease  system  has  been  in 
vogue  in  the  past,  it  should  be  said  that  the  system  is  largely  being 
superseded  by  other  systems,  mainly  the  public-account,  State-use, 
and  public  works  and  ways  systems.  And  in  the  States  where  the 
lease  system  is  still  found,  the  welfare  of  the  convicts  is  more  carefully 
guarded  than  heretofore. 

So  far  as  the  welfare  of  the  convict  is  concerned,  the  contract  sys¬ 
tem  is  far  superior  to  the  lease  system.  Under  this  system  the  State 
assumes  the  burden  of  providing  shelter,  food,  etc.,  for  the  convict. 
The  State  sells  to  contractors  only  the  labor,  and  retains  to  itself  the 
general  care  of  the  convict.  The  contractor  works  the  convict  under 
the  close  supervision  of  the  State,  but  the  State  has  exclusive  control 
of  maintenance  and  discipline,  as  it  has  in  all  of  the  other  systems 
except  the  lease  system. 

Prison  officials  may  be  brutal  sometimes,  whatever  the  system  in 
vogue,  but,  being  employed  on  a  salary  independent  of  the  profits  of 
the  institution,  they  do  not  have  the  ever-present  incentive  to  over- 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  959 


work  the  convicts  in  their  charge,  or  to  provide  them  with  the  mini¬ 
mum  of  food  and  clothing.  The  chief  objection  to  the  contract  system 
is  that  authority  over  the  convicts  is  divided.  The  prison  officials 
maintain  order  while  the  contractor  or  his  foremen  superintend  the 
work.  As  the  contractor  hires  the  convict  by  the  day  or  some  other 
unit  of  time,  it  is  to  his  interest  to  get  all  of  the  work  possible  out  of 
the  convict.  With  three  interests  involved — those  of  the  State,  the 
contractor,  and  the  convict — it  is  to  be  expected  that  friction  will 
sometimes  arise.  The  influence  of  the  contractor  and  his  employees 
on  the  convict  is  not  always  good. 

The  division  of  authority  in  industrial  and  financial  matters,  how¬ 
ever,  is  the  principal  feature  that  commends  this  system.  The  con¬ 
tractor  directs  the  industries  of  the  institution  and  assumes  all  of  the 
responsibility  of  profit  and  loss,  leaving  the  prison  officials  free  to 
devote  their  whole  attention  to  the  care  of  the  convict.  The  working 
of  the  lease  system  has  demonstrated  that  men  may  be  able  to  get 
profitable  wTork  out  of  the  convicts  and  yet  be  utterly  unfitted  to  be 
trusted  with  their  physical,  mental,  and  moral  interests.  Conversely, 
prison  officials  may  be  selected  who  are  fully  qualified  to  administer 
the  penal  and  reformatory  side  of  the  institution,  yet  who  possess  few 
qualifications  for  conducting  manufacturing  or  other  industrial  enter¬ 
prises.  This  system  is  intended  to  conserve  two  interests — first,  to 
administer  the  institution  with  the  least  possible  expense  to  the  State, 
and,  second,  to  provide  good  care  in  every  respect  for  the  convict. 

Under  the  piece-price  system  the  contractor  pays  for  the  work  of 
the  convict,  not  by  the  day,  but  by  the  piece  or  article  produced. 
The  prison  officials  may  or  may  not  supervise  the  work  of  the  convicts, 
but  they  control  the  pressure  under  which  the  convict  must  work. 
When  the  prison  officials  supervise  the  work,  as  they  more  often  do, 
this  system  eliminates  the  division  of  authority  over  the  convicts,  but 
it  requires  that  prison  officials  shall  have  sufficient  ability  to  direct  the 
labor  of  the  convicts,  as  well  as  ability  to  maintain  the  punitive  side 
of  the  institution. 

So  far  as  the  convict  is  concerned,  there  is  very  little  difference 
between  the  piece-price  system  and  the  public-account  system.  For 
the  State,  however,  the  systems  are  radically  different.  In  the  public- 
account  system  the  State  goes  into  business  on  its  own  account.  It 
provides  the  raw  material,  employs  the  convicts  thereon,  and  places 


960 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


its  goods  on  the  market  like  any  other  manufacturer,  and  assumes  all 
the  risk  of  profit  and  loss  in  the  business.  By  this  system  the  State 
seeks  to  gain  for  itself  all  the  profit  the  contractor  might  make  out  of 
the  labor  of  the  convicts.  Evidence  shows  that  the  convicts  work 
more  willingly  for  the  State  than  for  a  contractor.  In  authorizing 
this  system  the  State  often  provides  that  the  convicts  shall  produce 
something  that  is  in  general  demand  in  the  State,  or  some  article 
whereon  their  labor  will  compete  to  the  least  extent  with  free  labor  in 
the  State.  But  the  system  requires  a  high  degree  of  ability  on  the 
part  of  the  prison  officials,  for  they  must  be  able  to  conduct  not  only 
the  penal  side  of  the  institution,  but  also  the  manufacturing  business, 
and  be  able  successfully  to  place  the  prison  product  on  the  market. 

Under  the  State-use  system  the  State  provides  the  raw  material  and 
employs  the  convicts  in  the  same  manner  as  under  the  public-account 
system.  The  difference  between  these  two  systems  lies  in  the  disposal 
of  the  product.  Under  the  State-use  system  the  goods  must  be  con¬ 
sumed  in  the  same  institution,  or  be  sold  only  to  other  State  institu¬ 
tions  or  other  departments  of  the  State  government.  This  system  has 
been  adopted  largely  because  of  the  objections  of  free  labor  to  the 
competition  of  the  convict  and  of  the  manufacturer  employing  free 
labor  to  the  competition  of  prison-made  goods.  It  must  be  conceded 
that  if  the  convict  works  at  all  there  must  be  competition  between 
convict  labor  and  free  labor,  but  under  this  system  the  competition  is 
indirect  and  not  so  apparent.  What  the  State  provides  it  does  not 
have  to  buy,  and  thus  the  cost  of  maintaining  the  State  and  its  several 
institutions  is  partially  met  by  the  employment  of  prisoners  under 
this  system  and  taxation  thus  reduced.  The  State  gets  the  full  benefit 
of  the  labor  of  the  convict,  and,  as  has  been  stated,  the  average  convict 
works  more  willingly  when  working  for  the  State,  and  especially  when 
working  on  articles  for  his  own  consumption.  This  system  seeks  to 
conserve  three  interests  instead  of  two — the  financial  interest  of  the 
State,  the  general  interest  of  the  convict,  and  to  at  least  an  equal  ex¬ 
tent  the  interest  of  free  labor,  which  is  ignored  entirely  in  the  lease, 
contract,  and  piece-price  systems  and  to  a  great  extent  in  the  public- 
account  system.  The  State-use  system,  however,  has  its  faults.  It 
cannot  supply  all  the  wants  of  the  convicts,  as  the  convicts  cannot 
enter  every  industry,  and  as  the  demand  for  the  convict  product  is 
limited  the  convicts  cannot,  as  a  rule,  be  worked  to  their  full  capacity. 


PENAL  AND  REFORMATORY  INSTITUTIONS  961 


The  public  works  and  ways  system  is  nearly  the  same  as  the  State- 
use  system.  The  competition  with  free  labor  is  perhaps  a  little  further 
removed.  The  State  is  the  sole  beneficiary  of  the  work  of  the  convicts, 
as  is  the  case  under  the  State-use  system.  In  the  public  works  and 
ways  system  the  convicts  are  employed  in  erecting  public  buildings, 
building  highways,  etc.,  of  a  permanent  character,  rather  than  in 
making  articles  for  consumption.  Under  this  system  much  work  is 
done  that  would  be  delayed  or  possibly  not  undertaken  at  all  if  the 
work  were  not  done  by  convict  labor.  Convicts  may  be  put  to  work 
erecting  buildings  or  improving  highways,  and  no  difficulty  experi¬ 
enced  in  procuring  an  appropriation  for  the  maintenance  of  the  con¬ 
victs  while  so  engaged,  when  it  would  be  quite  impossible  to  secure  a 
direct  appropriation  for  the  same  work  to  be  done  by  free  labor,  even 
though  the  total  cost  should  be  the  same. 

Practically  all  of  the  work  done  under  the  public  works  and  ways 
system  is  performed  in  the  open  air,  which  is  greatly  to  the  benefit  of 
the  health  of  the  convicts  engaged.  When  the  convicts  are  engaged, 
however,  in  building  public  roads  there  is  greater  danger  of  escape 
and  consequently  a  greater  cost  for  guarding  them.  Another  objec¬ 
tion  to  the  employment  of  convicts  on  public  ways  is  the  fact  that 
they  are  exposed  to  the  gaze  of  the  public,  which  all  penologists  admit 
to  be  against  the  best  interests  not  only  of  the  public  but  of  the 
convict  as  well. 

In  some  institutions  only  one  system  of  work  was  found ;  in  the 
.  greater  number  of  institutions,  however,  two  or  more  systems  were 
found.  Prison  labor  is  not  like  free  labor.  The  convicts  are  on  hand 
whether  their  labor  is  wanted  for  any  purpose  or  not ;  hence  it  is 
more  often  a  matter  of  finding  work  for  the  convicts  than  of  finding 
employees  for  the  work. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 
128.  The  American  Reformatory  Prison  System1 

To  accomplish  protective  reformations  it  is  necessary,  preliminarily, 
to  fix  upon  the  standard  of  reformatory  requirement,  to  adopt  the 
criterion,  to  organize  and  perfect  the  plan  of  procedure.  The  standard 
fixed  is,  simply,  such  habitual  behavior,  during  actual  and  construc¬ 
tive  custody,  as  fairly  comports  with  the  legitimate  conduct  of  the 
orderly  free  social  class  to  which  the  prisoner  properly  belongs  in  the 
community  where  he  should  and  probably  will  dwell.  The  criterion 
of  fitness  for  release  is  precisely  the  same  performance  subjected  to 
tests  while  under  prison  tutelage  by  the  merit  and  demerit  marking 
system  which,  somewhat  modified  in  strenuousness  and  with  addition 
of  its  monetary  valuations,  is  similar  to  the  marking  system  of  our 
National  Military  Academy;  and  tested,  also,  by  proper  supervision 
during  a  period  of  practical  freedom  while  on  parole.  Both  the  stand¬ 
ard  and  criterion  must  be  somewhat  pliant  to  meet  the  variant  capacity 
of  communities  to  absorb  incongruous  elements  and  because  each 
prisoner  must  be  fitted  for  his  appropriate  industrial  and  social  niche. 

Reformatory  procedure.  Efficiency  of  the  reformatory  procedure 
depends  on  completeness  of  its  mechanism  composed  of  means  and 
motives ;  on  the  force,  balance,  and  skill  with  which  the  means  and 
motives  are  brought  to  bear  upon  the  mass,  the  groups,  and  the  in¬ 
dividual  prisoners ;  and  not  a  little  on  the  pervading  tone  of  the  re¬ 
formatory  establishment.  A  mere  enumeration  of  means  and  motives 
of  the  mechanism  is,  briefly,  as  follows : 

i.  The  material  structural  establishment  itself.  This  should  be 
salubriously  situated  and,  preferably,  in  a  suburban  locality.  The 
general  plan  and  arrangements  should  be  those  of  the  Auburn  Prison 

1By  Z.  R.  Brockway,  formerly  Superintendent  of  the  Elmira  State  Reforma¬ 
tory.  Adapted  from  Correction  and  Prevention ,  pp.  95,  99-102,  107.  Edited 
by  Charles  Richmond  Henderson,  Ph.D.,  Charities  Publication  Committee,  New 
York,  1910.  Copyright,  1910,  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation. 

962 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


96.3 


System  plan,  but  modified  and  modernized  as  at  the  Elmira  Reforma¬ 
tory  ;  and  ten  per  cent  of  the  cells  might  well  be  constructed  like  those 
in  the  Pennsylvania  System  structures.  The  whole  should  be  supplied 
with  suitable  modern  sanitary  appliances  and  with  abundance  of 
natural  and  artificial  light. 

2.  Clothing  for  the  prisoners,  not  degradingly  distinctive  but  uni¬ 
form,1  yet  fitly  representing  the  respective  grades  or  standing  of  the 
prisoners.  Similarly  as  to  the  supply  of  bedding  which,  with  rare  ex¬ 
ceptions,  should  include  sheets  and  pillow  slips.  For  the  sake  of 
health,  self-respect,  and  the  cultural  influence  of  the  general  appear¬ 
ance,  scrupulous  cleanliness  should  be  maintained  and  the  prisoners 
kept  appropriately  groomed. 

3.  A  liberal  prison  dietary  designed  to  promote  vigor.  Deprivation 
of  food,  by  a  general  regulation,  for  a  penal  purpose,  is  deprecated ;  it 
is  a  practice  only  tolerable  in  very  exceptional  instances  as  a  tentative 
prison  disciplinary  measure.  On  the  other  hand,  the  giving  of  food 
privileges  for  favor  or  in  return  for  some  special  serviceableness  ren¬ 
dered  to  the  prison  authorities  is  inadvisable  and  usually  becomes  a 
troublesome  precedent.  More  variety,  better  quality  and  service  of 
foods  for  the  higher  grades  of  prisoners  is  serviceably  allowable  even 
to  the  extent  of  the  a  la  carte  method,  whenever  the  prisoners  under 
the  wage  system,  have  the  requisite  credit  balance  for  such  expendi¬ 
ture.  Also,  for  some  of  the  very  lowest  intractable  prisoners,  a  special, 
scientifically  adjusted  dietary,  with  reference  to  the  constituent  nutri¬ 
tive  quality,  and  as  to  quantities  and  manner  of  serving,  may  be  used 
to  lay  a  foundation  for  their  improvement,  otherwise  unattainable. 

4.  All  the  modern  appliances  for  scientific  physical  culture:  a  gym¬ 
nasium  completely  equipped  with  baths  and  apparatus ;  and  facilities 
for  field  athletics.  On  their  first  admission  to  the  reformatory  all  are 
assigned  to  the  gymnasium  to  be  examined,  renovated,  and  quick¬ 
ened  ;  the  more  defective  of  them  are  longer  detained,  and  the  de¬ 
cadents  are  held  under  this  physical  treatment  until  the  intended  effect 
is  accomplished.  When  the  population  of  the  Elmira  Reformatory 
was  1400,  the  daily  attendance  at  the  gymnasium  averaged  429. 

5.  Facilities  for  special  manual  training  sufficient  for  about  one- 
third  of  the  resident  population.  The  aim  is  to  aid  educational  ad- 

1  Compare  this  and  other  recommendations  with  contemporary  principles  and 
practice. —  Ed. 


964 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


vancement  in  the  trades  and  school  of  letters.  This  special  manual 
training,  which  at  Elmira  Reformatory  included,  at  one  time,  five 
hundred  of  the  prisoners,  covered  in  addition  to  other  exercises  in 
other  departments  mechanical  and  freehand  drawing ;  sloyd  in  wood 
and  metals ;  cardboard  constructive  form  work ;  clay  modeling ;  cabi¬ 
net  making ;  chipping  and  filing ;  and  iron  molding. 

6.  Trades  instruction  based  on  the  needs  and  capacities  of  in¬ 
dividual  prisoners,  conducted  to  a  standard  of  perfect  work  and  speed 
performance  that  insures  the  usual  wage  value  to  their  services. 
When  there  are  a  thousand  or  more  prisoners  confined,  thirty-six 
trades  and  branches  of  trades  may  be  usefully  taught. 

7.  A  regimental  military  organization  of  the  prisoners  with  a  band 
of  music,  swords  for  officers,  and  dummy  guns  for  the  rank  and  file 
of*  prisoners.  The  military  membership  should  include  all  the  able 
bodied  prisoners  and  all  available  citizens  of  the  employes.  The  regu¬ 
lar  army  tactics,  drill,  and  daily  dress  parade  should  be  observed. 

8.  School  of  letters  with  a  curriculum  that  reaches  from  an  adapta¬ 
tion  of  the  kindergarten,  and  an  elementary  class  in  the  English  lan¬ 
guage  for  foreigners  unacquainted  with  it,  through  various  school 
grades  up  to  the  usual  high-school  course ;  and,  in  addition,  special 
classes  in  college  subjects  and,  limitedly,  a  popular  lecture  course 
touching  biography,  history,  literature,  ethics,  with  somewhat  of 
science  and  philosophy. 

9.  A  well-selected  library  for  circulation,  consultation,  and  under 
proper  supervision,  for  occasional  semi-social  use.  The  reading  room 
may  be  made  available  for  worthy  and  appreciative  prisoners. 

10.  The  weekly  institutional  newspaper,  in  lieu  of  all  outside  news¬ 
papers,  edited  and  printed  by  the  prisoners  under  due  censorship. 

11.  Recreating  and  diverting  entertainments  for  the  mass  of  the 
population,  provided  in  the  great  auditorium;  not  any  vaudeville 
nor  minstrel  shows,  but  entertainments  of  such  a  class  as  the  middle 
cultured  people  of  a  community  would  enjoy ;  stereopticon  instructive 
exhibitions  and  explanations,  vocal  and  instrumental  music,  and  elo¬ 
cution,  recitation,  and  oratory  for  inspiration  and  uplift. 

12.  Religious  opportunities,  optional,  adapted  to  the  hereditary, 
habitual,  and  denominational  predilection  of  the  individual  prisoners. 

13.  Definitely  planned,  carefully  directed,  emotional  occasions ;  not 
summoned,  primarily,  for  either  instruction,  diversion,  nor,  specifi- 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


96s 


cally,  for  a  common  religious  impression,  but,  figuratively,  for  a  kind 
of  irrigation.  I  have  sufficiently  experimented  with  music,  pictures, 
and  the  drama,  in  aid  of  our  rational  reformatory  endeavors,  to  af¬ 
firm  confidently  that  art  may  become  an  effective  means  in  the  scheme 
for  reformation. 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing  items  the  prisoners  are  constantly  under 
pressure  of  intense  motives  that  bear  directly  upon  the  mind.  The 
indeterminatenes  of  the  sentence  breeds  discontent,  breeds  purposeful¬ 
ness,  and  prompts  to  new  exertion.  Captivity,  always  irksome,  is  now 
unceasingly  so  because  of  the  uncertainty  of  its  duration  ;  because  the 
duty  and  responsibility  of  shortening  it  and  of  modifying  any  un¬ 
desirable  present  condition  of  it  devolve  upon  the  prisoner  himself, 
and,  again,  because  of  the  active  exactions  of  the  standard  and 
criterion  to  which  he  must  attain. 

Naturally,  these  circumstances  serve  to  arouse  and  rivet  the  atten¬ 
tion  upon  the  many  matters  of  the  daily  conduct  which  so  affect  the 
rate  of  progress  toward  the  coveted  release.  Such  vigilance,  so  de¬ 
voted,  supplies  a  motive  equivalent  to  that  of  the  fixed  idea.  Then 
the  vicissitudes  of  the  daily  experience  incite  to  prudence ;  and  the 
practice  of  prudence  educates  the  understanding. 

Neither  punishment  nor  precept  nor  both  combined  constitute  the 
main  reliance ;  but,  instead,  education  by  practice — education  of  the 
whole  man,  his  capacity,  his  habits  and  tastes,  by  a  rational  procedure 
whose  central  motive  and  law  of  development  are  found  in  the  indus¬ 
trial  economies.  This  is  a  reversal  of  the  usual  contemplated  order  of 
effort  for  reformations — the  building  of  character  from  the  top  down  ; 
the  modern  method  builds  from  the  bottom  upward,  and  the  sub¬ 
stratum  of  the  structure  rests  on  work. 

129.  The  Mutual  Welfare  League1 

While  I  had  become  fully  convinced  in  1964  that  self-government 
was  the  practical  remedy  for  the  evils  of  the  prison  system,  I  did  not 
see  clearly  just  how  it  could  be  put  in  practice. 

For  many  years  I  wondered  how  and  when  such  a  system  of  self- 
government  could  be  put  in  operation  ;  and  to  find  light  on  this  subject 

1From  Society  and  Prisons  (pp.  154-184),  by  Thomas  Mott  Osborne.  Copy¬ 
right,  1916,  by  the  Yale  University  Press. 


966 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


,  was  one  of  the  reasons  for  my  week’s  imprisonment.  Thanks  to  the 
chance  (was  it  altogether  chance,  I  wonder?)  which  sent  me  to  the 
basket-shop  and  to  my  partner,  Jack  Murphy,  an  answer  to  the  prob¬ 
lem  was  found. 

As  Jack  and  I  stood  talking  at  our  work-table  on  Thursday  after¬ 
noon,  October  2,  1913,  the  conversation  drifted  to  the  long  and  dreary 
Sundays.  Jack  agreed  with  all  those  with  whom  I  had  talked  that 
Sunday  afternoon  was  the  worst  thing  in  prison  life.  I  said  that  I  felt 
sure  the  prison  authorities  would  be  glad  to  give  the  men  some  sort 
of  exercise  or  recreation  on  Sunday  afternoons,  if  it  were  practicable. 
Then  ensued  the  following  conversation,  as  set  forth  in  my  journal: 

"You  can’t  ask  the  officers  to  give  up  their  day  off.  and  you  don’t  think 
the  men  could  be  trusted  by  themselves,  do  you?”  9 

"Why  not?”  says  Jack. 

I  look  at  him,  inquiringly. 

"Why,  look  here,  Tom!”  In  his  eagerness  Jack  comes  around  to  my 
side  of  our  working  table.  "I  know  this  place  through  and  through.  I 
know  these  men ;  I’ve  studied  ’em  for  years.  And  I  tell  you  that  the  big 
majority  of  these  fellows  in  here  will  be  square  with  you,  if  you  give  ’em 
a  chance.  The  trouble  is,  we  ain’t  treated  on  the  level.  I  could  tell  you 
all  sorts  of  frame-ups  they  give  us.  Now  if  you  trust  a  man,  he’ll  try  and 
do  what’s  right;  sure  he  will.  That  is,  most  men  will.  Of  course,  there 
are  a  few  that  won’t.  There  are  some  dirty  curs— degenerates — that  will 
make  trouble,  but  there  ain’t  so  very  many  of  those. 

"Look  at  that  road  work,”  he  continues.  "Haven’t  the  men  done  fine? 
How  many  prisoners  have  you  had  out  on  the  roads  ?  About  one  hun¬ 
dred  and  thirty.  And  you  ain’t  had  a  single  runaway  yet.  And  if  there 
should  be  any  runaways,  you  can  just  bet  we’d  show  ’em  what  we  think 
about  it.” 

"Do  you  really  believe,  Jack,  that  the  Superintendent  and  the  Warden 
could  trust  you  fellows  out  in  the  yard  on  Sunday  afternoons  in  summer?” 

"Sure  they  could,”  responds  Jack,  his  face  beginning  to  flush  with  pleas¬ 
ure  at  the  thought.  "And  there  could  be  a  band  concert,  and  we’d  have  a 
fine  time.  And  it  would  be  a  good  sight  better  for  us  than  being  locked  in 
our  cells  all  day.  We’d  have  fewer  fights  on  Monday,  I  know  that.” 

"Yes,  it  would  certainly  be  an  improvement  on  spending  the  afternoon 
in  your  cells,”  I  remark.  "Then  in  rainy  weather  you  could  march  to  the 
chapel  and  have  some  sort  of  lecture  or  debate.  .  .  .  But  how  about  the 
discipline?  Would  you  let  everybody  out  into  the  yard?  What  about  those 
bad  actors  who  don’t  know  how  to  behave  ?  Won’t  they  quarrel  and  fight 
and  try  to  escape?” 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


967 


"But  don’t  you  see,  Tom,  that  they  couldn’t  do  that  without  putting  the 
whole  thing  on  the  bum,  and  depriving  the  rest  of  us  of  our  privileges?  You 
needn’t  be  afraid  we  couldn’t  handle  those  fellows  all  right.  Or  why  not  let 
out  only  those  men  who  have  a  good  conduct  bar?  That’s  it,”  he  continues, 
enthusiastically  warming  up  to  the  subject,  " that’s  it,  Tom,  a  Good  Con¬ 
duct  League.  And  give  the  privilege  of  Sunday  afternoons  to  the  members 
of  the  League.  I’ll  tell  you,  Tom  !  you  know  last  year  we  got  up  an  Anti¬ 
swearing  League  here  in  this  shop,  and  we  had  a  penalty  for  every  oath  or 
dirty  word.  The  forfeits  were  paid  in  matches.  You  know  matches  are 
pretty  scarce  here,  don’t  you  ?  Well,  we  had  a  grand  success  with  that 
League.  But  this  Good  Conduct  League  would  be  a  much  bigger  thing. 
It  would  be  just  great.  And  go  !  Sure  it’ll  go.” 

The  next  day  Jack  and  I  discussed  the  matter  again,  especially  the 
necessity  of  having  some  officers  of  the  League  to  enforce  discipline. 
To  this  he  at  first  objected,  on  the  ground  that  it  "would  be  too  much 
like  Elmira.  .  .  .  I’m  afraid  the  fellows  wouldn’t  stand  for  it.  You 
know  they  just  hate  those  Elmira  officers ;  they’re  nothing  but  stool- 
pigeons.” 

Here  my  Junior  Republic  training  came  to  our  aid,  and  I  showed 
Jack  how,  if  the  officers  were  elected  by  the  men,  it  would  change 
their  whole  character.  "They  may  turn  out  to  be  poor  officers,” — I 
said;  "dictatorial,  or  weak,  or  incompetent — but  they  will  not  be 
stool-pigeons.” 

The  die  was  cast ;  the  seed  of  the  new  system  had  been  planted. 
On  the  day  I  left  prison  Jack  Murphy  wrote  me  a  letter,  which  con¬ 
tained  this  paragraph : 

To-morrow,  Monday,  October  6,  I  shall  request  one  of  the  boys  in  the 
basket-shop  to  draw  up  a  resolution  pledging  our  loyalty  to  your  cause ;  and 
I  shall  ask  only  those  who  are  sincere  to  sign  it.  After  this  has  been  done, 
I  am  going  to  ask  our  Warden  for  permission  to  start  a  Tom  Brown  League  ; 
its  members  to  be  men  who  have  never  been  punished.  Tom,  I  hope  that 
you  and  your  fellow-commissioners  as  well  as  Supt.  Riley  and  Warden 
Rattigan  will  approve  of  this,  for  I  am  sure  that  such  a  League  will  bring 
forth  good  results.  I  fiave  associated  so  many  years  among  the  class  of  men 
in  this  prison  that  I  believe  them  to  be  part  of  my  very  being;  and  that  is 
why  I  have  so  much  confidence  in  the  success  of  a  Tom  Brown  League. 

What  came  to  me  so  clearly,  as  Jack  Murphy  and  I  talked  over  the 
matter  in  the  basket-shop,  was  that  here  were  the  men  who  knew; 
here  were  the  men  who  had  really  thought  seriously  about  the  matter ; 


968 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


here  were  the  men  who  were  the  ones  most  directly  affected.  If  a 
plan  of  self-government  was  to  work  at  all,  it  must  be  worked  by 
them ;  and  they  would  certainly  work  their  own  plan  better  than  they 
could  some  outside  plan — no  matter  how  perfect.  I  understood  that 
the  only  self-government  that  would  be  successful  in  prison  was  the 
self-government  which  the  prisoners  themselves  would  bring  about — 
their  own  self-government.  This  was  real,  vital  democracy  ;  this  was 
solving  the  problem  in  the  genuine  American  spirit. 

On  December  26th  a  free  election  was  held  in  the  different  shops 
of  the  prison,  to  choose  a  committee  of  forty-nine,  to  determine  the 
exact  nature  and  organization  of  the  League,  the  gdheral  idea  of  which 
had  been  unanimously  approved  by  show  of  hands  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  chapel  services  on  the  Sunday  previous.  A  half  hour  was  given 
to  each  shop,  before  taking  a  vote,  to  discuss  candidates  and  other 
matters  relating  to  the  proposed  organization.  The  officers  were  of 
course  in  charge,  and  extra  but  unnecessary  guards  were  in  attend¬ 
ance.  Much  interest  was  taken  in  the  election ;  and  there  were  some 
very  close  contests  for  places  on  the  committee. 

Two  days  after  the  election  (December  28th),  the  members  of  the 
committee  of  forty-nine  were  brought  to  the  chapel,  and  the  meeting 
called  to  order  by  the  Warden.  Some  one  made  the  motion  that 
Thomas  Brown,  No.  33,333x,  be  made  chairman,  which  was  unani¬ 
mously  carried.  Then  the  Warden  and  the  guards  retired.  For  the 
first  time  in  the  history  of  prisons  a  large  body  of  convicts,  unguarded, 
was  permitted  a  full  and  free  discussion  of  their  own  affairs.  The 
discussion  was  not  only  free,  but  most  interesting,  as  the  committee 
contained  men  of  many  minds  and  of  all  kinds,  sentenced  for  all  sorts 
of  offences — first,  second,  and  third  termers. 

The  first  question  discussed  was  the  membership  of  the  League; 
should  it  be  a  reward  for  good  behavior,  or  thrown  open  to  every 
prisoner  and  terminated  on  bad  behavior?  As  has  been  shown,  the 
first  idea  Jack  Murphy  and  I  had  had  was  the  former ;  but  Warden 
Rattigan  had  expressed  his  opinion  that  the  more  democratic  form 
would  be  far  better.  The  committee,  in  its  discussion,  went  to  th*e 
bottom  of  the  question  in  short  order.  One  member  arose  and  said : 
"If  the  membership  is  to  be  only  of  those  who  have  shown  good  be¬ 
havior,  who  is  to  decide  what  is  good  behavior?  Who  is  to  set  the 
standards  ?  ” 


REFORMATORY  METHODS  969 

"Why,  I  suppose  the  prison  authorities  will,  of  course,”  was  my 
rather  lame  reply. 

"We  don’t  recognize  those  standards,”  was  the  decisive  rejoinder, 
as  the  speaker  took  his  seat. 

The  point,  when  put  in  this  way  was  obvious  and  well-taken.  The 
standards  of  the  old  system — the  standards  of  soft  jobs  for  "rats” 
and  "stool-pigeons,”  but  bread  and  water  in  the  dark  cells  for  faithful 
fellows  who  would  not  "snitch  on  their  pals,” — such  standards  were 
not  those  of  the  right-minded  men  who  must  be  the  backbone  of  the 
League.  It  was  the  first  point  of  division ;  and  unhesitatingly  the 
men  turned  to  the  path  of  sincerity  and  straightforward  dealing.  If 
they  were  to  have  a  league,  it  must  be  one  which  represented  their  own 
ideals,  not  the  ideal  of  the  bad  old  system. 

Unanimously  the  point  was  carried — the  membership  of  the  League 
must  be  thrown  open  to  all ;  and  forfeited  for  bad  conduct,  according 
to  standards  which  it  would  be  for  the  League  to  determine. 

Then  we  came  to  the  second  question :  What  should  the  League  do  ? 
As  quickly  as  they  had  gone  to  the  root  of  the  first  question,  it  was 
seen  that  this  question  need  not  be  debated.  What  the  League  would 
be  allowed  to  do  rested  entirely  with  the  authorities.  I  suggested  that 
the  best  method  of  procedure  would  probably  be  to  take  up  one  de¬ 
sired  privilege  at  a  time;  ask  for  it,  and  get  it  if  we  could.  For 
instance,  the  privilege  of  the  chapel  for  meetings  on  Sunday  afternoons 
was  obviously  the  first  thing  to  bring  about. 

The  third  question  was :  How  should  the  machinery  of  the  League 
be  formulated?  A  sub-committee  of  twelve,  with  the  chairman  a 
member  ex-officio,  was  voted ;  and  with  some  difficulty,  owing  to  my 
limited  prison  acquaintance,  I  selected  the  necessary  members. 

This  sub-committee  proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  bodies 
of  the  kind  I  have  ever  worked  with.  Businesslike,  fertile  in  sug¬ 
gestion,  keen  in  argument,  good-tempered  in  decision.  There  was  a 
general  sense  of  the  lasting  importance  of  our  discussions — of  the 
movement  we  were  starting.  Three  or  four  meetings  of  the  sub¬ 
committee  sufficed  to  formulate  the  by-laws,  and  after  full  discussion 
by  the  committee  of  forty-nine,  they  were  reported  to  the  whole  body 
of  the  prisoners  on  January  n,  1914,  and  unanimously  adopted. 

The  scheme  of  government  thus  prepared  was  the  simplest  and  most 
democratic  imaginable.  Every  prisoner  was  eligible  for  membership 


970 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


in  the  Mutual  Welfare  League,  which  was  the  name  adopted  after 
much  discussion.  It  was  declared  that  "the  object  of  the  League 
shall  be  to  promote  in  every  way  the  true  interests  and  welfare  of 
the  men  confined  in  prison.”  The  motto  was  concise  and  explicit: 
"Do  Good — Make  Good.”  The  colors,  green  and  white, — emblematic 
of  Hope  and  Truth. 

Adopting  the  same  constituencies  that  had  elected  the  committee 
on  organization,  the  governing  body  of  the  League  was  a  board  of  dele¬ 
gates  of  forty-nine,  elected  every  six  months.  The  delegates  were  to 
select  an  executive  board  of  nine  from  among  their  number,  to  which 
was  entrusted  the  administration  of  the  League.  The  executive  board 
appointed  a  clerk,  and  a  sergeant-at-arms,  who  was  empowered  to  add 
as  man}^  assistant  sergeants-at-arms  as  necessary,  the  delegates  acting 
also  in  that  capacity.  The  board  of  delegates  was  also  divided  into 
eight  grievance  committees  of  five  each,  which  should  hear  and 
determine  all  complaints  against  members  of  the  League. 

With  this  simple  framework  of  organization  the  new  prison  system 
began.  At  the  first  election  on  January  15th  many  of  those  who  had 
been  on  the  committee  of  forty-nine  were  returned  as  members  of  the 
board  of  delegates.  It  was  a  thrilling  sight  when  on  Sunday,  Jan¬ 
uary  18,  1914,  after  the  population  of  the  prison  in  excited  expectation 
was  seated  in  the  chapel,  the  newly  elected  representatives  of  their 
fellow-prisoners  marched  in  two  by  two — each  with  a  bow  of  green 
and  white  ribbon  pinned  to  his  gray  coat,  to  the  thunderous  applause 
of  their  constituents.  Raising  their  right  hands  they  took  the  oath 
of  office  read  to  them  by  the  Warden,  as  follows : 

You  solemnly  promise  that  you  will  do  all  in  your  power  to  promote  the 
true  welfare  of  the  men  confined  in  Auburn  Prison ;  that  you  will  cheer¬ 
fully  obey  and  endeavor  to  have  others  obey  the  rules  and  regulations  of 
the  duly  constituted  prison  authorities,  and  that  you  will  endeavor  in  every 
way  to  bring  about  friendly  feeling,  good  conduct,  and  fair  dealing  among 
both  officers  and  men  to  the  end  that  each  man,  after  serving  the  briefest 
possible  term  of  imprisonment,  may  go  forth  with  renewed  strength  and 
courage  to  face  the  world  again.  All  this  you  promise  faithfully  to  en¬ 
deavor.  So  help  you  God. 

Many  of  the  prisoners  showed  deep  emotion ;  and  one  man  said  to 
me  afterwards:  "When  those  delegates  marched  in,  I  just  wanted  to 
get  up  and  shout.  I  never  was  so  excited  but  once  before ;  and  that 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


971 

was  when  I  was  a  soldier  in  Cuba  and  saw  our  fellows  making  their 
charge  up  San  Juan  Hill.” 

Better  still  was  to  come.  The  delegates  met  and  selected  an  ad¬ 
mirable  executive  board ;  that  board  met  and  appointed  as  Sergeant- 
at-Arms  a  young  man  named  William  Duffy,  whose  services  to  the 
League  have  only  been  equalled  by  those  of  Jack  Murphy,  the  founder, 
and  S.  L.  Richards,  a  prisoner  whose  faithful  and  untiring  energy, 
high  ethical  standards,  and  large  experience  made  him  almost  invalu¬ 
able  as  secretary. 

On  February  4th  occurred  the  first  meeting  of  a  grievance  commit¬ 
tee.  There  had  been  a  fight  on  one  of  the  galleries  and  two  men  were 
accused.  The  question  arose  as  to  the  kind  of  hearing  that  should  be 
held  by  the  committee  ;  should  it  be  a  trial  or  an  investigation  ?  One 
of  the  guilty  parties  claimed  the  right  to  be  represented  by  coun¬ 
sel  ;  but  it  was  quickly  seen  that  this  meant  attorneys  and  cross- 
examinations  and  objections  and  all  the  rigmarole  of  a  court.  Many 
of  the  League  members  had  already  suffered  from  a  surplus  of  legal 
procedure  and  they  willingly  listened  to  a  suggestion  that  we  start 
by  throwing  aside  the  whole  simulacrum  of  a  court.  So  counsel  was 
refused  and  the  two  accused  men  were  examined  as  witnesses — and 
both  lied  like  the  traditional  trooper ;  exactly  as  they  had  been  accus¬ 
tomed  to  lie  under  the  old  system.  But  when  other  witnesses  were 
brought  in  one  by  one,  some  of  them,  understanding  the  changed  con¬ 
ditions  of  things,  told  the  truth.  The  case  ended  in  both  guilty  parties 
making  a  clean  breast  of  the  whole  matter,  one  of  them  being  dis¬ 
missed  from  the  office  of  delegate,  and  both  being  suspended  for  the 
first  general  meeting  of  the  League,  which  was  scheduled  for  Feb¬ 
ruary  12th.  The  last  punishment  was  afterwards  remitted  in  view 
of  the  truthful  attitude  of  the  two  men. 

On  February  nth  a  brief  gathering  of  the  delegates  was  held,  so 
that  the  Sergeant-at-Arms  could  give  his  instructions  for  the  conduct 
of  the  first  general  meeting  of  the  League  on  the  next  day.  Remember 
that  for  the  first  time  the  whole  prison  population  was  to  come  to¬ 
gether  without  guards !  It  is  impossible  for  one  who  did  not  pass 
through  those  thrilling  experiences  to  realize  the  excitement — the  ex¬ 
hilarating  effect  of  passing  safely  one  after  another  of  the  milestones 
on  the  road  to  a  genuine  system  of  prison  discipline.  The  delegates 
were  filled  with  an  enthusiasm  which  bore  an  almost  religious  charac- 


972 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


ter.  They  were  pioneers  of  prison  democracy.  The  meeting  broke  up 
with  an  earnest  appeal  from  the  Secretary  reminding  the  men  "that 
it  was  up  to  them  to  show  that  they  could  behave  themselves  and  act 
like  gentlemen.” 

The  events  of  the  next  day  I  wrote  out  shortly  after  the  occurrence ; 
here  is  the  account. 

It  is  the  afternoon  of  Lincoln’s  Birthday.  Once  again  I  am  standing  on 
the  stage  of  the  assembly  room  of  Auburn  prison,  but  how  different  is  the 
scene  before  me.  Busy  and  willing  hands  have  transformed  the  dreary  old 
place.  The  stage  has  been  made  into  a  real  stage — properly  boxed  and 
curtained ;  the  posts  through  the  room  are  wreathed  with  colored  papers ; 
trophies  and  shields  fill  the  wall  spaces;  the  front  of  the  gallery  is  gaily 
decorated.  Everywhere  are  green  and  white,  the  colors  of  the  League,  sym¬ 
bolic  of  hope  and  truth.  Painted  on  the  curtain  is  a  large  shield  with  the 
monogram  of  the  League  and  its  motto,  suggested  by  one  of  the  prisoners, 
"Do  good — Make  good.” 

At  about  quarter  past  two  the  tramp  of  men  is  heard  and  up  the  stairs 
and  through  the  door  come  marching  nearly  fourteen  hundred  men  (for  all 
but  seventeen  of  the  prisoners  have  joined  the  League).  Each  man  stands 
proudly  erect  and  on  his  breast  appears  the  green  and  white  button  of  the 
League,  sign  and  symbol  of  a  new  order  of  things.  At  the  side  of  the  com¬ 
panies  march  the  assistant  sergeants-at-arms  and  the  members  of  the  board 
of  delegates  —  the  governing  body  of  the  League;  and  on  the  coat  of  each 
is  displayed  a  small  green  and  white  shield — his  badge  of  authority. 

No  such  perfect  discipline  has  ever  been  seen  before  in  Auburn  prison, 
and  yet  there  is  not  a  guard  or  keeper  present  except  the  new  P.  K.  or 
Deputy  Warden,  who  in  an  unofficial  capacity  stands  near  the  door,  watch¬ 
ing  to  see  how  this  miracle  is  being  worked.  In  the  usual  place  of  the  P.  K. 
stands  one  of  the  prisoners,  the  newly-elected  Sergeant-at-Arms,  whose 
keen  eye  and  forceful,  quiet  manner  stamp  him  as  a  real  leader  of  men. 

In  perfect  order  company  after  company  marches  in,  and  as  soon  as 
seated  the  men  join  in  the  general  buzz  of  conversation,  like  any  other  hu¬ 
man  beings  assembled  for  an  entertainment.  There  is  no  disorder,  nothing 
but  natural  life  and  animation. 

I  look  out  over  the  audience — and  my  mind  turns  back  to  the  day  be¬ 
fore  I  entered  prison,  when  I  spoke  to  the  men  from  this  stage.  What  is  it 
that  has  happened  ?  What  transformation  has  taken  place  ?  It  suddenly 
occurs  to  me  that  this  audience  is  no  longer  gray ;  why  did  I  ever  think 
it  so?  "Gray  and  faded  and  prematurely  old,”  I  had  written  of  that  rigid 
audience1 — each  man  sitting  dull  and  silent  under  the  eye  of  his  watchful 
keeper,  staring  straight  ahead,  not  daring  to  turn  his  head  or  to  whisper. 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


973 


Now  there  are  no  keepers,  and  each  man  is  sitting  easily  and  naturally, 
laughing  and  chatting  with  his  neighbor.  There  is  color  in  the  faces  and 
life  in  the  eyes.  I  had  never  noticed  before  the  large  number  of  fine-looking 
young  men.  I  can  hardly  believe  it  is  the  same  gray  audience  I  spoke  to 
less  than  five  short  months  ago.  What  does  it  all  mean  ? 

For  this  first  meeting,  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  League  has 
planned  a  violin  and  piano  recital.  For  two  hours  the  men  listen  atten¬ 
tively  and  with  many  manifestations  of  pleasure  to  good  music  by  various 
composers  ranging  from  Bach  and  Beethoven  to  Sullivan  and  Johann 
Strauss. 

Between  the  first  and  second  parts  of  the  programme,  we  have  an  en¬ 
couraging  report  from  the  Secretaty  of  the  League,  none  other  than  our 
friend  Richards,  whose  cynical  pessimism  of  last  July  has  been  replaced 
by  an  almost  flamboyant  optimism  as  he  toils  night  and  day  in  the  service 
of  the  League.  We  have  also  speeches  of  congratulation  and  good  cheer 
from  two  other  members  of  the  Commission  on  Prison  Reform,  who  have 
come  from  a  distance  to  greet  this  dawn  of  the  new  era. 

Then  after  the  applause  for  the  last  musical  number  has  died  away,  the 
long  line  of  march  begins  again.  In  perfect  order  and  without  a  whisper 
after  they  have  fallen  into  line,  the  fourteen  hundred  men  march  back  and 
shut  themselves  into  their  cells.  One  of  the  prison  keepers  who  stands  by, 
watching  this  wonderful  exhibition  of  discipline,  exclaims  in  profane  amaze¬ 
ment,  "Why  in  Hell  can’t  they  do  that  for  us?” 

Why,  indeed? 

The  men  have  been  back  in  their  cells  about  an  hour  when  an  unex¬ 
pected  test  is  made  of  their  loyalty  and  self-restraint.  As  I  am  about  to 
leave  the  prison  and  stand  chatting  with  Richards  at  his  desk  in  the  back 
office,  the  electric  lights  begin  to  flicker  and  die  down. 

Richards  and  I  have  just  been  talking  of  the  great  success  of  the  League’s 
first  meeting  and  the  good  conduct  of  the  men.  "Now  you  will  have  the 
other  side  of  it,”  says  Richards.  "Listen  and  you  will  hear  the  shouts  and 
disorder  that  always  come  when  the  lights  go  out.” 

Dimmer  and  dimmer  grow  the  lights,  while  Richards  and  I  listen  intently 
at  the  window  in  the  great  iron  door  which  opens  onto  the  gallery  of  the 
north  wing. 

Not  a  sound.  . 

The  lights  go  entirely  out,  and  still  not  a  sound.  Not  even  a  cough 
comes  from  the  cells  to  disturb  the  perfect  silence. 

We  remain  about  half  a  minute  in  the  dark,  listening  at  the  door.  Then 
the  lights  begin  to  show  color,  waver,  grow  lighter,  go  out  altogether  for  a 
second,  and  then  burn  with  a  steady  brightness. 

I  look  at  Richards.  He  is  paler  than  usual,  but  there  is  a  bright  gleam 
in  his  eyes.  "I  would  not  have  believed  it  possible,”  he  says  impressively  ; 


974 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


"such  a  thing  has  never  happened  in  this  prison  before.  The  men  always 
yell  when  the  lights  go  out.  In  all  my  experience  I  have  never  known  any¬ 
thing  equal  to  that.  I  don’t  understand  it. 

"If  any  one  had  told  me  the  League  could  do  such  a  thing,”  he  con¬ 
tinues,  "I  would  have  laughed  at  them.  Yet  there  it  is.  I  have  no  further 
doubts  now  about  our  success.” 

I  have  spoken  of  the  lights  dying  down  on  the  evening  of  Feb¬ 
ruary  1 2  th.  The  next  month  we  had  a  somewhat  similar  incident, 
but  under  much  more  exciting  conditions.  A  distinguished  English 
pianist  had  agreed  to  stop  over  on  his  way  to  New  York  from  Chicago 
and  fill  one  of  the  regular  Sunday  afternoon  chapel  meetings  with  a 
piano  recital.  As  luck  would  have  it  his  telegram  was  so  late  in  de¬ 
livery  that  there  was  no  time  to  get  a  suitable  piano.  He  arrived  and 
was  much  disappointed,  as  were  the  men.  He  suggested  to  me  that 
he  give  the  concert  the  next  evening.  I  gasped.  "In  the  evening! 
Why,  the  men  have  never  been  out  of  their  cells  at  night  since  the 
prison  was  built — one  hundred  years  ago.  But  I  will  put  it  up  to 
the  Warden.” 

I  did  so  ;  and  his  action  was  characteristic.  "It’s  never  been  done,” 
he  said;  "but  that’s  no  reason  why  it  shouldn’t  be.  I’ll  take  the 
chance,  if  you  will.”  As  the  official  responsibility  was  entirely  his,  I 
consented  at  once ;  and  arrangements  were  duly  made.  Many  of 
these  men  had  not  spent  an  evening  out  of  their  cells  for  years — five, 
ten,  fifteen,  some  of  them  for  twenty  years.  The  excitement  can  hardly 
be  imagined. 

The  evening  came.  The  procession  of  fourteen  hundred  men  started 
for  the  chapel.  Between  three  and  four  hundred  men  were  seated 
there;  the  long  line  stretched  out  through  the  chapel,  through  the 
halls,  down  the  stairs,  and  along  the  corridors.  The  galleries  were 
filled  with  marching  men.  Suddenly  something  happened  to  the 
dynamo  and  every  light  in  the  prison  went  out ! 

The  lines^  halted.  Some  few  men  started  whispering,  but  were 
promptly  hushed  by  the  delegates.  In  perfect  order  and  silence,  min¬ 
ute  after  minute,  they  waited  for  the  lights  to  return.  Up  in  the 
chapel,  meantime,  the  same  good  discipline  reigned.  The  Sergeant- 
at-Arms,  describing  his  experience  to  me  the  next  day,  said :  "At  first 
I  didn’t  know  what  to  do.  Then  I  told  Billy  O’D — [the  pianist]  to 
play  something.  Then  I  saw  the  light  of  a  lantern  coming  along  the 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


975 


hall  and  I  thought  it  was  Johnny,  the  P.  K.’s  runner;  and  I  yelled, 

'  Hurry  up  there  with  that  lantern.’  And  when  he  came  nearer,  who 
do  you  think  it  was?  —  the  Warden.  I  said:  'Excuse  me,  Warden,  I 
thought  it  was  one  of  the  boys.’  And  what  do  you  think  he  said  ? 
He  said,  'So  I  am,  or  I  wouldn’t  be  here.’  Think  of  the  Warden 
coming  into  this  place  in  the  dark  alone  with  us  fellows !  Gee,  that 
took  nerve !  ” 

After  nearly  fifteen  minutes  of  darkness  and  perfect  quiet  the  lights 
came  back  and  the  march  was  resumed.  When  my  friend,  the  pianist, # 
and  I  arrived  shortly  afterwards,  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  unusual, 
except  that  I  noticed  the  Warden  looked  a  little  pale,  and  tense  about 
the  corners  of  his  mouth. 

The  next  day  one  of  the  men  said  to  me:  "I  guess  that  was  done 
on  purpose,  just  to  try  us  out;  wasn’t  it?”  And  I,  adopting  the 
vernacular,  responded  briefly  but  forcibly:  "Not  on  your  life!” 

Soon  after  this  an  interesting  and  most  important  meeting  took 
place.  We  had  run  against  a  snag.  Cases  of  discipline  were  still, 
handled  as  usual  by  the  prison  officials, — the  P.K.  sending  men  to  the 
dark  cells  on  bread  and  water  for  all  sorts  of  minor  offences ;  then  the 
same  cases  were  being  brought  before  the  grievance  committees.  Thus 
the  offenders  were  getting  double  punishment ;  with  the  result  that 
guilty  prisoners  were  refusing  to  own  up,  witnesses  were  declining  to 
testify,  and  grievance  committees  were  objecting  to  serve. 

There  was  but  one  thing  to  do ;  to  show  to  the  prison  authorities 
that  there  were  only  two  possible  policies :  to  go  forward  or  to  go 
back ;  and  that  to  go  forward  meant  that  the  minor  cases  of  discipline 
must  be  left  to  the  League.  Only  in  that  way  could  full  responsibility 
be  placed  upon  the  men  and  the  real  benefits  of  the  new  system 
secured.  Warden  Rattigan  faced  the  situation  with  his  usual  good 
judgment,  and,  with  the  approval  of  the  Superintendent  of  Prisons, 
proposed  to  hand  over  all  infractions  of  discipline  to  the  League  ex¬ 
cept  in  five  instances :  ( i )  Assault  upon  an  officer  5(2)  Deadly  assault 
upon  another  inmate ;  (3)  Refusal  to  work ;  (4)  Strike;  (5)  Attempt 
to  escape. 

By  the  time  the  executive  committee  had  secured  this  proposition 
from  the  Warden  considerable  dissatisfaction  had  developed  about  the 
prison.  Gossip  had  greatly  exaggerated  the  number  of  double  punish¬ 
ments  inflicted  by  the  League  and  prison  officials,  and  there  had  been 


976 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


revived  the  old  jealousy  and  dislike  of  convict  officers.  One  of  the 
first  men  to  whom  Jack  and  I  had  suggested  the  League,  when  he 
heard  of  the  authority  it  was  proposed  to  grant  to  sergeants-at-arms, 
promptly  responded:  "Nothin’  doin’.  I  wouldn’t  be  bossed  by  no 
convict.  Ain’t  the  keeper  enough  ?  What ’s  he  paid  for  ?  No  Elmira 
stool-pigeons  for  mine !  ” 

There  was  added  a  third  source  of  dissatisfaction:  the  natural 
shrinking  from  responsibility  on  the  part  of  men  who  in  many  cases 
%  had  been  so  many  years  under  prison  discipline  that  they  had  almost 
lost  the  power  of  initiative.  The  responsibilities  of  self-government, 
to  some  of  these  men,  were  painful ;  as  painful,  doubtless,  in  its  way, 
as  the  sudden  effort  to  use  some  muscle  which  has  long  been  atrophied 
from  lack  of  exercise. 

A  mass-meeting  of  the  League  was  called  to  settle  the  momentous 
question.  The  day  before,  the  executive  committee  told  me  that  it 
was  desirable  I  should  preside ;  for  it  was  altogether  likely  that  a 
rather  lively  discussion  would  take  place.  We  have  come  now  to  re¬ 
gard  such  mass-meetings  as  so  much  a  matter  of  course  that  it  is 
hard  to  realize  how  anxious  we  all  felt  concerning  that  first  one.  But 
at  the  time  we  had  no  precedents ;  there  were  plenty  of  people  outside 
and  officers  inside  the  prison  who  were  genuinely  of  the  belief  that 
to  let  the  prisoners  meet  without  guards  was  very  much  like  un¬ 
muzzling  a  lot  of  mad  dogs.  So  I  laid  my  plans  for  the  meeting  very 
carefully  before  I  went  to  sleep  the  night  before. 

On  Sunday  afternoon  the  fourteen  hundred  men  came  together  in 
the  chapel  and  there  ensued  a  serious,  most  interesting,  and,  at  times, 
a  really  brilliant  debate  on  the  acceptance  of  self-government.  One 
speech,  in  particular,  was  made  by  a  clever  Irishman,  who  had  been  in 
his  day  a  well-known  labor  agitator,  and  who  from  the  first  had  taken 
a  great  interest  in  the  League ;  and  an  unselfish  interest,  for  his  own 
term  was  nearly  completed.  His  speech  was  a  brief  one,  lasting  only 
three  and  one-half  minutes, — he  asked  the  audience  to  stop  applauding 
as  he  wanted  his  full  allowance  of  time  for  speaking, — and  in  that 
short  period  he  poured  forth  a  stream  of  eloquence,  humor,  sarcasm, 
and  common-sense,  ending  with  an  impassioned  appeal  to  the  intelli¬ 
gence  and  righteousness  of  his  fellow-prisoners,  such  as  I  have  seldom 
heard  equalled.  He  swept  his  audience  along  with  him ;  and  when  the 
vote  was  taken  at  the  end  of  a  three-hour  debate,  only  about  twenty 


REFORMATORY  METHODS  977 

men  were  unconvinced.  Inside  the  prison  the  day  was  finely  and 
thoroughly  won  for  the  new  system. 

Every  Sunday  afternoon  the  League  met  in  the  chapel,  where  a  wide 
variety  of  entertainment  was  provided.  One  day  a  musicale,  another 
day  a  scientific  lecture,  then  a  moving  picture  show — (the  battle  of 
Waterloo),  followed  the  next  Sunday  by  a  lecture  on  Napoleon. 
Always  good  conduct  and  increasing  indications  of  better  health  and 
general  morals. 

As  Memorial  Day  approached  a  new  excitement  stirred  the  prison : 
permission  had  been  obtained  to  have  open-air  sports  in  the  yard.  For 
several  weeks  an  athletic  committee  had  been  busy  at  work — pre¬ 
paring  a  schedule  of  events,  obtaining  entries,  and  getting  the  various 
contestants  into  training.  When  the  list  was  shown  to  and  approved 
by  the  Warden,  a  certain  third-termer,  a  man  of  solemn  manner  and 
much  prison  experience,  said  drily:  " Warden,  some  of  the  boys  have 
suggested  an  additional  event,  to  be  added  at  the  end  there :  a  wall¬ 
climbing  contest.” 

Some  three  weeks  beforehand  the  Warden’s  chief  assistant,  the 
Superintendent  of  Industries,  took  me  off  one  side  and  said:  "Now, 
Mr.  Osborne,  of  course  I  approve  of  this  League.  It’s  worked  just 
fine  on  Sunday  afternoons ;  and  the  men  have  certainly  behaved 
splendidly  up  in  chapel.  But,  do  you  know,  I  don’t  just  like  this 
yard  business !  ” 

Stifling  any  doubt  I  might  myself  feel,  I  looked  him  calmly  in  the 
eye.  "What  do  you  think  they’ll  do  ?  ”  I  asked. 

"I  don’t  know,”  said  he;  "they  might  do  almost  anything.” 

"Yes,”  I  rejoined,  "they  might;  but  they  won’t.” 

Two  days  before  the  30th  we  seemed  to  be  the  victims  of  mis¬ 
fortune  ;  the  Warden  was  ordered  away  by  the  doctors  for  a  fort¬ 
night’s  rest — having  been  in  bad  health  for  many  weeks ;  and  an 
epidemic  of  scarlatina  developing,  the  prison  was  placed  under  quar¬ 
antine.  It  seemed  as  though  Fate  was  against  us ;  but  as  we  look 
back  now,  it  seems  almost  as  if  Fate  had  been  consciously  engaged 
in  our  behalf. 

As  the  quarantine  was  strict,  no  officer  was  allowed,  to  leave  the 
prison.  This  was  one  advantage ;  for  the  first  time  many  of  the 
guards  understood  to  some  extent  what  imprisonment  means.  The  ab¬ 
sence  of  the  Warden  was  another  advantage;  it  gave  self-reliance 


97» 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


to  the  officials  of  the  League, — who  were  thus  forced  to  trust  to  their 
own  judgments.  The  third  advantage  happened  afterwards. 

Memorial  Day  was  one  of  glorious  sunshine  and  summer  air.  After 
an  early  dinner,  everything  was  made  ready.  The  signal  was  given, 
the  door  of  every  cell  was  thrown  open,  the  music  of  the  band  broke 
forth,  and  out  from  the  iron  portals  into  the  freedom  of  God’s  fresh 
air  and  sunlight  marched  the  fourteen  hundred  prisoners — each  com¬ 
pany  in  charge  of  its  own  delegates  and  sergeants-at-arms.  Each  group 
stood  at  attention  until  the  last  man  was  in  the  yard ;  then  at  the 
trumpet  call  ranks  were  broken,  friends  rushed  across  the  yard  to 
greet  each  other,  and  brothers  who  for  long  years  had  never  been  able 
to  speak,  clasped  hands  and  walked  away  together,  their  feelings  too 
sacred  for  the  common  gaze.  It  was  a  sight  which  those  fortunate 
enough  to  witness  will  never  forget. 

Through  the  long,  bright  afternoon  there  was  good  sport  and  pleas¬ 
ant  fellowship.  In  the  intervals  between  the  various  athletic  events 
the  mandolins  and  guitars  of  the  Italians  made  music ;  the  crowds 
joined  in  the  singing;  the  broad  asphalt  walks  made  good  floors 
for  dancing. 

The  executive  committee  had  adopted  a  happy  suggestion  which 
had  occurred  to  me — to  pit  the  athletes  of  the  North  Wing  against 
those  of  the  South  Wing ;  Auburn  prison  rejoicing  in  two  cell-blocks. 
The  result  was  that  every  one  was  wildly  interested  in  the  sports; 
and  I  was  constantly  reminded  of  some  good-natured  intercollegiate 
rivalry.  It  was  difficult  to  think  of  these  men  as  the  cowed,  sullen, 
dangerous  creatures  of  six  months  before. 

When  the  last  race  had  been  run,  the  big  green  and  white  banner 
had  been  awarded  to  the  victors  of  the  South  Wing,  and  they  had 
paraded  their  trophy  proudly  around  the  yard,  it  was  time  to  end  the 
happy  afternoon.  At  the  trumpet  signal  every  man  found  his  place, 
the  companies  were  duly  counted  by  their  delegates ;  and  as  the  band 
played  the  final  number,  the  lines  of  gray  figures  marched  back 
through  the  doorways.  Then  the  bandsmen  picked  up  their  stools  and 
followed  after ;  the  yard  officer  and  his  trusties  swung-to  the  heavy 
iron  doors,  secured  with  bolts  and  huge  padlocks  on  the  outside ;  and 
the  yard  was  left  silent  and  empty  to  the  gathering  dusk.  As  we 
watchers  from  the  head  of  the  gray  stone  staircase  turned  and  struck 
upon  the  iron  door  for  admission  to  the  back  office,  the  whole  thing 


REFORMATORY  METHODS 


979 

seemed  already  like  a  dream — a  wonderful  dream  of  human  brother¬ 
hood ; — a  prophetic  vision  looking  toward  that 

one  far-off  divine  event, 

To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 

The  next  day  was  as  sunny  and  as  summery  as  our  glorious  holiday 
had  been.  The  Sergeant-at-Arms  accosted  me  in  his  most  insinuating 
manner.  "Say;  don't  you  think  the  boys  ought  to  be  allowed  out  in 
the  yard  for  an  hour  after  work  to-day?  You  see  it’ll  be  awful  good 
for  their  health ;  they  won’t  catch  that  scarlet  bug,  or  whatever  it  is.” 

"Yes,”  I  answered  gravely;  "it  seems  to  me  it  would  scare  the  mi¬ 
crobes;  in  fact  it’s  absolutely  essential,  as  a  health  precaution.  Let’s 
go  and  talk  to  Grant.” 

So  we  conversed  with  Mr.  Grant,  the  acting  Warden  ;  and  the  result 
was  another  fine  outing  in  the  yard.  The  next  day  a  similar  request 
was  preferred. 

"Look  here,”  said  Grant ;  "you  don’t  expect  to  get  this  hour  in  the 
yard  as  a  regular  thing,  do  you  ?  ” 

"Why  not?”  I  asked  in  answer.  "All  the  guards. are  here  and 
can’t  get  away.  Better  give  them  something  to  do.” 

Upon  reference  to  the  Doctor,  he  could  not  but  admit  that  there  was 
nothing  better  to  be  done  in  the  way  of  preventive  medicine.  The 
guards  on  night  duty  had  already  reported  a  remarkable  change  in 
the  cell-blocks ;  quiet,  restful  sleep  instead  of  the  long,  wakeful,  tor¬ 
turing  nights.  So  again  we  had  our  hour  of  recreation. 

Every  afternoon,  while  that  blessed  quarantine  lasted,  we  had  the 
privilege  of  the  yard  ;  and  such  a  physical  change  for  the  better  I  would 
not  have  believed  possible  in  human  beings.  It  was  evident  to  the 
most  casual  observer.  And  day  after  day  passed,  with  no  fights,  no 
disorder,  nothing  but  the  best  of  conduct. 

Then  came  the  day  when  that  blessed  quarantine  was  lifted ;  the 
joyous  officers  were  released  from  their  imprisonment ;  and  the  old 
schedule  was  put  back  in  force.  In  spite  of  the  continued  fine  weather, 
the  prisoners  marched  back,  at  four  o’clock,  to  their  damp  and  dis¬ 
mal  cells. 

But  it  was  evident  to  us  all  that  it  would  not  do ;  the  blessings  of 
liberty  had  been  too  patent.  Some  way  must  be  found  out  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  ;  for  no  revolution  moves  backwards.  Amid  some  grumbling  from 


980 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


a  few  of  the  stupider  guards,  a  new  time  schedule  was  worked  out  and 
the  hour  of  recreation  became  a  regular  and  established  part  of  the 
prison  routine. 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  single  episode  in  the  history  of  the 
Auburn  branch  of  the  League  has  been  the  Honor  Camp.  Twenty 
men  were  selected  by  the  authorities  of  the  League  to  form  this  road¬ 
building  camp; — most  of  them  with  long  terms,  most  of  them  men 
with  bad  official  records,  most  of  them  men  of  sterling  character  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  prisoners’  standards.  For  three  months  they  were  in 
camp,  working  hard  every  day  at  road  making,  gaining  health  and 
strength,  fighting  each  his  own  temptations  and  gaining  the  mastery 
of  them ;  winning  here  and  losing  there,  but  all  the  time  building  up 
manhood  and  capacity  to  fight  the  battles  of  the  world  outside. 

I  have  gone  thus  much  into  detail  in  telling  of  the  beginning  of 
the  Mutual  Welfare  League  because  I  esteem  it  of  the  greatest  im¬ 
portance  that  the  nature  and  plan  of  this  organization  should  be  fully 
understood;  not  only  by  its  by-laws  and  methods  of  procedure,  but 
the  spirit  underneath, — for  there  is  danger  of  the  form  being  copied 
without  an  understanding  of  the  far  more  important  underlying 
principles. 

For  over  two  years  now  the  Mutual  Welfare  League  has  been  in 
operation  in  Auburn  prison.  Mistakes  have  been  made  ;  — mistakes 
by  the  men  and  mistakes  by  the  prison  officials.  Where  is  there  a 
community  which  has  not  made  its  mistakes?  The  League  has  had 
its  ups  and  downs ;  some  of  the  prisoners  have  lost  faith — usually 
because  their  own  personal  purposes  have  not  been  served.  But  in 
spite  of  its  shortcomings,  there  has  never  been  a  day  since  it  started 
that  those  who  have  been  in  closest  touch  with  its  workings  have 
doubted  that  we  were  on  the  right  path — that  we  had  found  the  right 
solution  of  the  prison  problem. 


I 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 


PROBATION  AND  PAROLE 

130.  Aims,  Standards,  and  Methods  of  Probation 

and  Parole1 

The  words  Probation  and  Parole2  have  been  used  interchangeably  to 
so  great  an  extent  and  are  so  closely  associated  in  people’s  minds  that 
it  seems  best  to  make  clear  the  distinction  between  them  at  the  outset. 

To  the  person  on  probation  the  institution  is  but  a  threat ;  to  the 
paroled  person  the  institution  is  an  actuality,  a  vital  experience,  which 
necessarily  must  leave  an  indelible  imprint  on  his  mental  processes. 
His  outlook  upon  society  has  been  changed.  His  estimate  of  himself 
is  altered. 

The  person  on  probation  has  remained  an  intrinsic  part  of  the 
community.  He  goes  along  practically  in  the  same  sphere.  The  per¬ 
son  on  parole  has  been  forcibly  segregated  from  the  social  unit.  He 
cannot  get  back  to  the  same  sphere. 

The  person  on  probation  has  been  treated  chiefly  by  moral  suasion. 
The  paroled  person  has  had  driven  home  to  him  society’s  determina¬ 
tion  to  change  him  forcibly. 

Minimum  Standards  of  Probation 

Probation  as  a  recognized  essential  of  a  fully  equipped  criminal 
court’s  outfit  is  a  development  of  the  present  century.  In  no  more 
than  three  states  had  it  been  given  legal  standing  of  any  sort  prior  to 

1By  Edith  N.  Burleigh,  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Probation  and  Parole 
of  the  American  Prison  Association.  From  Journal  of  the  American  Institute  of 
Criminal  Law  and  Criminology ,  Vol.  XII,  No.  3,  pp.  320-329. 

2  Probation  is  conditional  release  of  delinquents  by  a  court  without  commit¬ 
ment  to  an  institution,  but  under  the  oversight  of  a  probation  officer. 

Parole  is  conditional  release  from  a  penal  institution  under  the  oversight  of  a 
parole  officer. 

The  above  definitions  are  paraphrased  from  Bernard  Flexner  and  Roger  N. 
Baldwin,  Juvenile  Courts  and  Probation.  New  York,  1914. —  Ed. 

981 


982 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


1900;  in  only  one  was  it  in  general  operation.  Reading  the  enact¬ 
ments  of  state  legislatures  since  the  century  opened  yields  evidence 
that  it  has  won  a  measure  of  recognition  in  nearly  all  the  states. 
Examine  the  other  side  of  the  account.  Strike  a  1920  balance.  Then 
it  appears  that  as  yet  in  only  one  state  is  it  in  complete  use.  In  all  the 
others  it  is  qualified  in  these  ways : 

First,  as  to  territory.  Special  laws  have  given  it  to  specified  cities, 
or  to  counties  of  over  a  certain  population.  Or  general  laws  have 
made  it  optional,  subject  to  acceptance  by  the  municipality  or  the 
county  or  the  court.  In  actual  effect  it  has  not  reached  all  the  courts, 
even  in  those  states  where  it  has  been  placed  within  their  reach. 

Second,  as  to  the  age  of  offenders.  In  the  majority  of  the  states 
it  is  available  only  for  juveniles.  Adult  probation  has  yet  to  win  what 
could  be  called  general  acceptance,  either  as  a  legally  approved  theory 
or  as  a  device  in  actual  operation. 

Third,  as  to  the  seriousness  of  the  offense.  The  fiction  that  the  first 
offense  has  a  fixed  value  as  a  measure  of  fitness  for  probationary  treat¬ 
ment  lingers  in  the  laws  of  numerous  states.  Likewise,  there  is  limita¬ 
tion  to  those  offenders  who  have  no  prison  record,  a  singular  confession 
that  even  one  prison  term,  however  short,  incapacitates  a  person  for 
out-patient  treatment,  classing  him  as  an  incurable.  And  again,  the 
possible  application  of  probation  is  limited  to  those  who  have  com¬ 
mitted  minor  offenses — misdemeanants.  This  in  face  of  the  demon¬ 
strated  fact  that  the  highest  percentage  of  clear  rescues  is  reaped 
among  those  who  have  offended  in  the  more  serious  ways. 

To  arrive  at  an  understanding  of  the  limitations  of  probation  in 
practice,  add  the  numbers  represented  in  the  following  groups  of 
offenders  who  are  excluded  from  the  possibilities  of  its  benefits :  Those 
who  happen  to  offend  in  locations  where  the  courts  have  not  been 
granted  or  have  not  accepted  the  probation  authority ;  those  who 
happen  to  be  over  sixteen,  or,  it  may  be,  fifteen  years  of  age  and  have 
committed  their  offense  in  regions  where  adults  are  not  reckoned  as 
salvable ;  those  who  have  offended  for  the  second  time  and  whose 
punishment  is  not  to  be  withheld  because  of  the  refusal  of  the  statute 
to  allow  a  second  test  of  comparative  liberty ;  those  whose  offense 
exceeds  a  misdemeanor  and  chances  to  be  committed  within  those 
wide  areas  where  it  is  still  the  offense  and  not  the  offender  that  the 
court  is  required  to  consider. 


PROBATION  AND  PAROLE 


983 

% 

The  computation  reveals  that  it  is  a  meager  minority  of  the  persons 
brought  to  the  criminal  bar  in  the  courts  of  the  states  who  may  be 
given  experimental  treatment  to  correct  their  behavior  outside  the 
fixed  penalties  of  the  code.  It  remains  to  add  to  this  total  of  the 
excluded  the  entire  body  of  offenders  against  the  people  of  the  United 
States  as  a  nation,  the  federal  courts  not  being  clothed  with  the 
power  to  grant  probation  or  to  suspend  the  execution  of  the  pre¬ 
scribed  sentence. 

It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  power  to  place  on  probation  or 
suspend  the  execution  of  a  sentence  is  not  inherent  in  the  court,  but 
must  be  conferred  by  legislation.  State  supreme  courts  have  so  de¬ 
termined  and  finally  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  has  settled  that 
point  by  its  decision  in  the  Killits  case. 

Yet  probation  is  a  demonstrated  success  always  and  wherever  it  has 
been  given  a  fair  test.  No  state  and  no  court  once  employing  it  aban¬ 
dons  its  use ;  and  those  states  and  those  courts  which  adopt  it  and 
rationally  use  it,  expand  and  extend  it,  consistently  with  their  own 
discovery  of  its  utility  and  effectiveness.  Witness  the  region  where  it 
has  so  far  passed  beyond  experiment  that  a  settled  practice  places  2  5 
per  cent  of  all  convicted  offenders  oh  probation  against  8  per  cent 
committed  to  institutions,  penal  or  reformatory,  and  those  states  where 
the  prison  population  at  a  given  time  is  exceeded  by  the  probation 
population  in  the  ratio  of  five  to  one.  In  the  city  of  Boston,  which 
may  be  cited  because  it  has  the  longest  experience,  the  persons  locked 
up  number  about  three  hundred  and  the  convicts  at  large  under  pro¬ 
bationary  control  number  sixty-five  hundred — one  in  jail,  twenty  in 
normal  setting. 

In  view  of  a  clearly  demonstrated  value  in  the  use  of  this  in¬ 
strumentality  and  of  the  restrictions  upon  its  application,  convicted 
offenders  overwhelmingly  proving  themselves  responsive  to  the  out¬ 
patient  treatment,  and  only  a  fraction  of  them  in  the  nation  being 
permitted  to  make  this  demonstration,  it  is  easy  to  set  up  the  minimum 
in  the  movement  for  an  enlightened  criminal  procedure.  It  is : 

Every  court  shall  be  clothed  with  the  power  to  place  offenders  on 
probation.  This  is  the  irreducible  first  step.  And  it  is  so  far  beyond 
what  has  yet  been  attained  that  the  discussion  of  features,  as  to  form 
of  organization,  the  specifications  for  the  superstructure,  may  well 
await,  as  to  the  most  of  our  country,  the  placing  of  this  foundation. 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


984 

f 

Turning  to  the  regions  and  the  courts  where  legal  standing  has  been 
gained  for  probation,  the  question  of  minimum  requirements  becomes 
one  as  to  mechanism.  These  are  to  be  specified  conformably,  first,  to 
common  sense  applied  to  the  administration  of  any  system  of  dealing 
with  erring  humanity,  and,  secondly,  to  the  experience  gained  where 
the  practice  has  become  settled.  They  may  be  briefly  stated  as  follows : 

A  full  knowledge  by  the  court  of  the  past  of  the  offender.  Must  it 
be  said  that  this  is  not  solely  nor  chiefly  a  revelation  of  his  misdeeds  ? 
We  are  not  looking  for  a  limitation ;  we  are  looking  for  light.  Guid¬ 
ance  is  wanted  for  a  disposition  of  the  case  that  will  consist  with  a 
purpose  to  help  the  offender  back  to  correctness  of  behavior,  and 
thereby  serve  the  only  justifiable  intent  of  criminal  law,  the  protec¬ 
tion  of  the  state. 

A  full  knowledge  of  the  present  conditions  of  the  offender.  This 
knowledge  is  essential  to  an  understanding  of  his  conduct  and  to  any 
wise  provision  as  to  his  future.  Incidentally  it  has  value  as  account¬ 
ing  for  the  particular  offense  under  consideration.  Here  we  are  not 
seeking  grounds  for  mitigation ;  we  are  looking  ahead  to  a  process 
of  rehabilitation.  This  inquiry,  of  course,  includes  a  determination 
of  his  physical  and  mental  status.  It  has  a  remedial  purpose.  We  are 
engaged  in  the  task  of  setting  a  person  right.  The  remedy  may  be 
physical  treatment,  as  in  the  newest  field  of  application,  the  existence 
of  venereal  disease.  It  may  be  mental  treatment,  even  to  the  extent 
of  commitment  to  institutions  for  the  mentally  defective  or  disordered. 
The  possession  of  this  knowledge  with  professional  accuracy  is  an  un- 
debatable  requisite. 

Provision  having  been  secured  for  full  information  in  the  court  of 
the  problem  the  case  presents,  we  turn  to  the  requirements  for  such 
supervision  of  the  person  placed  on  probation  as  the  public  interest 
demands.  These  may  be  briefly  stated,  even  though  each  of  the  fea¬ 
tures  to  be  mentioned  could  be  discussed  at  length : 

The  paid  probation  officer.  It  may  be  taken  as  settled  that  this 
service  carries  with  it  such  responsibility  and  involves  such  close  at¬ 
tention  that  reliance  upon  voluntary  service  fails  to  meet  the  need. 

Direct  responsibility  of  the  officer  to  the  court.  The  probation 
officer  is  the  extension  of  the  court  into  the  community,  and  there 
can  be  nothing  short  of  unqualified  control  of  his  acts  at  the  source 
of  his  authority. 


PROBATION  AND  PAROLE 


985 

Eventual  termination  0)  the  probation  period.  The  length  of  time 
required  for  dealing  with  the  offender  is  not  discoverable  at  the  mo¬ 
ment  of  beginning  what  is  really  an  individual  experiment.  Elasticity 
in  point  of  time  is  one  of  the  prime  advantages  of  probationary  treat¬ 
ment  as  compared  with  a  fixed  term  of  incarceration.  But  at  the 
moment  of  ascertained  trustworthiness  there  must  be  a  lifting  of 
supervision  and  not  a  fading  away  of  the  court’s  authority  over  the 
person.  This  only  is  consistent  with  the  right,  clearly  settled  in  the 
law,  of  every  man  to  have  the  case  against  him  finally  disposed  of. 

As  to  the  offender,  the  minimum  is  such  conduct  as  conforms  to 
reasonable  requirements  of  correctness  and  propriety,  and  holds  out 
distinct  promise  of  future  rectitude.  This  involves,  of  course,  the 
power  in  the  officer  to  surrender  his  charge,  and  the  considerate  but 
firm  exercise  of  that  power. 

As  to  the  officer,  there  are  obvious  character  requirements — in¬ 
telligence,  an  understanding  of  the  problems  he  is  to  face — conceiv¬ 
ably  requiring  previous  study  and  training — a  capacity  for  sympathy 
combined  with  firmness  and  diligence  in  order  that  there  may  be  un¬ 
failing  thoroughness  in  the  exacting  business  of  dealing  with  the  per¬ 
son  under  his  care  and  within  his  custody. 

As  to  methods,  the  least  requirements  are  ( 1 )  That  they  shall  be 
friendly.  The  nearest  approach  to  failure  in  probation  work  comes 
with  the  conception  of  it  as  a  modified  form  of  imprisonment.  The 
probation  officer  is  not  a  policeman,  he  is  not  a  sleuth ;  he  is  an  up- 
builder.  (2)  That  there  shall  be  every  safeguard  thrown  around  the 
probationer  against  influences  that  tend  to  upset,  as  well  as  against  ex¬ 
ploitation  and  against  effort,  which  may  always  be  suspected,  to  treat 
him  meanly  and  as  different  from  human  beings  who  happen  not  to 
have  been  called  to  account  for  wrongdoing.  (3)  Profitable  and  re¬ 
spectable  employment.  The  experienced  probation  officer  is  a  little 
better  informed  than  anybody  else  of  the  truth  of  the  saying  that  idle¬ 
ness  is  the  devil’s  workshop.  (4)  Not  the  greatest,  but  a  modulated 
and  discriminating  oversight,  the  end  being  to  develop  progressively 
the  self-respect  and  the  self-reliance  of  the  probationer.  (5)  The  en¬ 
listment  of  every  available  agency  for  the  upbuilding  of  the  man,  the 
task  which  one  of  our  philosophers  has  described  as  "the  greatest  en¬ 
terprise  in  the  world  for  splendor  and  for  extent.” 


986 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Minimum  Standards  of  Parole 

Parole  is  now  an  acknowledged  part  of  the  correctional  system. 
This  trial  of  the  offender  in  the  community,  under  the  control  and 
guidance  of  the  law,  has  proved  to  be  a  vital  part  of  reformative  treat¬ 
ment.  Fifty  years  ago,  when  the  Declaration  of  Principles  was  drawn 
up  by  this  Association,  parole  was  forecast  in  the  statement,  "The 
State  has  not  discharged  its  whole  duty  to  the  criminal  when  it  has 
punished  him,  nor  even  when  it  has  reformed  him.  Having  raised 
him  up,  it  has  the  further  duty  to  aid  in  holding  him  up.”  The  laws 
governing  parole  in  different  states  differ  widely.  This  report  is  to 
discuss  standards  of  parole — general  principles  whose  application 
must  be  governed  by  the  laws  of  the  different  states,  but  which  can 
be  accepted  as  generally  applicable. 

First  of  all,  the  institution  should  fit  the  inmate  for  parole.  Parole 
must  be  considered  not  merely  an  adjunct  to  but  the  aim  of  the  insti¬ 
tution,  since  restoration  of  the  inmate  to  the  community  as  an  integral 
part  of  it  is  the  purpose  of  all  reformatory  treatment.  What,  then, 
have  we  a  right  to  expect  of  the  institution  in  this  preparation  for 
parole? 

1.  The  groundwork  of  all  treatment  must  he  a  thorough  under¬ 
standing  of  the  individual,  based  on  a  knowledge  of  his  past  environ¬ 
ment,  and  his  family  and  personal  history,  including  the  circumstances 
under  which  his  offense  was  committed.  If  his  needs  are  to  be  met, 
there  must  be  a  sympathetic  understanding  of  their  sources.  By  whom 
this  investigation  is  to  be  made  depends  upon  the  system  by  which 
the  inmate  gets  to  the  institution ;  if  he  has  been  on  probation,  upon 
the  thoroughness  with  which  the  probation  officer  has  been  able  to  go 
into  the  case,  for  instance.  Usually  any  investigation  previously  made 
will  need  supplementing  by  the  institution  to  gather  all  material  for 
the  thorough  study  of  the  personality  made  possible  by  months  of 
institutional  life. 

2.  Physical  examination — to  ascertain  if  there  are  possible  physical 
causes  of  delinquency. 

3.  Treatment  of  disease.  If  a  person  is  deprived  of  his  liberty  be¬ 
cause  he  runs  counter  to  the  law,  he  has  a  right  to  expect  that  any 
physical  handicaps  he  is  under,  which  may  be  contributing  causes  of 
his  delinquency,  shall  be  removed  before  he  is  returned  to  the  com- 


PROBATION  AND  PAROLE  987 

munity  to  take  up  the  responsibilities  of  straight  living.  The  com¬ 
munity  also  demands  protection. 

4.  Treatment  and  cure  0)  venereal  disease.  No  one  could  dis¬ 
pute  the  need  of  diagnosis  and  treatment  of  venereal  disease  during 
the  enforced  segregation  of  the  inmate  in  an  institution.  Progressive 
legislation  in  some  states  goes  further  and  says  that  the  inmate  who 
is  still  suffering  from  venereal  disease  shall  not  be  returned  to  the 
community  until  all  danger  of  infection  is  over,  even  if  the  term  of 
his  sentence  is  past.  This  is  a  public  health  measure. 

5.  Mental  examination.  ( 1 )  To  determine  the  mental  accountability 
of  the  individual,  and  (2)  to  determine  his  abilities  and  disabilities, 
for  the  purpose  of  vocational  guidance  or  its  equivalent.  This  mental 
examination  should  not  be  solely  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  men¬ 
tal  defect  or  disease,  but  in  connection  with  the  physical  examination 
and  the  social  history  should  be  made  a  study  of  the  personality 
— the  key  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  reinstatement  in  society. 
It  should  help  to  an  understanding  of  handicaps  and  possible  develop¬ 
ment  and  should  make  clear  the  inmate’s  mental  attitude  and  purpose. 
In  his  able  report  to  this  committee  in  1914,  Mr.  Vasaly  called  atten¬ 
tion  to  this  need  of  "studying  the  prisoner’s  attitude  and  purpose” 
as  a  basis  of  training.  We  are  beginning  to  realize  that  diagnosis  of 
mental  defect  is  not  the  entire  answer  to  the  problem,  since  the  per¬ 
sonality  of  one  feeble-minded  individual  may  make  him  very  difficult 
to  handle,  while  another  equally  feeble-minded  individual,  whose 
tendencies  and  characteristics  are  different,  may  not  be  a  problem 
at  all.  Testing  should  probably  be  done  soon  after  commitment,  so 
that  there  may  be  time  for  checking  up  results  by  observation  of 
inmate’s  development. 

6.  Educational  training.  To  teach  foreigners  English,  to  eliminate 
illiteracy,  and  to  prepare  for  citizenship.  This  opportunity  for  effec¬ 
tive  work  in  the  educational  field  in  guiding  misdirected  mental  powers 
into  the  right  direction  should  be  a  challenge  to  educators,  so  impor¬ 
tant  is  its  effect  upon  the  future  of  the  individual  inmate. 

7.  Industrial  training.  This  is  a  most  important  equipment  for 
life  outside  the  institution.  In  most  institutions  a  selection  of  trades 
or  occupations  to  suit  the  capacity  and  interest  of  the  inmate  is  pos¬ 
sible.  This  selection  does  away  with  the  irritation  caused  by  misfits, 
and  helps  the  officers  of  the  institution  to  that  visualizing  of  the  man 


988 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


outside  the  institution,  essential  to  his  return  to  society.  The  attitude 
of  society  towards  him  must  be  interwoven  in  the  officers’  imagination. 

8.  Religious  training.  There  is  no  more  effective  way  to  open 
the  individual’s  mind  to  the  possibilities  of  a  new  life  than  through 
religious  influences.  Training  in  his  own  faith  should  be  available  in 
every  institution. 

9.  Instruction  in  meaning  of  parole.  It  should  be  made  clear  to 
every  inmate  before  he  leaves  the  institution  that  a  person  on  parole 
is  still  under  authority,  on  trial  in  the  community,  before  being  com¬ 
pletely  restored  to  it ;  that  there  are  necessarily  restrictions  upon  his 
freedom.  Parole  is  a  test  of  his  purpose.  Does  he  intend  to  use  his 
ultimate  freedom  rightly — to  be  a  good  citizen?  It  must  be  further 
made  clear  to  him  that  he  is  assuming  obligations  to  live  up  to  certain 
requirements  and  standards. 

10.  Teaching  of  principles  of  mental  health.  The  successful  out¬ 
come  of  parole  depends  upon  the  possibility  of  changing  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  offender  towards  society ;  of  inculcating  self-respect ; 
of  changing  the  current  of  his  emotions  (the  action  of  most  of  us  is 
governed  by  emotion)  ;  by  making  a  man  feel  rightly  as  well  as  act 
rightly ;  by  raising  the  level  of  his  motives.  Mental  attitudes  are 
most  important  to  mental  health  and  are  determined  largely  by  en¬ 
vironment.  Certain  types  of  training  such  as  "the  development  of 
wholesome  interests  and  regular  habits  of  attention  and  orderly  as¬ 
sociation”  are  specially  adapted  to  institution  life.  To  develop  the 
capacity  and  the  will  for  service  is  to  supplant  the  selfish  anti-social 
attitude  of  the  offender  by  the  motive  best  calculated  to  make  him 
a  good  citizen. 

All  this  by  way  of  preparation  for  parole.  What  have  we  a  right 
to  expect  of  parole  ? 

1.  A  continuation  of  training  outside  the  institution — a  friendly 
oversight  and  guidance.  , 

2.  The  providing  of  suitable  work — work  which  the  individual 
can  do  and  likes  to  do. 

3.  Continued  supervision  of  health  conditions — to  maintain  the 
highest  standard  of  efficiency  and  to  protect  the  community  from  any 
danger  of  infection. 

4.  Continued  educational  opportunities — to  encourage  self- 
improvement  and  to  stimulate  ambition. 


PROBATION  AND  PAROLE 


989 


5.  Continued  industrial  opportunities — to  make  the  individual 
more  and  more  self-dependent,  and  therefore  to  bring  about  more 
complete  adjustment  in  the  community. 

6.  Suitable  recreational  outlets — one  of  the  most  important  func¬ 
tions  of  parole,  since  disposal  of  leisure  time  is  the  real  test  of  desir¬ 
ability  as  a  citizen. 

7.  Continued  religious  privileges — which  should  include  social 
contacts. 

8.  Protection  of  the  paroled  person  from  exploitation — a  man 
must  have  a  fair  chance  if  he  is  to  "make  good.” 

9.  Teaching  of  the  application  of  the  principles  of  mental  hygiene 
— the  formation  and  maintenance  of  good  habits,  and  the  understand¬ 
ing  and  acceptance  of  his  position  are  important  parts  of  this  instruc¬ 
tion.  But  most  of  all  is  necessary  the  continuance  of  the  spirit  of  good 
will  which  he  should  have  begun  to  acquire  while  in  the  institution. 

10.  Protection  of  the  community  by  the  return  to  the  institution 
of  the  individual,  who  threatens  its  welfare  either  through  danger  of 
infection  or  of  bad  behavior. 

There  are  several  other  matters  pertinent  to  this  discussion  which 
should  be  considered. 

First,  as  to  the  responsibility  of  the  paroling  authority.  There  is  a 
growing  acceptance  of  the  view  that  the  paroling  power  should  be 
outside  the  institution,  centralized  in  a  parole  board,  for  instance, 
since  it  is  a  judicial  rather  than  an  administrative  function.  There 
seems  also  to  be  a  growing  opinion  that  consideration  for  parole  should 
not  depend  upon  anybody’s  initiative,  but  should  be  automatic.  At 
some  definite  time  an  inmate’s  name  should  come  up  for  consideration. 

One  of  the  most  important  questions  to  decide  is,  What  should  be 
the  basis  for  parole?  All  the  facts  of  the  person’s  life  in  the  com¬ 
munity,  his  success  in  the  institution,  his  behavior — good  as  well  as 
bad — his  mental  and  physical  condition,  the  conditions  in  the  commu¬ 
nity  to  which  he  is  to  return,  and  especially  his  mental  attitude  towards 
his  parole  and  his  future  must  all  be  considered. 

What  should  be  the  basis  for  return  to  the  institution  ?  is  another 
equally  important  question.  Cortimission  of  an  offense  should  not  be 
a  final  reason  for  return,  nor  should  it  be  necessary  to  await  commis¬ 
sion  of  offense  before  return.  The  commission  of  an  offense,  or  even 
arrest  and  conviction  for  an  offense  committed  on  parole,  should  have 


990 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


no  other  weight  in  deciding  the  question  of  return  than  as  evidence  of 
behavior.  The  paroled  person  should  be  returned  to  the  institution 
if  he  has  a  tendency  to  go  wrong,  or  after  warnings  persists  with  bad 
companions,  or  if  he  disregards  conditions  of  parole.  He  should  also 
be  returned  if  the  condition  of  his  health  demands  further  treatment 
which  cannot  safely  be  given  outside  the  institution.  There  is  but 
one  other  point  which  should  be  referred  to ;  that  is,  the  training  of 
parole  officers.  In  Article  VII  of  the  Declaration  of  Principles  there 
is  a  plea  for  "special  training,  as  well  as  high  qualities  of  head  and 
heart  ...  to  make  a  good  prison  or  reformatory  officer.”  This  is 
equally  true  of  the  parole  officer.  The  article  goes  on  to  say,  "Then 
only  will  the  administration  of  public  punishment  become  scientific, 
uniform,  and  successful,  when  it  is  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  profession 
and  men  are  specially  trained  for  it  as  they  are  for  other  pursuits.” 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 
131.  The  Evolution  of  the  Juvenile  Court1 
English  Precedents  and  American  Beginnings 

The  history  of  the  juvenile  court  covers  less  than  a  quarter-century, 
but  its  roots  extend  far  back  into  English  jurisprudence.  That  ancient 
institution,  the  English  High  Court  of  Chancery,  keeper  of  the  King’s 
conscience,  in  applying  the  principles  of  equity  to  cases  in  which  the 
rigid  rules  of  law  alone  would  not  bring  justice,  was  called  upon  to 
exercise  the  prerogative  of  the  Crown  as  parens  patriae  in  behalf  of 
children  whose  property  or  welfare  was  in  jeopardy.  The  English 
precedents  for  the  exercise  of  the  power  of  the  state  as  ultimate  par¬ 
ent  of  those  who  are  unable  to  care  for  themselves  and  have  no  other 
lawful  protectors  have  been  stated  by  a  number  of  writers  on  the 
juvenile  court.2  In  the  United  States  the  power  of  the  state  as  parens 
patriae — exercised  through  its  representative,  a  court  of  chancery 
jurisdiction — to  assume  control  and  jurisdiction  over  the  persons  and 

1  By  Katharine  F.  Lenroot,  Assistant  to  the  Chief,  Children’s  Bureau,  United 
States  Department  of  Labor.  From  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political 
and  Social  Science,  Vol.  CV,  No.  194  (January,  1923),  ’'Public  Welfare  in  the 
United  States,”  pp.  213-222. 

2  See,  for  example,  Julian  W.  Mack  (formerly  judge  of  the  juvenile  court  of 
Cook  County,  Ill.),  "Legal  Problems  Involved  in  the  Establishment  of  the 
Juvenile  Court,”  appendix  to  The  Delinquent  Child  and  the  Home ,  by  Breckin¬ 
ridge  and  Abbott.  Charities  Publication  Committee,  New  York,  1912. 

Bernard  Flexner,  "The  Juvenile  Court  —  Its  Legal  Aspect,”  in  the  Annals  of 
the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science ,  Vol.  XXXVI,  No.  1  (July, 
1910),  pp.  49-56. 

Supplement  to  Annual  Report  of  the  Attorney  General  of  the  United  States 
for  the  Year  1914,  pp.  17-45.  Washington,  1915. 

Edward  F.  Waite,  District  Judge  of  the  Fourth  Judicial  District  of  Minnesota, 
The  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Minnesota  Juvenile  Court,  pp.  12-17.  State 
Board  of  Control,  1920. 

Bernard  Flexner  and  Reuben  Oppenheimer,  "The  Legal  Aspect  of  the  Juvenile 
Court,”  United  States  Children’s  Bureau  Publication  No.  99.  Washington,  1922. 

99 1 


992 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


property  of  minors  was  affirmed  in  a  number  of  cases  which  arose 
during  the  nineteenth  century.  Among  these  were  a  Pennsylvania 
case,  decided  in  1838,1  and  an  Illinois  case,  decided  in  1882. 2 

The  first  step  in  modification  of  court  procedure  in  children’s  cases 
— aside  from  the  doctrine  that  children  of  tender  years  were  not  to  be 
held  " criminally  responsible”  for  their  actions — was  taken  in  Mas¬ 
sachusetts  in  1863,  when  separate  sessions  of  the  court  were  required 
by  law  for  the  trial  of  juveniles.  This  precedent  was  followed  in  a 
few  other  jurisdictions.  Massachusetts  also  led  in  the  establishment 
of  a  probation  system.  Probation  has  been  described  as  "an  evolution 
of  the  common-law  method  of  conditionally  suspending  a  sentence.”3 
Its  development  in  Massachusetts  through  "judicial  experiment,”  be¬ 
fore  statutory  provision  had  been  made,  has  been  traced  back  to  1830, 
and  in  1878  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  passed  the  first  probation 
law  in  any  country.4  Probation  laws  were  also  enacted  in  a  few  other 
states  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Under  these  laws 
providing  for  special  sessions  in  children’s  cases  and  for  probation, 
some  of  the  principal  features  of  the  juvenile  court  were  developed. 

The  First  Juvenile  Court  Laws 

Twenty-three  years  ago5  Illinois  enacted  the  first  law  bringing  un¬ 
der  one  jurisdiction — that  of  a  court  especially  organized  for  chil¬ 
dren’s  work — cases  involving  delinquent,  neglected,  and  dependent 
children.0  This  law  provided  for  practically  all  the  essential  features 
of  the  juvenile  court  as  it  exists  today.  The  jurisdiction  conferred  in 
children’s  cases  was  chancery  and  not  criminal,  the  state  thus  ac¬ 
knowledging  its  obligation  to  save  (not  to  punish)  delinquent  as  well 

xEx  parte  Crouse,  4  Wharton  (Pa.),  9. 

2McClean  Co.  v.  Humphreys ,  104  Ill.  378. 

3 Bernard  Flexner  and  Reuben  Oppenheimer,  "The  Legal  Aspect  of  the  Juvenile 
Court,”  United  States  Children's  Bureau  Publication  No.  99,  p.  8.  Washington, 

IQ22. 

4F.  W.  Grinnell,  "Probation  as  an  Orthodox  Common  Law  Practice  in  Mas¬ 
sachusetts  prior  to  the  Statutory  System,”  in  Massachusetts  Law  Quarterly , 
Vol.  II  (August,  1917),  No.  6. 

5  April  21,  1899.  Laws  of  Ill.  1899,  P-  131. 

6  Children’s  courts  were  established  in  South  Australia  by  ministerial  order 
as  early  as  1890,  and  were  legalized  under  a  state  act  in  1895.  Bernard  Flexner 
and  Roger  N.  Baldwin,  Juvenile  Courts  and  Probation,  p.  4,  New  York,  1914. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


993 


as  dependent  children.  Separate  hearings,  detention  apart  from  adults 
and  probation  were  all  provided — though  the  probation  service,  with 
the  exception  of  that  of  police  officers  assigned  to  the  court,  was  dot 
at  first  .paid  from  public  funds. 

A  few  days  prior  to  the  passage  of  the  Illinois  law,  the  Colorado 
Legislature  passed  a  "school  law”  under  the  authority  of  which  juve¬ 
nile  court  organization  in  Denver  was  established  in  1901  C  a  special 
juvenile  court  act  was  passed  in  1903.  That  year  also  witnessed  the 
passage  of  juvenile  court  legislation  in  several  other  states. 

The  First  Ten  Years  oj  the  Juvenile  Court 

Extension  oj  the  movement.  The  principles  expressed  in  the  first 
juvenile  court  laws  had  been  written  into  the  laws  of  a  number  of 
states  within  a  very  few  years.  In  April,  1904 — just  five  years  after 
the  passage  of  the  Illinois  law — a  report  on  "Children’s  Courts  in 
the  United  States,  The  Origin,  Development,  and  Results,”  to  which 
Judge  Lindsey  was  one  of  the  principal  contributors,  was  prepared  for 
the  International  Prison  Commission  and  published  by  the  United 
States  as  a  Government  document.  In  his  introduction,  Mr.  Samuel  J. 
Barrows,  Commissioner  for  the  United  States,  said : 

If  the  question  be  asked:  "What  is  the  most  notable  development  in 
judicial  principles  and  methods  in  the  United  States  within  the  last  five 
years?”  the  answer  may  unhesitatingly  be:  "The  introduction  and  estab¬ 
lishment  of  juvenile  courts.”  Never  perhaps  has  any  judicial  reform  made 
such  rapid  progress.  Beginning  in  Chicago  in  1899,  this  institution  has 
sprung  up  in  city  after  city  and  state  after  state  until  it  is  now  established 
in  eight  states  and  eleven  large  cities. 

This  progress  has  been  made  not  merely  by  changes  in  procedure  or  legal 
technique,  nor  by  the  introduction  of  a  new  method ;  it  is  most  of  all  by 
the  introduction  of  a  new  spirit  and  a  new  aim. 

By  1910,  legislation  authorizing  probation  in  children’s  cases  was 
in  force  in  thirty-eight  states  and  the  District  of  Columbia.2  How¬ 
ever,  in  this  first  period  juvenile  court  organization  was  developed 
mainly  in  the  larger  cities.  The  difficulties  involved  in  extending  the 

1  Session  Laws,  1899,  C.  136,  p.  342.  Approved  April  12,  1899. 

2  Homer  Folks  and  Arthur  W.  Towne,  "Probation  in  the  Juvenile  Court,”  in 
Proceedings  of  the  Academy  of  Political  Science  in  the  City  of  New  York, 
Vol.  I,  No.  4  (July,  1911),  P-  685. 


994 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


benefits  of  the  new  legislation  to  small  towns  and  rural  communities 
were  not  seriously  faced  until  later. 

Establishment  of  constitutionality  of  statutes .  Within  ten  years 
after  the  enactment  of  the  first  juvenile  court  law,  the  constitutionality 
of  such  statutes  had  been  well  established.  A  number  of  cases  had 
been  brought,  in  which  juvenile  court  acts  and  similar  statutes  had 
been  attacked  on  constitutional  grounds,  and  it  had  been  held  by  the 
overwhelming  weight  of  authority  that  juvenile  courts  were  not  crim¬ 
inal  in  nature,  and  hence  that  they  were  not  unconstitutional  because 
of  the  informality  of  procedure  or  because  of  the  deprivation  of  the 
right  to  trial  by  jury,  the  right  of  appeal  or  similar  protection  afforded 
persons  charged  with  crime  under  the  constitutions  of  the  United 
States  and  the  various  states.1 

Development  of  methods  of  procedure.  The  juvenile  court  was 
established  under  legislation  that  expressed  a  new  idea  in  the  judicial 
treatment  of  delinquent  children,  that  of  saving  instead  of  punishing 
the  child,  and  imposed  upon  a  judicial  agency  new  functions.  The 
court  itself,  through  its  probation  service,  was  to  become  one  of 
the  administrative  agencies  for  the  achievement  of  the  end  in  view. 
The  first  juvenile  courts  had  to  develop  new  modes  of  preliminary  pro¬ 
cedure,  new  methods  of  conducting  hearings ;  they  had  to  extend  the 
conception  of  evidence  to  include  the  social  and  personal  facts  concern¬ 
ing  the  child’s  environment  and  -the  child  himself,  and  work  out  a 
technique  for  the  gathering  of  such  facts ;  they  had  to  develop  methods 
of  supervision  over  children  in  their  own  homes  that  would  by  their 
results  justify  the  probation  system — a  method  of  disposing  of  cases 
which,  though  not  unknown,  was  in  the  main  undeveloped  at  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  the  juvenile-court  movement. 

To  perform  these  manifold  and  technical  duties,  the  first  courts  had 
very  meager  staffs.  It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  they  should  rely 
for  assistance  in  investigation  and  supervision  upon  private  agencies 
— some  already  established  and  others  called  into  existence  by  the 

1”The  Legal  Aspect  of  the  Juvenile  Court,”  United  States  Children's  Bureau 
Publication  No.  pp,  pp.  9-10. 

Julian  W.  Mack,  "Legal  Problems  Involved  in  the  Establishment  of  the 
Juvenile  Court,”  appendix  to  The  Delinquent  Child  and  the  Home ,  pp.  189- 
195. 

Supplement  to  the  Annual  Report  of  the  Attorney  General  of  the  United 
States  for  the  Year  1914 ,  pp.  17-45. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


995 


court’s  need  for  aid.  In  the  east,  child-caring  agencies  and  societies 
for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  children,  and,  in  the  west,  juvenile- 
court  committees  or  juvenile-improvement  associations  or  probation 
committees,  furnished  service  of  various  kinds — the  maintenance  of 
detention  homes,  for  instance,  and  probation  service.  In  some  cities 
the  court  work  was  done  by  paid  members  of  the  staffs  of  private 
agencies ;  in  others,  private  individuals  volunteered  their  services. 

The  importance  of  probation  service  and  its  public  character  was 
soon  recognized,  however,  and  in  many  of  the  larger  cities  it  was  not 
long  before  the  private  agencies  were  able  to  turn  over  the  work  of 
investigation  and  supervision  to  regular  probation  officers  paid  from 
public  funds.1  The  agencies  in  most  instances  continued  to  cooperate 
with  the  court  in  many  ways,  but  gave  principal  emphasis,  as  a  rule, 
to  preventive  community  work  and  case  work  with  children  who  were 
in  danger  of  becoming  delinquent  but  who  did  not  require  court  action. 

The  development  of  paid  service  was  necessarily  unstandardized, 
with  respect  both  to  qualifications  and  to  technique,  and  the  work  was 
uneven.  But  the  early  literature  of  the  juvenile-court  movement  re¬ 
veals  that  judges  and  probation  officers  were,  in  the  main,  thinking 
constructively,  in  terms  of  the  child  and  not  of  legalistic  tradition. 
The  judge  in  his  informal  hearing  was  endeavoring  to  gain  the  child’s 
point  of  view  and  to  make  the  child  know  that  he  was  trying  to  be 
an  understanding  friend.  The  probation  officers,  and  the  judges  too, 
were  developing  the  system  of  reporting  and  of  home  visits ;  their 
purpose  was  not  only  supervision  to  keep  the  child  from  doing  wrong, 
but  constructive  effort  to  enrich  his  interests,  implant  right  ideals  and 
encourage  the  formation  of  sound  habits.  It  is  of  interest  to  note  how 
early  the  cooperation  of  the  schools  was  utilized ;  in  fact,  the  report 
system  was  in  some  courts  based  largely  on  teachers’  reports  of 
scholarship  and  conduct. 

These  activities,  however,  were  in  the  main  based  upon  inadequate 
knowledge  of  the  material  with  which  the  courts  were  dealing,  and 
were  carried  on  often  by  officers  unskilled  in  social  case  work.  Not 
until  the  close  of  the  first  decade  of  the  juvenile  court  did  scientific 
study  of  the  child’s  mental  abilities,  personality,  and  mental  life  begin. 
In  the  words  of  the  pioneer  in  this  service,  Dr.  William  Healy : 

iSee,  for  example,  "The  Chicago  Juvenile  Court,”  by  Helen  Rankin  Jeter,  in 
United  States  Children's  Bureau  Publication  No.  104,  pp.  5-6.  Washington,  1922. 


996 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Scientific  diagnostic  study  as  a  regular  service  for  delinquents  and  for  a 
court  began  in  the  juvenile  court  in  Chicago  in  1909.  This  work,  which  was 
started  and  continued  under  the  name  of  the  Juvenile  Psychopathic  Insti¬ 
tute,  was  soon  perceived  to  have  much  wider  bearings  and  usefulness  than 
study  of  merely  psychopathic  cases ;  the  cases  of  quite  normal  offenders 
often  justify  as  much,  if  not  more,  attention  given  them  for  the  sake  of 
effective  understanding.1 

Two  other  developments  during  the  first  decide  of  the  juvenile 
court  deserve  special  notice.  In  1903,  an  act  drafted  by  Judge  Lind¬ 
sey,  making  those  responsible  for  contributing  to  the  delinquency  of  a 
child  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor,  was  passed  by  the  Colorado  Legisla¬ 
ture.  This  precedent  has  been  widely  followed.  State  supervision 
of  probation  work  was  originated  in  Massachusetts  when  the  first 
state-wide  probation  law  was  enacted  in  1880,  and  was  carried  on  in 
that  state  by  the  prison  commissioners  until  an  independent  commis¬ 
sion  on  probation  was  established  in  1908.  The  first  independent  pro¬ 
bation  commission,  however,  was  created  in  New  York  in  1907,  as  the 
result  of  a  thorough  investigation  of  probation  work  in  that  state 
made  by  a  special  legislative  commission  appointed  for  the  purpose.2 

The  Development  of  the  Juvenile  Court  since  igio 

Extent  of  juvenile-court  organization.  By  the  end  of  the  second 
decade  of  the  juvenile-court  movement  every  state  but  two  had  en¬ 
acted  laws  providing  for  juvenile  or  children’s  courts.  Such  laws  have 
been  amended  many  times,  as  experience  has  demonstrated  the  need 
for  modification  or  for  additional  provisions.  Increased  staffs  and 
more  adequate  salaries  have  been  provided.  The  early  system  of  rota¬ 
tion  of  judges,  under  which  each  judge  was  assigned  to  the  juvenile 
branch  of  the  court  for  only  a  few  months  or  a  year,  has  been  largely 
discarded  in  favor  of  longer  assignments,  permitting  greater  speciali¬ 
zation.  In  some  jurisdictions  juvenile  courts  are  independent  of  other 
court  systems.3  In  such  courts  and  in  some  courts  which  are  parts 

1  William  Healy,  M.D.,  "The  Practical  Value  of  Scientific  Study  of  Juvenile 
Delinquents,”  United  States  Childrens  Bureau  Publication  No.  96,  p.  7.  Washing¬ 
ton,  1922. 

2  Charles  L.  Chute,  State  Supervision  of  Probation.  State  Probation  Commis¬ 
sion,  Albany,  1918. 

3  The  number  of  such  courts  in  1918  was  twenty-two.  See  United  States  Chil¬ 
dren’s  Bureau  Publication  No.  65 ,  p.  12.  Washington,  1920. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


997 


of  other  systems,  the  judge  gives  his  whole  time  to  children’s  work. 
State  probation  commissions  and  other  state  agencies  have  been  pro¬ 
moting  the  application  of  juvenile-court  principles  and  raising  the 
standards  of  probation  service.  However,  the  juvenile  court  has  had 
to  develop  an  organization  and  a  technique  in  a  new  field,  and  in  each 
state  it  operates  under  a  legal  system  and  with  available  facilities 
somewhat  different  from  those  existing  in  any  other  state.  In  conse¬ 
quence,  the  greatest  variety  in  procedure  and  method  exists. 

In  order  to  ascertain  the  extent  of  the  development  of  the  juvenile- 
court  movement  during  the  twenty  years  that  had  elapsed  since  its 
inception,  the  Children’s  Bureau  of  the  United  States  Department  of 
Labor  in  1918  made  a  survey,  through  questionnaires  and  correspond¬ 
ence,  of  juvenile  courts  and  other  courts  throughout  the  United  States 
hearing  children’s  cases.1  Replies  were  received  from  2034  courts. 
The  most  significant  findings  were  as  follows : 

1.  Ninety  per  cent  of  the  courts  addressed  served  areas  in  which  there 
was  no  city  of  25,000  or  more  inhabitants. 

2.  Only  three  hundred  and  twenty-one  courts,  or  16  per  cent  of  those 
from  which  information  was  obtained,  had  even  the  minimum  degree  of 
specialization  used  as  a  basis  of  comparison ;  namely,  separate  hearings  for 
children,  officially  authorized  probation  service,  and  the  recording  of  social 
information. 

3.  All  the  courts  serving  cities  of  100,000  or  more  population  were  spe¬ 
cially  organized,  according  to  the  above  definition,  and  71  per  cent  of  those 
serving  areas  containing  cities  of  from  25,000  to  100,000  population  were 
so  organized. 

4.  Only  16  per  cent  of  the  courts  serving  areas  containing  only  small 
cities,  and  only  4  per  cent  of  those  serving  only  rural  areas,  were  specially 
organized. 

5.  From  at  least  one  court  in  every  state  in  the  Union  came  reports  of 
detaining  children  in  jails;  thirty-seven  courts  in  eighteen  states  reported 
that  no  effort  was  made  to  separate  children  detained  in  jails  from  adult 
offenders,  though  in  many  of  these  states  such  separation  was  required 
by  law. 

6.  Although  juvenile  probation  was  authorized  by  the  laws  of  all  but 
one  state,  only  45  per  cent  of  the  courts  having  jurisdiction  over  children’s 
cases  were  known  to’  have  had  probation  service  during  the  year  for  which 
the  report  was  made. 

1  Evelina  Belden,  "  Courts  in  the  United  States  Hearing  Children’s  Cases,” 
United  States  Children's  Bureau  Publication  No.  65.  Washington,  1920. 


99» 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


7.  Less  than  half  the  courts  reporting  probation  work  had  regular  officers 
giving  full-time  service  paid  for  by  the  court. 

8.  Only  7  per  cent  of  the  courts  reported  mental  examinations  of  chil¬ 
dren  in  clinics  organized  for  that  purpose  or  by  persons  more  or  less  quali¬ 
fied  to  give  psychiatric  or  psychological  examinations. 

9.  The  returns  indicated  that  in  many  courts  social  records  were  very 
inadequate.  A  general  lack  of  uniformity  and  a  wide  difference  in  definition, 
both  in  laws  and  in  court  usage,  appeared  to  exist. 

10.  It  was  estimated  that  175,000  children’s  cases  were  brought  before 
courts  in  the  United  States  in  1918.  Of  these,  approximately  50,000  cases 
came  before  courts  not  having  the  minimum  degree  of  specialization  defined 
above. 

These  facts  present  the  darker  side  of  the  picture.  They  show  that 
the  juvenile  court  is  still  in  an  Nearly  stage  of  development,  and  reveal 
the  urgent  need  for  further  progress.  Nevertheless,  the  picture  has 
a  brighter  side.  Encouragement  is  to  be  derived  from  the  fact  that 
after  twenty  years  125,000  of  an  estimated  175,000  children’s  cases 
were  heard  by  courts  with  some  degree  of  special  organization ;  that 
such  service  has  been  extended  to  all  the  large  cities ;  that  children 
have  to  a  considerable  extent  been  rescued  from  the  ordeal  of  jail 
detention;  and  that  45  per  cent  of  the  courts  in  1918  had  some  sort 
of  probation  service. 

Broadening  of  jurisdiction.  In  many  states  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
juvenile  court  has  been  broadened  to  include  children  above  the  age 
limits  set  in  the  original  laws,  and  classes  of  cases  not  at  first  included. 
In  approximately  one-third  of  the  states,  at  the  present  time,  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  juvenile  court  extends  to  eighteen  years  or  even  to  a 
higher  age.  A  number  of  states  give  jurisdiction  to  juvenile  courts  in 
aid-to-mothers  cases,  and  a  few  place  adoption  cases  and  cases  of 
feeble-minded  children  under  these  courts.  It  has  become  evident, 
moreover,  that  in  many  instances  the  juvenile  court  cannot  deal  effec¬ 
tively  with  the  child  without  exercising  jurisdiction  over  parents  and 
other  adults,  and  so  jurisdiction  over  adults  contributing  to  delin¬ 
quency  or  dependency  has  been  vested  in  the  juvenile  court  in  the 
majority  of  the  forty  states  that  have  enacted  laws  on  this  subject. 
Criminal  .courts,  however,  usually  have  concurrent  jurisdiction  with 
the  juvenile  court  in  such  cases.  In  twelve  states  the  juvenile  court  is 
given  jurisdiction  over  desertion  and  non-support  cases.  It  also  has 
jurisdiction  in  some  states  over  cases  of  offenses  against  minors  which 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


999 


do  not  come  under  the  contributing  to  delinquency  or  dependency 
laws,  and  over  violations  of  child  labor  laws.  Clearly  the  tendency  is 
to  give  general  jurisdiction  over  all  cases  involving  children  or  the 
relationship  of  adults  to  children  to  the  juvenile  court  or  to  a  court  of 
domestic  relations  having  jurisdiction  over  family  problems. 

Unofficial  adjustment  oj  cases.  A  very  important  aspect  of  the 
work  of  the  juvenile  court  is  the  elimination  of  cases  that  do  not 
require  formal  court  action  or  prolonged  treatment,  and  the  unofficial 
adjustment  of  the  problems  involved  in  these  cases.  Such  informal 
action  saves  many  children  from  court  hearing  and  adjudication  of 
delinquency,  and  at  the  same  time  results  in  economy  of  the  time  and 
effort  of  the  judge  and  probation  officers  and  enables  the  court  to 
concentrate  on  the  more  serious  cases.  The  practice  with  reference 
to  informal  adjustment  varies  greatly  in  different  courts;  in  some, 
more  than  half  the  delinquency  cases  brought  to  the  court’s  attention 
are  settled  in  this  way,  and  in  others  practically  no  cases  are  handled 
unofficially.  Unofficial  adjustment  is  in  harmony  with  the  funda¬ 
mental  principles  of  the  juvenile  court  only  when  the  child’s  needs, 
and  not  the  nature  of  the  offense,  determine  the  action  taken.  Too 
general  use  of  the  unofficial  method,  if  based  on  inadequate  knowledge, 
may  result  in  failure  to  take  effective  action  in  the  early  stages  of 
maladjustments  which  will  perhaps  become  serious. 

The  study  oj  the  child.  Although  the  fundamental  concept  of  the 
juvenile  court  is  that  treatment  shall  be  adapted  to  individual  needs, 
the  courts  have  been  very  slow  to  set  up  facilities  for  diagnosis.  A 
brief  examination  of  the  home  and  the  securing  of  general  facts  re¬ 
garding  the  child’s  reputation  and  conduct  have  afforded  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases  the  only  data  available  for  the  judge’s  guidance  in 
making  his  decision.  Even  where  attempts  have  been  made  to  ascer¬ 
tain  by  expert  study  the  condition  of  the  child,  these  efforts  have 
frequently  been  limited  to  a  physical  examination  and  routine  mental 
tests — as  if  the  level  of  intelligence  alone,  apart  from  the  will,  the 
emotional  make-up,  and  the  other  dynamic  factors  of  mental  life,  were 
the  determiner  of  conduct.  Moreover,  the  study  of  the  environmental 
factors  represented  by  the  social  investigation  and  the  psychological 
study  have  often  been  entirely  dissociated,  their  results  to  be  united 
only  by  the  judge  at  the  time  of  the  hearing.  Only  a  few  courts — for 
example  those  in  Chicago  and  Boston,  and  for  a  period  those  in  Seattle 


1000 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


and  the  District  of  Columbia — have  been  able  to  give  practical  recog¬ 
nition  to  the  importance  of  scientific  study  of  all  the  associated  factors 
of  conduct. 

The  socialization  of  court  procedure.  Juvenile  courts,  operating  in 
most  instances  under  equity  jurisdiction,  are  relatively  unhampered 
by  tradition  and  precedent.  In  delinquency  hearings  the  determina¬ 
tion  of  the  facts  of  the  offense  constitutes  the  least  difficult  and  the 
least  important  part  of  the  procedure.  It.has  been  the  experience  of  a 
number  of  courts  that  at  least  nine-tenths  of  the  children  readily  admit 
that  they  have  committed  the  offense  alleged.  The  more  important 
function  of  the  judge  is  to  weigh  the  results  of  the  social  investigation 
and  physical  and  mental  examinations,  determine  what  the  needs  of 
the  child  are,  and  then  decide  upon  the  treatment. 

As  an  aid  to  ascertaining  the  facts  and  winning  the  child’s  confi¬ 
dence  and  cooperation,  the  hearing  of  girls’  cases  has  in  some  courts 
been  delegated  to  a  woman  referee.  In  California,  statutory  provision 
has  been  made  for  the  appointment  of  a  paid  woman  referee  fpr  the 
Los  Angeles  court.  She  hears  all  cases  of  girls  and  of  boys  under  the 
age  of  thirteen  years.  In  San  Francisco  an  unpaid  woman  referee — a 
member  of  the  probation  committee — hears  girls’  cases.  The  Chicago, 
Cincinnati,  and  Detroit  courts  are  among  those  which  have  delegated 
referee  powers  to  a  woman  probation  officer. 

Probationary  supervision.  Probation  has  from  the  first  been  looked 
upon  as  the  keystone  of  the  juvenile  court.  It  is  and  'must  remain  the 
judge’s  chief  resource.  As  a  result  of  more  than  twenty  years’  experi¬ 
ence,  methods  have  been  tested  and  the  main  principles  of  technique 
formulated.  General  agreement  may  be  said  to  exist,  for  example, 
with  reference  to  the  following  propositions : 

1.  Effective  probation  service  means  regular,  paid  service,  either 
full  time  or  (in  rural  communities  and  small  towns)  in  connection  with 
other  social  work  requiring  similar  qualifications  and  approach.  Vol¬ 
unteer  service  is  effective  only  when  supplemental  to  paid  service. 

2.  Probationary  supervision  requires  the  application  of  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  social  case  work,  and  training  and  compensation  at  least 
equal  to  that  demanded  for  case  work  with  families  or  other  specialized 
work  in  the  social  service  field. 

3.  Probation  often  involves  the  reconstruction  of  the  child’s  family, 
school,  vocational,  and  recreational  relationships. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


ioo  i 


4.  Probation  can  be  effective  only  as  it  enlists  all  the  available  re¬ 
sources  of  the  community. 

Although  these  principles  have  received  fairly  general  recognition, 
the  means  for  their  application  are  in  many  courts  insufficient.  Often 
the  prime  essential — a  staff  of  workers  fully  trained  and  qualified — 
is  difficult  to  secure,  owing  to  faulty  methods  of  selection  or  to  the 
inadequacy  of  the  salaries  allowed.  In  addition,  the  number  of  pro¬ 
bation  officers  is  frequently  far  too  small.  Although  it  is  generally 
agreed  that  from  fifty  to  seventy-five  cases  are  all  that  one  probation 
officer  can  handle  effectively,  this  standard  is  rarely  adhered  to,  and 
in  many  courts  each  officer  is  required  to  supervise  from  one  hundred 
to  two  hundred  children  on  probation. 

Provision  for  the  training  of  probation  officers1  after  their  entrance 
on  duty,  and  for  the  general  supervision  of  the  work  of  the  probation 
staff,  is  inadequate  in  the  majority  of  the  courts.  As  a  result,  work  is 
frequently  uneven ;  probation  periods  are  unnecessarily  prolonged ; 
and  friction  within  the  staff  and  complicated  relationships  with  out¬ 
side  agencies  and  institutions  sometimes  develop.  Far  too  often,  in 
undertaking  the  supervision  of  a  new  case,  the  probation  officer  fails  to 
perceive  clearly  the  fundamental  problems  involved,  and  to  make  a 
definite  plan  for  remedial  action.  Effective  base  supervision  tends  to 
promote  constructive  work  at  the  beginning  of  a  case,  and  so  to  lessen 
the  chances  of  failure  and  shorten  the  period  of  probation  required. 

State  promotion  of  juvenile-court  work.  The  work  of  the  Massa¬ 
chusetts  and  New  York  Probation  Commissions  in  promoting  juvenile- 
court  and  probation  standards  has  already  been  mentioned.  The  New 
York  commission  has  carried  on  local  campaigns  to  introduce  and 
extend  probation  work ;  it  makes  investigations  and  recommendations 
concerning  the  work  of  individual  courts,  publishes  record  forms  and 
educational  pamphlets,  aids  in  conducting  civil  service  examinations, 
holds  conferences  of  probation  officers,  and  performs  many  other  serv¬ 
ices.2  The  Massachusetts  commission  has  similar  functions,  and  in 
addition  maintains  a  central  record  of  cases  known  to  the  courts  of 
Greater  Boston  and  a  number  of  neighboring  cities.  In  a  few  other 
states  some  measure  of  state  control  has  been  exercised  for  a  number 

1  Bernard  J.  Fagan,  Administrative  Problems  in  Probation  Work.  Albany, 

IQ22. 

2  Charles  L.  Chute,  State  Supervision  of  Probation.  Albany,  1918. 


1002 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


of  years.  Indiana  in  1921  enacted  a  law  providing  for  state  super¬ 
vision  of  probation  work  through  a  state  probation  officer  and  an 
advisory  juvenile  commission. 

In  the  last  four  or  five  years  a  most  significant  type  of  state  promo¬ 
tion  of  juvenile  courts  and  probation  has  been  developed  in  a  number 
of  states;  its  main  purpose  is  to  raise  the  standards  of  juvenile-court 
work  and  provide  a  means  for  extending  juvenile-court  organization 
to  rural  communities.  Frequently  the  work  is  carried  on  through  state 
departments  in  cooperation  with  county  public-welfare  or  child-welfare 
organizations.  Aid  rendered  juvenile  courts  includes  preparing  forms 
to  be  used,  developing  community  cooperation,  securing  appointment 
of  probation  officers,  training  probation  officers,  publishing  educational 
literature,  and  advising  and  assisting  in  difficult  cases.  Among  the 
states  in  which  such  work,  under  state  or  state  and  county  auspices,  is 
in  progress  or  planned  are  Alabama,  Arkansas,  California,  Georgia, 
Minnesota,  Missouri,  Nebraska,  North  Carolina,  Pennsylvania,  and 
Virginia.1 

This  recent  development  of  state  assistance  in  the  extension  and 
standardization  of  juvenile-court  organization  makes  feasible  for  the 
first  time,  in  many  states,  an  attempt  to  afford  juvenile-court  service 
to  all  the  communities  in  the  state.  Many  difficult  problems  must  be 
faced  in  rural  juvenile-court  organization.  The  unit  of  jurisdiction 
must  be  sufficiently  large  to  permit  of  specialization,  and  at  the  same 
time  facilities  must  be  made  available  to  all  parts  of  the  area  served. 
A  circuit  system  of  holding  court  and  the  referee  system  afford  pos¬ 
sible  solutions.  Because  of  the  small  number  of  children’s  cases, 
probation  must  often  be  united  with  other  types  of  social  service.  The 
problem  of  detention  in  rural  communities  is  a  baffling  one,  which  is 
sometimes  met  by  the  system  of  detention  in  private  family  boarding 
homes.  Facilities  for  scientific  study  of  the  child  are  still  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  majority  of  courts  serving  small  cities  and  rural  areas. 
The  development  of  a  state  system  of  traveling  clinics  will  perhaps 
prove  to  be  a  means  for  meeting  this  need.  In  most  states  juvenile- 
court  laws  are  nominally  state-wide  in  their  application,  but  many 
problems  must  be  met  and  solved  before  they  become  state-wide  in 
reality. 

1  See  "County  Organization  for  Child  Care,"  United  States  Children's  Bureau 
Publication  No.  107.  Washington,  1922. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION  1003 

132.  Scientific  Study  of  Juvenile  Delinquents' 

The  juvenile  court  itselj.  When  operating  effectively,  the  juvenile 
court  together  with  its  agencies  has  the  chance  to  check  and  prevent 
the  development  of  criminal  careers  vastly  more  than  other  courts. 
If  it  succeeds,  it  renders  to  the  delinquent  and  to  society  a  service  that 
is  great  indeed,  because  of  the  very  fact  of  the  moral  and  economic 
expensiveness  of  continuance  in  delinquency.  If  it  fails,  much  has 
been  lost  because  the  conditions  of  causation,  bound  up  so  strongly 
with  the  possibilities  of  prevention,  are  many  times  more  readily  alter¬ 
able  at  the  juvenile-court  age  than  ever  again. 

The  purpose  of  the  juvenile  court  has  all  along  been  quite  clear. 
Differing  from  courts  established  under  the  criminal  law,  its  business 
is  not  to  follow  set  forms  of  treatment  of  offenses.  Its  idea  is  in¬ 
dividualization  both  of  understanding  and  of  treatment.  Of  course, 
the  juvenile  court  is  part  of  the  social  machinery  for  the  prevention 
of  delinquency  as  a  measure  of  public  welfare,  but  in  the  very  accom¬ 
plishment  of  this  it  has,  explicitly  or  implicitly,  to  seek  the  welfare  of 
the  individual.  And  so  it  is  that  in  dealing  with  the  fact  of  delin¬ 
quency  in  the  juvenile  court,  inevitably  the  prime  consideration  is  the 
offender  as  a  person. 

Had  attention  been  well  directed  to  the  great  social  problem  of 
crime,  it  could  have  been  understood  ages  earlier  that  it  is  during  the 
youthful,  formative  periods  of  life  that  tendencies  toward  social  mis¬ 
behavior  begin,  and  that  this  is  the  time  of  times  in  which  to  gain 
understanding  of  causes  and  beginnings  and  is  the  time  in  which  to 
thwart  such  warpings  of  character  and  habit. 

Studies  of  actual  facts  teach  nothing  if  not  the  importance  of  treat¬ 
ing  with  delinquent  tendencies  in  youth.  Whether  we  turn  to  con¬ 
vincing  earlier  statistics  from  abroad  or  to  the  work  of  Glueck  in 
tracing  backward  the  careers  of  Sing  Sing  prisoners,  or  to  recent 
studies  of  the  later  life  of  youthful  offenders  in  Chicago  seen  at  the 
Juvenile  Psychopathic  Institute,  it  stands  out  clearly  that  criminal 
tendencies  and  careers  with  astonishing  frequency  begin  in  childhood 
or  adolescence.  And,  after  all,  why  should  we  expect  it  to  be  other- 

1  By  William  Healy,  M.D.,  Director  of  the  Judge  Baker  Foundation,  Boston. 
Adapted  from  "The  Practical  Value  of  Scientific  Study  of  Juvenile  Delinquents.” 
United  States  Department  of  Labor,  Children’s  Bureau  Publication  No.  96. 
Government  Printing  Office,  Washington,  1922. 


1004 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


wise  ?  Do  we  not  know  well  enough  that  in  all  of  us  the  development 
of  behavior  tendencies,  the  set  of  our  own  characters  and  of  our  own 
habits  of  thought  and  action  begin  long  before  adult  life? 

Although  existing  in  some  places  as  an  offshoot  of  other  courts, 
the  peculiarly  basic  work  of  the  juvenile  court  does  not  allow  it  to 
be  regarded  fairly  as  any  addendum  to  another  court.  Properly  it 
should  require  of  the  judge  more  thoughtfulness,  a  wider  education 
in  the  human  sciences,  more  shrewd  discernment,  more  close  reason¬ 
ing  on  the  relation  of  theory,  fact,  and  proposed  treatment  to  out¬ 
comes  than  is  demanded  in  any  other  court.  And  all  this  just  because 
of  the  wide  range  of  scientifically  ascertainable  conditions,  motives, 
and  influences  leading  to  juvenile  transgressions,  the  wide  range  of 
treatments  possible,  and  the  very  absence  of  the  fetish  of  unscientifi¬ 
cally  concocted  forms  and  codes  of  practice  and  procedure,  which 
in  some  other  courts  form  such  a  drag  upon  effective  dealing  with 
offenders. 

Methods  oj  the  court.  The  work  of  judges  in  juvenile  courts,  and 
of  other  officers  of  the  law  making  decisions  there,  proceeds  very 
largely  in  accord  with  personal  tendencies  and  moods.  Immediate 
treatment  of  the  case,  to  be  specific,  is  ( i )  sometimes  by  the  methods 
of  personal  appeal — by  warning,  exhortation,  scolding,  sermonizing, 
threatening — or  (2)  frequently  by  a  direct  attempt  at  a  shrewd  guess 
concerning  what  should  be  done  in  the  case,  of  course  with  the  help 
that  observation  in  the  court  room  offers.  (3)  Sometimes  there  may 
be  fairly  prolonged  weighing  of  the  meager  facts  that  have  been  ob¬ 
tained;  occasionally  there  is  a  demand  for  more  data,  but  (4)  often 
the  treatment  is  left  to  the  judgment  of  probation  officers,  with  the 
feeling  that  in  the  court  room  there  is  so  little  opportunity  for  learning 
all  the  facts  necessary  for  satisfactory  adjustment. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  most  significant  that  individuals  are  passed  with 
comparatively  great  rapidity  through  a  court  procedure  that  ends 
often  in  a  judgment  rendered  which,  one  way  or  another,  is  of  the 
greatest  import  in  constructing  the  behavior  tendencies  of  a  life.  And, 
it  should  be  noted,  it  happens  sometimes  that  an  apparently  milder 
or  more  negative  decision,  such  as  placing  on  probation,  is  a  decision 
of  the  most  positive  import  for  the  bad,  as  when  it  means  sending  the 
individual  back  to  deleterious  influences,  perhaps  unknown  to  the 
court  because  of  incomplete  studies  of  the  causation  of  delinquency. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


1005 


Deciding  treatment  that  is  tremendously  influential  at  the  forma¬ 
tive  period  of  life  vastly  outweighs  in  importance  in  the  world  of 
realities  any  decision  of  a  criminal  case  that  may  take  weeks  in  court 
or  perhaps  fill  pages  of  the  newspapers. 

Principles  of  scientific  study  of  delinquents.  The  manifold  practi¬ 
cal  issues  that  are  intrinsic  in  juvenile-court  cases  not  only  justify  by 
their  importance  careful  case  study,  but  make  it  an  absolute  necessity, 
if  exceedingly  significant  conditions  are  not  to  be  overlooked. 

Unfortunately  it  is  not  yet  grasped  by  many  as  a  matter  of  shrewd 
common  sense  that  the  practical  aspects  of  delinquency  really  are 
manifold  and  that  manifold  though  they  are,  knowledge  of  causations 
and  carrying  out  a  diversity  of  treatment  is  thoroughly  practicable. 

Indeed,  not  foresighted  in  the  sense  of  the  best  conceptions  of  the 
juvenile  court  is  the  procedure  that  fails  to  appreciate  acquirement  of 
enlightening  knowledge  of  the  delinquent  and  his  background  or  to 
demand  the  attempt  at  adjustment  through  the  many  constructive 
possibilities  as  well  as  through  restrictive  measures.  It  is  the  very 
richness  of  the  outlook  that  presents  itself  during  scientific  case  study 
(and  really  scientific  study  can  mean  only  well-rounded  study)  that, 
more  than  anything  else,  justifies  undertaking  it. 

Classification  by  "intelligence  levels”  or  by  these  other  categories 
does  not  and  never  can  represent  the  whole  individual,  or  even  the 
elements  most  essential  for  the  student  of  delinquent  tendencies  to 
know,  such  as  the  individual’s  habits  of  mind  and  body,  the  forces 
which  drive  him,  his  motivating  experiences,  his  reactions  to  his 
environment,  his  ideation  as  related  to  delinquency,  causations  in  the 
environment  itself,  his  special  resources  of  mind  and  body  that  can 
be  utilized  for  reeducative  treatment. 

For  the  sake  of  mental  classification  (invaluable  though  it  is  posi¬ 
tively  and  negatively — of  course  we  need  to  evaluate  the  human  ma¬ 
terial  we  are  working  with)  we  cannot  throw  away  the  everyday 
knowledge  of  many  generations  that  there  are  forces  operating  both 
from  without  and  from  within  which  are  the  decisive  factors  in  the 
formation  of  delinquent  trends.  It  is  to  the  better  understanding  of 
these  forces  as  well  as  of  the  individual’s  capacities  that  we  must 
address  ourselves.  It  is  for  this  that  we  bespeak  the  value  of  scientific 
studies  of  individual  careers,  of  all  that  goes  to  make  a  delinquent 
what  he  is  in  his  behavior  tendencies. 


ioo6 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Working  values  of  scientific  study.  The  working  values  that  accrue 
even  through  scientific  knowledge  of  personality  alone  Were  impressed 
on  the  writer  from  the  day  of  beginning  in  the  Chicago  court. 

The  very  first  case  studied  was  that  of  a  girl  about  whom  long  columns 
had  appeared  in  the  newspapers ;  she  disappeared  from  home  and  when  found 
made  startling  and  apparently  important  statements  which  included  an  ac¬ 
count  of  her  own  deliberate  sex  misconduct.  Not  insane  and  not  feeble¬ 
minded,  we  found  her,  nevertheless,  to  be  a  most  peculiar  person  who  had 
been  influenced  recently  by  emotional  stirrings  to  the  extent  that  she  felt 
some  sort  of  impulsion  to  thus  allege  herself  immoral  and  to  make  most  se¬ 
rious  charges  against  others.  Our  study,  aided  by  a  short  investigation, 
quickly  set  the  whole  affair  in  its  right  light  and  the  girl  quieted  down  and 
told  the  truth.  It  had  been  quite  different  in  the  case  of  her  neurotic  mother, 
we  learned,  who,  unrecognized  as  an  abnormal  personality,  had  been  the 
cause  of  serious  hardships  experienced  by  a  couple  of  good  men  in  a  certain 
church  circle  where  she  had  made  false  allegations.  It  is  a  matter  of  great 
interest  that  the  girl  herself  ever  since  has  been  known  for  what  she  is  and 
that  when  several  peculiar  situations  have  arisen  as  a  result  of  her  con¬ 
duct,  her  case  has  been  effectively  handled  by  officers  who  have  had  to  guide 
them  knowledge  of  the  fundamental  feature  of  the  situation,  namely,  her 
personality. 

In  great  practical  contrast,  especially  from  the  standpoint  of  public 
economy,  was  the  case  of  a  young  woman  which  appeared  in  the  adult 
courts  in  Chicago  a  year  or  so  later.  She  made  terrible  accusations  against 
some  prominent  people  and  the  matter  was  heard  at  great  length  with  very 
puzzling  evidence  presented  in  court.  But  the  girl’s  first  deposition  and  the 
character  of  her  injuries  would  have  made  it  quite  easy  for  any  experienced 
student  of  abnormal  psychology  to  determine  the  true  nature  of  the  case. 
Had  there  been  any  chance  to  act  as  friend  to  the  court  one  might  have 
made  the  situation  plain  to  the  judge  as  it  was  made  clear  to  a  certain  group 
of  people  who  asked  professional  advice  for  determining  their  sympathetic 
attitude  toward  the  case.  As  it  was,  certain  pathetic  circumstances  and  the 
girl’s  strong  statements  won  for  her  a  public  following  of  really  good  people 
who  through  general  ignorance  of  such  personalities  and  the  fact  that  no 
one  acting  as  friend  to  the  court  made  any  study  of  her  personality  trends, 
pushed  public  opinion  strongly  in  her  favor.  The  trial  of  this  case  cost  the 
State  over  $15,000  and  the  outcome  was  nil.  Very  few  of  her  sympathizers 
ever  realized  that  she  was  an  hysterical  false  accuser  and  self-mutilator. 

Or  take  another  very  simple  instance ;  shortly  after  we  began  work  an 
experienced  officer  said  that  since  we  were  interested  in  delinquents  he 
would  bring  in  what  he  and  his  colleagues  called  their  best  example  of  the 
criminal  type  —  "This  boy  is  a  genuine,  born  criminal.”  But  five  minutes’ 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION  1007 

observation  showed  the  lad  to  present  the  signs  of  juvenile  paresis,  with 
eyes  not  reacting  to  light,  with  absent  knee  jerks,  etc.,  a  victim  of  con¬ 
genital  syphilis — a  boy  with  a  nervous  system  as  thoroughly  diseased  as 
it  could  well  be  and  leave  the  patient  active,  merely  appearing  to  be  a  des¬ 
perate  conduct  problem. 

For  those  doing  even  the  simplest  scientific  work  among  delin¬ 
quents,  the  citation  of  such  obvious  examples  from  the  material  of  ten 
or  twelve  years  ago  is  quite  unnecessary — there  is  ample  recognition 
nowadays  of  what  such  human  problems  may  signify,  and  there  are 
already  established  many  centers  for  examination  of  such  cases.  But 
taking  the  country  over,  a  vast  number  of  peculiar  individuals  do 
even  nowadays  pass  along  through  courts  quite  unrecognized  for 
what  they  are. 

The  field  for  scientific  study.  But  scientific  study  should  not  be 
limited  at  all  to  such  psychopathic  material,  nor  to  personality  from 
the  standpoint  alone  of  abnormal  psychology.  The  frequency  with 
which  mental  defectives  and  the  psychopathic  appear  before  courts 
is  enough  to  justify  diagnostic  examinations,  but  certainly  studies 
should  not  be  confined  to  these  classes — by  no  means  the  largest 
proportion  of  youthful  delinquents  as  seen  in  courts  are  abnormal 
mentally.  There  must  be  equal  interest  in  anything  causative  that 
involves  the  individual  or  that  has  influenced  him. 

Adequate  practical  study  means  no  short  routine  of  examination, 
whether  in  giving  age-level  tests  that  do  help  as  a  part  of  mental 
testing,  or  in  giving  a  physical  examination — that  rarely  indeed  throws 
light  on  the  causation  of  delinquency.  Courts  that  begin  with  such 
examinations  or  with  having  special  blood  tests  made,  etc.,  examina¬ 
tions,  of  course,  so  important  in  many  ways,  should  have  clear  insight 
into  the  limitations  of  such  humanitarian  work  as  sources  of  informa¬ 
tion  that  really  help  in  the  effective  treatment  of  conduct  problems. 

Adequate  study  means  finding  the  influences  at  work  in  the  delin¬ 
quent’s  life,  influences  perhaps  remaining  over  from  early  childhood 
experiences  or  arising  perhaps  from  family  conditions  on  the  basis  of 
which  grudges  are  formed  (on  the  day  this  was  written  there  was 
brought  to  light  in  court  here  a  semiprofessional  career  with  just  such 
an  antisocial  foundation),  influences  perhaps  from  hidden  bad  habits, 
or  involving  matters  of  frequently  recurrent  ideation  or  impulse — - 
adequate  study  means  finding  any  of  a  thousand  and  one  condi- 


ioo8 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


tions  and  experiences,  the  existence  or  absence  of  which  one  cannot 
tell  beforehand. 

Nor  can  the  individual  be  studied  apart  from  his  setting,  his  en¬ 
vironment,  any  more  than  a  biologist  can  hope  to  know  what  con¬ 
ditions  the  behavior  of  a  starfish  by  studying  it  in  fresh  water  or  as 
taken  from  a  laboratory  jar  of  alcohol. 

We  are  properly  concerned  with  the  study  of  delinquents  that 
takes  in  enough  points  of  view  to  lead  to  such  a  rational  explanation 
that  effective  treatment  can  be  prescribed  therefrom. 

As  has  been  pointed  out  many  times,  it  is  very  rarely  that  any  one 
factor  in  the  background  can  be  reasonably  selected  as  the  sole  cause 
of  delinquency — the  fact  is  that  usually  several  causes  *are  inter¬ 
woven.  Now,  there  is  no  way  of  evaluating  or  indeed  of  knowing  at 
all  many  of  these  causes,  except  as  one  ascertains  them  by  a  thorough 
analysis  of  the  situation  and  then  studies  them  in  the  light  of  their 
influences  on  the  mind  and  so  on  conduct. 

A  careful  study  of  even  a  few  of  the  simplest  cases  of  stealing,  for 
example,  shows  motives  so  different,  shows  such  variations  in  impulse, 
in  personality  background,  and  in  the  stealing  as  phenomena  of  re¬ 
action  to  environment,  that  good  sense  itself  calls  for  knowledge  of 
causation  and  personality  in  every  case  in  order  to  have  any  clear 
idea  of  how  effectively  to  combat  the  delinquent  tendency. 

General  relation  of  delinquency  to  mental  life.  Scientific  study  of 
social  behavior  is  builded  foursquare  upon  the  fundamental  fact  that 
conduct  is  action  of  the  body  and  the  mind.  All  conduct,  of  course, 
directly  emanates  from  mental  life.  And  many  elements  and  condi¬ 
tionings  of  mental  life  are  concerned  in  that  product  of  mental  activity 
which  we  call  social  behavior. 

The  many  studies  of  exterior  conditions  or  physical  states  or  per¬ 
sonal  habits  which  have  been  or  are  being  made  of  delinquents  are 
not  to  the  point  if  they  are  not  interpreted  in  relation  to  actual  causa¬ 
tion  of  the  delinquent's  misbehavior.  Nothing  is  any  more  striking 
to  the  careful  student  than  the  fact  that  reactions  between  personality 
and  living  conditions  are  not  fixed  and  are  not  a  priori  predictable. 
Poverty,  in  one  case  a  stimulus  to  formation  of  fine  character  tend¬ 
encies,  in  another  instance  is  the  motivation  of  even  major  crimes. 
Bad  neighborhood  conditions  in  some  cases  result  in  disgust  rather 
than  in  acceptance  of  local  standards  of  morality.  Adolescent  striv- 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


1009 


ings  and  aggressiveness  may  lead  in  a  direction  of  ambition  and  fine 
accomplishment,  or  may  find  outlets  largely  in  delinquent  trends. 
And  so  on  through  practically  the  whole  list  of  possible  causations 
of  delinquency. 

The  only  direct  means  of  knowing  the  forces  actually  operative  in  a 
given  case  is  through  study  of  the  mental  life,  the  definite  directive 
agent  of  conduct.  This  is  the  realm  of  a  practical  psychology,  which 
takes  into  account  mental  capacities,  mental  balance,  instincts,  im¬ 
pulses,  the  impress  of  experiences,  and  the  many  elements  of  conscious 
and  subconscious  mental  activity. 

Mental  deject  and  delinquency.  At  present  the  most  generally 
recognized  function  of  scientific  study  of  delinquents  is  determination 
of  mentality  in  terms  of  normality  or  feeble-mindedness.  This  is  a 
most  important  task  because,  without  such  study,  in  spite  of  the  belief 
of  some  that  they  are  able  to  detect  feeble-mindedness  by  physiognomy 
and  other  appearances,  it  is  not  possible  to  classify  individuals  men¬ 
tally.  Appearances  are  often  misleading. 

It  must  not  be  assumed  from  the  above  that  the  place  for  all  mental 
defectives  is  in  institutions ;  even  some  of  the  definitely  feeble-minded 
show  good  character  traits,  perhaps  have  been  brought  up  under  good 
moral  conditions  and  have  responded  well.  Here  again,  it  is  a  study 
not  of  the  individual  alone,  but  of  the  interaction  between  the  in¬ 
dividual  and  his  environment. 

Proportion  of  defectives  among  delinquents.  For  the  sake  of  fairly 
sizing  up  the  facts  in  general  concerning  mentality  and  delinquency 
we  have  gone  into  the  matter  of  mental  abnormality  with  much  care. 
(By  abnormality  is  meant  either  (1)  mental  defect  or  (2)  mental 
aberration ;  that  is,  psychosis,  insanity,  or  severe  psychopathic  condi¬ 
tions.)  In  two  Chicago  series,  each  of  one  thousand  young  repeated 
offenders,  only  about  67  per  cent  and  75  per  cent,  respectively,  could 
be  diagnosed  as  clearly  normal.1  Of  the  abnormal,  the  larger  propor¬ 
tion  consisted  of  mental  defectives;  a  much  smaller  number  repre¬ 
sented  cases  of  mental  disease.  Dr.  Bronner2  surveyed  five  hundred 

1For  detailed  figures  see  "Youthful  Offenders:  A  Comparative  Study  of  Two 
Groups,  Each  of  1000  Young  Recidivists,”  by  William  Healy  and  Augusta  F. 
Bronner,  Proceedings  of  the  Second  Pan  American  Scientific  Congress ,  Washing¬ 
ton,  January,  1916,  or  American  Journal  of  Sociology ,  July,  1916. 

2  Journal  of  American  Institute  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology ,  November, 

1914. 


1010 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


delinquents  as  they  came  into  the  Juvenile  Detention  Home,  including 
first  offenders,  and  found  that  very  probably  9  per  cent  of  these  were 
defective  to  the  degree  of  feeble-mindedness.  Recently  the  Judge 
Baker  Foundation  has  been  doing  much  more  intensive  work  and  in  a 
series  of  one  thousand  young  repeated  offenders  in  Boston  percentages 
are  found  quite  similar  to  those  of  the  Chicago  series — the  defectives 
form  22  per  cent,  among  these  the  clearly  feeble-minded  who  should 
undoubtedly  be  educated  and  protected  in  a  suitable  institution  being 
12  per  cent  of  the  whole  number;  the  aberrational  cases  were  about 
2  per  cent. 

Since  the  most  widely  recognized  grading  of  ''general  intelligence” 
at  the  present  time  is  according  to  the  Stanford  revision  of  the  Binet- 
Simon  age-level  scale  (imperfect  though  we  readily  acknowledge  this 
to  be),  it  may  be  worth  while  giving  a  graph  of  our  findings  according 
to  this  scale  of  mental  tests.  But  it  must  be  emphasized  that  for  prac¬ 
tical  diagnosis  there  is  much  else  of  value  for  which  other  tests  should 
be  given  to  delinquents — getting  an  "intelligence  quotient”  forms 
only  one  part  of  a  good  schedule  in  testing.  And,  then,  tests  them¬ 
selves  do  not  form  the  sole  criterion  of  diagnosis.1 

If,  as  usually  reckoned,  all  having  an  I.Q.  below  70  are  pretty 
surely  feeble-minded,  then  7  per  cent  of  the  total  number  belong  in 
that  category.  But  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale  we  find  that  no  less 
than  8  per  cent — those  above  no-I.Q. — are  supernormal.  To  be 
sure,  some  of  the  16  per  cent  falling  between  70  and  80  I.Q.  would 
be  classed  by  us  as  defective  to  the  degree  of  feeble-mindednesis,  but 
there  is  all  along  the  line  a  great  need  for  interpretation  according  to 
language  and  school  advantages  and  our  final  groupings  do  not  at 
all  necessarily  coincide  with  the  I.Q.  classifications.  However,  these 
figures  serve  to  bring  out  clearly  the  main  point,  namely,  the  aston¬ 
ishingly  wide  range  of  mental  ability  which  delinquents  present — 
some  of  them  ranking  twice  and  more  than  twice  as  capable  as  others. 
The  implications  of  these  great  differences,  and  indeed  of  lesser  varia¬ 
tions,  should  be  very  clear  in  the  endeavor  to  bring  about  adjustments 
so  that  their  behavior  tendencies  will  approach  normal. 

The  striking  fact  brought  out  by  these  and  other  studies  of  the 
mental  capacities  of  series  of  delinquents  is  that  a  much  larger  pro¬ 
portion  of  mental  defectives  is  to  be  found  among  delinquents  as  they 

1  Compare  supra ,  Chapter  XIII. —  Ed. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION  ion 

appear  in  court  than  in  the  ordinary  population,  perhaps  ten  times  as 
many.1  And  this,  of  course,  is  highly  significant.  But  since  it  is  well 
known  that  some  individuals  of  very  limited  mentality  maintain 
themselves  in  the  world  without  misbehavior  and,  indeed,  sometimes 
show  very  good  character  traits,  from  the  mere  fact  of  deficient  men¬ 
tality  the  outcome  in  behavior  cannot  be  predicted.  In  other  words, 
even  a  defective  individual  cannot  be  considered  apart  from  any 
special  capacities  which  he  may  have,  such  as  special  abilities  in 
mental  powers  or  assets  of  personality,  or  apart  from  formative  ex¬ 
periences  and  the  influences  of  his  given  environment. 

This  is  mentioned  particularly  because  of  the  great  emphasis  that 
lately  has  been  placed  on  findings  on  test  of  "  mentality.”  Too  fre¬ 
quently  mental  ages  or  "Intelligence  Quotients”  are  cited  as  if  these 
offered  a  complete  guide  to  prognosis  and  treatment,  and  answered 
exactly  the  problem  of  responsibility  of  the  individual.  A  little  re¬ 
flection  upon  the  fact  that  individuals  mentally  normal,  some  even 
very  bright,  are  misdoers  for  reasons  quite  apart  from  matters  of 
mental  capacity  and  that  many  feeble-minded  people  live  decently 
and  do  their  work  in  the  world  very  well,  should  indicate  how  neces¬ 
sary  it  is  to  cultivate  knowledge  concerning  causations  of  delinquency 
and  discrimination  in  rendering  judgments  which  prescribe  some  form 
of  treatment. 

Elements  of  mental  life  related  to  delinquency .  An  enumeration 
of  the  main  categories  of  qualities  and  elements  of  mental  life  that  in 
practical  studies  of  delinquents  have  been  found  to  have  to  do  with 
conduct  may  be  valuable  here,  perhaps,  for  reference.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  all  of  these  categories  can  be  successfully  inquired  into 
by  anybody  except  some  one  with  interest  and  training  in  these  mat¬ 
ters  and  with  sufficient  time,  which  usually  is  well  within  feasible 
limits.  But  thoughtful  consideration  of  these  classes  of  facts  will 
serve  to  enrich  the  knowledge  and  aid  the  everyday  judgments  of  any 
who  wish  to  deal  understandingly  with  delinquents.  There  are : 

1  Perhaps  the  reader  has  noted  the  great  variations  in  stated  percentages  of 
mental  defectives  among  delinquents,  as  given  by  different  investigators.  The 
main  cause  of  this  is  that  examiners  have  neglected  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  special  groups  are  highly  selected  —  delinquents  in  institutions  are  almost 
entirely  those  who  have  failed  on  probation,  and,  of  course,  have  more  defectives 
among  them.  This  selection  is  itself  from  an  already  selected  group ;  even, 
delinquents  as  seen  in  court  are  merely  the  offenders  who  have  been  caught. 


1012 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


1 .  The  problem  of  mental  capacities  in  terms  of  standardized  norms 
as  far  as  these  have  been  established.  This  should  mean  mental 
capacities  not  only  estimated  as  so-called  "general  intelligence”  ac¬ 
cording  to  some  age-level  scales  of  a  special  limited  group  of  tests, 
such  as  the  Binet  system  and  its  modifications,  but  also  as  measured 
by  the  performance  on  other  tests  which  indicate  special  abilities  or 
disabilities,  many  of  which  are  most  important  for  success  or  failure 
in  school  or  vocation  or  other  social  adjustment.  The  interpretation 
of  test  findings  is  a  difficult  matter ;  it  demands  training  and  experience. 

2.  Then  there  is  the  problem  of  mental  balance.  This  runs  all  the 
way  from  such  constitutional  states  as  hyperexcitability,  or  from  tem¬ 
porary  states  of  lack  of  self-control,  such  as  are  exhibited  oftentimes 
following  chorea  or  as  adolescent  phenomena,  to  the  chronic  psycho¬ 
pathic  conditions  and  to  out-and-out  insanity  or  psychosis. 

3.  Certain  dynamic  qualities  of  mental  life,  such  as  states  of  tem¬ 
porary  or  constitutional  lethargy  and  laziness,  as  contrasted  to  alert¬ 
ness  and  forcefulness,  etc.  One  is  concerned  here  with  the  problems 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  individual  uses  the  capacities  with  which 
he  is  endowed.  Even  feeble-minded  persons  may  be  energetic  men¬ 
tally  and,  of  course,  many  a  normal  person  is, lazy  in  the  use  of 
his  talents. 

4.  The  qualities  of  mental  life  which  are  subsumed  under  the  head 
of  personality  characteristics.  These  are  many,  forming  long  lists  as 
developed  by  special  students  of  the  subject.  Bearing  particularly  on 
delinquency  are  such  traits  as  love  of  adventure,  egocentrism,  revenge¬ 
fulness,  stubbornness,  rebelliousness,  etc.  But  the  good  character 
traits,  such  as  loyalty,  generosity,  kindliness,  responsiveness,  etc.,  must 
not  be  overlooked.  They  are  equally  important  for  prognosis  and  for 
determining  the  value  of  the  expenditure  of  effort  in  social  treatment. 

5.  Certain  traits  and  trends  as  related  to  characteristics  of  the  in¬ 
dividual’s  group  are  sometimes  important  for  the  production  of  delin¬ 
quency.  Does  he  show  special  reaction  tendencies,  not  in  themselves 
abnormal,  perhaps  even  in  connection  with  his  ambitions,  which  cause 
him  to  fail  to  adjust  so  markedly  in  his  immediate  circle,  in  his  family 
or  school  life,  that  misconduct  results  ? 

6.  Of  immense  significance  frequently  for  the  student  of  delin¬ 
quency  is  the  mental  content — ideation  or  imagery.  Just  what  comes 
into  the  offender’s  mind  that  tends  to  result  in  delinquency?  Some- 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


1013 


times,  certainly,  the  urge  is  from  within.  What  is  there  forming  the 
substance  of  his  conscious  thought  or  of  his  mental  pictures,  often  so 
intimately  related  to  his  delinquency  ?  Is  it  something  that  he  remem¬ 
bers  as  having  seen  or  heard  or  read  or  imagined  ? 

In  considering  this  aspect  of  mental  life,  however,  one  must  also 
be  on  the  lookout  for  definite  mental  vacuity,  lack  of  healthy  mental 
content,  absence  of  ideas  and  normal  mental  interests.  This  is  a 
striking  finding  in  some  individuals,  accounting  for  the  ease  with 
which  bad  influences  slide  in  and  take  hold. 

7.  Some  experiences,  from  without  or  even  internal,  which  have 
been  peculiarly  fixed  in  the  mind  by  accompanying  emotional  states 
and  which  are  repressed  can  subconsciously  become  actuating  forces 
of  conduct.  This  matter  of  mental  experiences  plus  repressions  is 
worthy  of  much  attention  in  many  cases  showing  the  most  persistent 
trends  toward  delinquency.  It  is  especially  of  importance  because  the 
discovery  of  this  specific  cause  of  misconduct  may  often  be  the  means 
of  a  quick  checking  of  the  misbehavior  or,  at  least,  may  be  the  basis 
of  an  effectual  reeducative  process. 

8.  The  fact  and  force  of  mental  habit  should  never  be  lost  sight  of 
either  in  considering  the  main  causes  of  repeated  delinquency  or  in 
thinking  of  what  to  do  in  working  for  the  delinquent’s  reformation. 
Whether  tendencies  are  deep-set  in  the  sense  of  being  habitual  is  a 
matter  of  great  importance  in  the  outlook. 

9.  General  mental  attitudes,  such  as  grudge  formations  against 
individuals  or  groups  or  against  society  as  a  whole,  or  intense  dissatis¬ 
factions,  may  be  most  important  to  unearth  for  the  understanding  of 
conduct.  Of  course,  peculiar  mental  attitudes  may  be  largely  de¬ 
pendent  on  personality  characteristics,  but  they  may  be  induced  by 
special  environmental  conditions  and  maladjustments,  and  particularly 
by  the  hidden  experiences  and  sore  spots  spoken  of  in  the  preceding 
paragraph.  At  any  rate,  such  attitudes  and  their  causes  badly  need 
recognition  in  order  that  there  may  be  appropriate  prescription  of 
mental  and  social  therapy. 

10.  The  mental  impulsions  which  in  rare  cases  make  for  delin¬ 
quency  in  a  powerful  way  should  also  be  a  subject  for  skillful  in¬ 
terpretation.  Impulses  toward  wrongdoing  sometimes  amount  to 
out-and-out  obsessions,  with  recurrent  ideation  or  imagery,  which  the 
individual  may  sometimes  be  able  to  fight  off  and  sometimes  not.  In 


ioi4 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


other  cases  the  ideation  or  impulse  arises  only  in  the  face  of  a  given 
situation,  usually  a  special  chance  or  opportunity  for  the  given  kind 
of  delinquency  toward  which  the  individual  has  impulsions.  Fre¬ 
quently  the  genesis  of  the  impulse  can  be  traced,  and  the  value  of  do¬ 
ing  so  is  proved  by  the  change  in  conduct  which  so  often  occurs. 

Mental  life  specifically  related  to  delinquency.  Just  because  it  is 
mental  life  which  always  stands  directly  back  of  conduct,  and  because 
nothing  in  the  outer  world  makes  for  misconduct  unless  it  influences 
the  mind  first,  just  because  of  this  sequence  established  in  the  very 
nature  of  things,  we  may  theoretically  expect  to  find,  and  we  actually 
do  find,  our  best  diagnoses  in  any  instance  of  delinquency  arising  from 
consideration  of  the  situation  in  terms  of  the  outline  «of  mental  life 
given  above.  Here  is  the  make-up  of  the  individual  and  here  are  the 
directly  dynamic  elements.  Knowing  these,  a  much  fairer  estimate  of 
the  outside  factors  may  be  made,  as  they  really  are  influences  and  as 
they  have  to  be  thought  of  for  adjustments.  This  is  much  more  valid 
than  generalizing  about  bad  influences  of  one  sort  or  another.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  many  of  the  external  conditions  absolutely  necessary 
to  be  altered  for  a  successful  outcome  are  only  to  be  known  as  true 
causations  through  sympathetic  inquiry  into  the  mental  life.  Hun¬ 
dreds  of  illustrations  might  be  given  of  the  general  value  of  this  ap¬ 
proach  (indeed,  all  the  cases  cited  bear  on  this  point).  In  many 
instances  the  really  enlightening  information  first  comes  through  learn¬ 
ing  what  the  individual  has  in  his  mind  that  steers  him  toward 
delinquency. 

The  many  factors  implicated.  Perhaps  enough  has  been  said  above 
to  indicate  that  scientific  study  of  delinquents  cannot  possibly  leave 
out  of  account  the  forces  or  the  negative  elements  in  the  individual’s 
experiences  and  environmental  life  which  in  any  ascertainable  measure 
have  tended  toward  the  production  of  his  delinquency.  No  careful 
evaluation  of  causes  or  of  the  outlook  can  afford  to  neglect  any  of  the 
possible  factors  such  as  companionship,  street  life,  poor  parental  un¬ 
derstanding  and  control,  vicious  example  in  the  home,  special  tempta¬ 
tions  that  are  offered  through  unfortunate  recreations  and  occupations. 
But,  as  before  stated,  many  of  these  are  only  to  be  recognized  as  actual 
pernicious  forces  through  discovering  their  specific  effect  upon  the 
individual,  upon  his  mental  life,  modifying  his  ideas  and  impulses  in 
the  direction  of  delinquency. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


1015 


Not  only  the  varying  nature  of  the  data  necessary  for  explanation 
of  the  delinquency  but  also  practical  outcomes  as  related  to  causation 
could  be  given  in  many  illustrations.  Often  greater  changes  in  be¬ 
havior  could  be  obtained  if  other  and  better  avenues  for  treatment 
were  open,  if  in  public  and  private  institutions  and  under  established 
routines  of  endeavor  with  delinquents  there  were  cultivation  of  an 
understanding  of  the  scientific  facts  implicated  in  each  case.  But  even 
with  things  as  they  are,  greater  accomplishment  is  possible  in  any 
jurisdiction  dealing  with  juvenile  delinquency.  The  way  to  get  better 
resources  for  treatment  is  to  know  causes  and  show  the  value  of 
meeting  causes. 

Cessation  of  the  delinquency  is  the  desideratum,  not  the  scientific 
facts  in  and  for  themselves;  the  aim  is  to  cure.  With  this  in  mind 
one  must  balance  carefully  what  is  causative  and  alterable  in  the  en¬ 
vironment  and  what  is  not,  and  what  is  causative  and  possible  to  in¬ 
fluence  in  the  inner  mental  life  and  what  is  not.  An  admixture  of 
factors  is  the  rule,  and  in  considering  adjustment  of  the  case  the 
whole  picture  properly  is  to  be  contemplated. 

Examples  0)  summaries  oj  cases.  In  the  endeavor  to  get  the  case 
clearly  in  mind  for  ourselves  and  for  the  judge  who  refers  it  (or  for 
the  parents  or  agencies  who  in  not  a  few  instances  are  the  first  ones 
to  bring  in  even  severe  problems  in  delinquency),  we  are  accustomed 
in  conference  to  develop  a  summary  of  our  findings.  This  is  done  after 
the  separate  studies  are  ready  to  be  put  together.  Of  course,  such 
summaries  differ  greatly  in  complexity  and  length  as  written  up  for 
use.  Examples  read  as  follows : 

SUMMARY 
(Not  for  public  files.) 

1001 

Joe  Doe.  Age  13-15.  November  21,  1920. 

Physical:  Very  poor  general  development.  Poor  nutrition  and  strength, 
but  upright  attitude.  Responsive  expression,  rather  strong  features. 

Mental:  Grades  as  supernormal  on  age-level  tests.  Works  very  well 
with  concrete  material.  Good  in  learning  ability,  especially  for  ideas. 
Somewhat  retarded  in  school,  but  no  disability  for  any  type  of  school  work. 
Comparatively  poorer  in  apperceptions.  Very  friendly.  With  us  interested 
in  mental  tasks  and  works  well.  Reported  very  repressed  and  quiet  at  home. 


ioi6 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


Delinquencies :  Excessive  petty  stealing  from  home.  Much  sleeping 
away  from  home  during  the  last  three  years.  Earlier  frequent  truancy. 

Background:  (i)  Heredity:  Father  decidedly  bad-tempered  and  mother 
nervous  and  irritable.  Families  otherwise  reported  negative.  (2)  Develop¬ 
mental:  Scarlet  fever  severely  at  three  years.  Enuresis  began  at  eight 
years  and  continued.  (3)  Home  conditions:  Poorly  kept;  mother  away 
much  in  store  with  father.  Frequent  quarreling  and  bad  temper  in  the 
home.  Decidedly  irregular  living  conditions — family  absorbed  in  getting 
ahead.  (4)  Habits:  Tea  and  coffee  in  excess.  Sex  habits.  Smoking. 

Direct  causation:  (1)  Neighborhood  companions  with  whom  he  began 
stealing  and  from  whom  he  received  early  (2)  bad  sex  knowledge.  On  the 
basis  of  this  there  has  arisen  a  definite  (3)  mental  conflict/  Boy  gives  a 
very  clear  account  of  this  and  of  his  ideation — sex  words  associated  with 
thoughts  about  stealing.  (4)  Unintelligent  home  control  and  discipline. 
Much  afraid  of  his  harsh  father.  (5)  Earlier  school  dissatisfaction  due  to 
the  boy’s  great  dislike  of  a  certain  teacher. 

Outlook:  Clear  that  this  boy  has  many  needs  and  that  conditions  under 
which  he  has  been  living  are  extremely  unfortunate.  His  family  has  taken 
a  strong  attitude  against  him  without  knowing  anything  about  the  ex¬ 
periences  he  has  had  or  the  causes  back  of  his  behavior.  They  have  not 
made  the  least  attempt  to  live  in  better  neighborhoods,  though  they  know 
the  boy  has  associated  with  bad  companions.  Unlikely  that  he  can  make 
good  under  present  family  conditions  and  in  the  neighborhood  where  he 
has  had  so  many  bad  experiences.  Should  be  placed  in  another  home  and 
receive  aid  in  overcoming  his  sex  habits,  then  his  enuresis  may  cease.  Al¬ 
together  he  should  improve  much  after  this  exploration  of  his  conflict  if 
he  has  any  sort  of  chance  to  build  up  other  and  better  ideas  and  mental 
interests.  Could  well  be  pushed  ahead  in  school.  He  naturally  has  good 
reading  interests  and  is  interested  in  boys’  clubs.  For  general  upbuilding 
should  recommend  good  country  home,  stopping  smoking,  and  should  not 
be  allowed  tea  and  coffee.  His  native  ability  and  many  good  traits  ought 
to  make  it  possible  to  succeed  with  him.  We  should  receive  frequent  re¬ 
ports  and  advise  about  details  as  necessary. 

It  may  be  that  just  the  above  form  of  summary  is  not  necessary 
(we  have  altered  our  method  several  times),  but  its  sequence  is  logi¬ 
cal:  There  is  the  individual  (1)  physically  and  (2)  mentally  (includ¬ 
ing  personality  and  character  traits)  and  this  (3)  is  what  he  has  done 
that  brings  him  to  our  notice;  (4)  here  are  the  main  backgrounds  of 
his  life  as  we  can  know  them  by  inquiry  and  ( 5 )  such-and-such  appear 
to  be  the  definite  elements  of  causation.  Putting  together  all  the 
above,  the  (6)  outlook  and  recommendations  are  to  be  stated. 


JUVENILE  COURTS  AND  PROBATION 


1017 


If  anything  is  to  be  omitted  it  is  the  elements  of  the  background 
that  are  not  presumably  causative.  In  skillfully  prescribing  treat¬ 
ment  for  delinquency  the  delinquent’s  make-up  of  body,  mind,  and 
character,  and  the  causes  of  his  delinquent  trends  are  never  to  be 
left  out  of  consideration. 

Greatest  needs  of  juvenile  courts.  The  very  greatest  needs  of  juve¬ 
nile  courts  are  those  things  which  make  for  practical  success  in  the 
job  at  hand — alteration  of  conduct  tendencies.  If  not  striving  for  the 
best  accomplishment,  for  what  is  the  court  existing  ?  The  first  step 
toward  measuring  success  and  failure  in  the  juvenile  court  can  be  made 
only  by  taking  scientific  account  of  the  human  material  treated  and 
the  causes  of  delinquency  as  specifically  met  with.  The  next  step  is 
the  relating  of  this  scientific  knowledge  to  outcomes.  If  the  expense 
deters  from  undertaking  scientific  study,  consider  what  $20  to  $30 
spent  in  diagnosis,  in  carefully  calculating  what  ought  to  be  done, 
amounts  to  in  the  light  of  the  heavy  cost  of  a  failure,  namely,  a 
delinquent  career ;  or  the  hundreds  of  dollars  that  institutional  treat¬ 
ment  will  mean ;  or  what  months  of  poorly  directed  effort  in  probation 
will  entail. 

If  it  is  alleged  that  lack  of  time  prevents,  let  us  state  that  usually 
a  satisfactory  study  can  be  made  in  a  few  hours  of  well-organized 
work  (with  the  aid,  of  course,  of  the  ordinary  official  reports  and  with 
special  appointments  made).1  With  a  staff  equipped  to  obtain  the 
social  and  other  background  facts  and  to  make  the  physical  and 
psychological  investigations  at  the  same  time,  a  well-rounded  study 
can  be  made  in  a  comparatively  short  period.  And  what  are  three, 
four,  five,  or  even  more  hours  spent  on  this  important  task  of  attempt¬ 
ing  to  find  the  right  direction  in  which  to  work,  in  comparison  with 
months  and  perhaps  years  of  possibly  poorly  guided  endeavor,  whether 
the  child  is  on  probation  or  in  an  institution  ?  Or  consider  the  possible 
value  of  such  diagnostic  effort  as  against  no  endeavor  at  all  to  strike 
at  any  real  source  of  trouble,  because  such  source  was  not  known  to 

1  It  may  be  of  interest  to  state  that  our  experience  is  proving  the  practicability 
of  studying  the  majority  of  delinquents  in  an  office  in  a  building  apart  from  the 
court,  without  provision  for  observational  or  other  detention.  The  advantages 
are  mainly  the  creating  of  a  good  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  delinquent  and  his 
family  and  the  avoidance  of  the  moral  dangers  of  detention.  If,  as  is  occasionally 
necessary,  cases  have  to  be  seen  over  and  over  they  can  return  in  the  spirit  that 
one  continues  consultations  in  the  office  of  a  physician. 


ioi8 


PROBLEM  OF  CRIMINALITY 


exist.  If  lack  of  supply  of  scientific  students  of  delinquency  deters, 
then  more  good  workers  must  be  trained  in  this  field — as  they  have  to 
be  trained  for  any  other  technical  undertaking. 

First  and  last,  it  can  be  said  about  this  whole  matter  of  the  scien¬ 
tific  study  of  delinquents  that  as  it  stands  now  the  juvenile  court  for 
the  most  part  is  in  a  very  uncritical  stage.  The  effectiveness  of  its 
measures,  to  say  nothing  of  its  possibilities,  are  very  littje  gauged. 
The  juvenile  court,  so  far,  is  a  fine-spirited  adventure,  perhaps  carried 
out  in  a  high-minded  and  sympathetic  way,  but  with  no  ledger  worthy 
of  the  name  for  balancing  expenditures  of  effort  over  against  success 
and  failure.  The  scientific  spirit  introduced  into  the  juvenile  court 
will  ennoble  the  whole  procedure ;  it  will  make  the  work  more  intelli¬ 
gent,  more  calculable ;  it  will  aid  sympathy  to  be  more  productive  of 
good  results. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


Abbott,  Edith,  789 
Abbott,  Grace,  748  ff. 

Abilities,  special,  362  ff. 

Accidents,  industrial,  607 
Addams,  Jane,  S3 
Adler,  Herman  M.,  353  ff. 
Administration,  of  criminal  law,  867  ff. ; 
of  pensions,  747 ;  of  public  welfare, 
787  ff.;  of  relief,  662  ff.,  670,  671  ff., 
678  ff. 

Admission,  671  ff. 

Adolescence,  198,  201  , 

Aim  of  moral  action,  20  ff.,  53 
Alcoholic  deterioration,  831 
Alcoholic  psychosis,  427 
Alexander,  19 
Aliens,  256 

Allen,  Edward  E.,  467  ff. 

Almshouses,  671  ff. 

Altruism,  20  ff.,  41  ff.,  48  ff.;  unregu¬ 
lated,  8,  50 

American  Association  for  Labor  Legis¬ 
lation,  627  ff. 

American  Bar  Association,  283,  288, 
289 

American  Engineering  Council,  594  ff. 
American  Institute  of  Criminal  Law 
and  Criminology,  837,  838,  872,  933, 
981 

American  Journal  of  Sociology ,  577, 
694 

American  Judicature  Society,*  936 
Amputations,  498 
Anarchism,  98 

Anderson,  V.  V.,  826  ff.,  829,  832 
Anthropological  theory  of  crime,  805  ff. 
Anxiety,  583 

Applied  Economics,  Bureau  of,  564  ff. 
Aquinas,  Thomas,  8 
Aristotle,  25,  67,  71,  77,  85,  96,  hi, 
166 

Army  tests,  336 
Associated  Charities,  714 
Association  for  Improving  the  Condi¬ 
tion  of  the  Poor,  730 
Asymmetry,  806 
Atavism,  805  ff.,  808  ff. 

Attlee,  C.  R.,  641  ff. 


Auburn  prison,  950  ff.,  970;  system, 
945  ff- 

Auerbach,  Murray  A.,  671  ff. 

Baby  welfare  stations,  737 
Bahnsen,  J.,  213 
Bain,  21,  211,  212 
Baldwin,  Roger  N.,  981,  992 
Ballantine,  Henry  W.,  872  ff. 

Bar,  the,  930  ff. 

Barnardo,  Dr.  Thomas  P.,  755  ff. 
Barnes,  Harry  Elmer,  942  ff. 

Bates,  Sanford,  880 
Bateson,  347  ff. 

Beccaria,  862 

Beggars,  15*2 

Belden,  Evelina,  997 

Bell,  Alexander  Graham,  466,  476 

Benevolence,  48  ff.,  62  ff. 

Bentham,  36,  53,  853,  862 
Bergson,  301 
Bertillon,  173,  838  ff. 

Best,  Harry,  449,  801 
Binet,  Alfred,  353  ff.,  359  ff-,  37°  ff., 
373 

Birth  control,  326 
Birth  rate,  323 
Birth  registration,  733 
Blackstone,  256,  258,  259,  276,  849 
Blindness,  440  ff. 

Boarding  out,  756 
Boas  scale,  731 
Bodio,  816 

Booth,  Charles,  512  ff.,  545  ff.,  574,  575 
Bosanquet,  Bernard,  67  ff.,  79  ff. 
Bowers,  Paul  E.,  826,  827 
Bowley,  Arthur  L.,  173  ff. 

Brace,  Charles  Loring,  756 
Bradley,  24,  27,  82 
Braille,  484 

Breckinridge,  Sophonisba  P.,  787  ff. 
Breckinridge  and  Abbott,  991 
Brockway,  Z.  R.,  948,  949,  962  ff. 
Bronner,  Augusta  F.,  358  ff.,  1009 
Brooklyn,  638  ff. 

Brutality,  955 
Bryant,  Louise  S.,  736 
Bryce,  20 


1019 


1020 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


Budgets,  workmen’s,  547,  5 50  ff . ;  his¬ 
tory  of,  559  ff.;  minimum  of  subsist¬ 
ence,  564  ff. 

Bullock,  Charles  J.,  554,  556,  558 
Bureau  of  Applied  Economics,  564  ff., 
57i  ff. 

Burleigh,  Edith  N.,  981  ff. 

Buying,  769,  770 

Cannon,  Walter  B.,  318 
Carlisle,  Chester  Lee,  433  ff. 

Carver,  Thomas  Nixon,  1,  217  ff. ,629ft. 
Case  study,  1003  ff.;  summaries,  1015 
Casual  laborers,  515  ff. 

Cattell,  322,  324 
Census  of  feebleminded,  409 
Census  Bureau,  391  ff.,  425  ff->  44°ff-> 
452  ff. 

Centralized  administration,  678  ff., 
787  ff. 

Chamber  of  Commerce,  780 
Chapin,  Robert  Coit,  559  ff.,  565,  567, 
568,  732 

Character,  bad,  54;  basis  of,  205  ff.; 
building,  6,  186  ff.;  definition,  209; 
and  habit,  209  ff. 

Charity,  63,534;  indiscriminate,  10,  50, 
65,  158;  state  boards  of,  787  ff. 
Charity  organization  movement,  662, 
7i4 

Charity  Organization  Society,  London, 
83,  644,  689,  692 
Child  labor,  266 

Child-placing,  755  ff.;  definition,  757 
Child  protection,  755  ff. 

Child  welfare,  standards,  764  ff. 
Children,  crippled,  491  ff. 

Children’s  Aid  Society,  755,  756 
Children’s  Bureau,  744  ff .,  748,  764  ff., 
788,  991,  994,  995,  996,  997,  1002, 
1003 

Church,  93 

Chute,  Charles  L.,  996,  1001 
Citizenship,  education  for,  171 
Class  distinctions,  256 
Cleveland,  184,  494  ff.,  780  ff.,  841  ff. 
Climate  and  crime,  815 
Clinics,  735 

Codification  of  laws,  283  ff. 
Coeducation,  322 
Collectivistic  formula,  134 
Colony  system,  438  ff. 

Commercial  agencies,  4 
Common  good,  20  ff. 

Commons,  John  R.,  636 
Community  Fund  campaign,  780  ff. 
Community  trust,  777 


Conformity,  242,  274 
Conklin,  Edwin  G.,  305  ff.,  309  ff. 
Consanguinity,  381,  465 
Consciousness  of  kind,  243 
Constraint,  effects  of,  244  ff. 
Constructive  democracy,  217  ff. 
Constructive  legislation,  281  ff. 
Constructive  philanthropy,  236  ff. 
Consumption,  nonproductive,  228 
Control,  boards  of,  792  ff.;  social,  109, 
121,  240  ff.,  248  ff. 

Convict  labor,  956  ff. 

Cooley,  Charles  Horton,  1 
Cooperation,  5,  in,  117,  253,  844;  of 
agencies,  713,  769  ff.;  voluntary,  40 
Co-operative  movement,  589 
Corruption,  128 
Cosmopolitanism,  231 
Cost  of  production,  221 
Councils  of  social  agencies,  769  ff. 
County  jail,  882 
Courts,  281  ff. 

Crafts,  L.  W.,  374 

Crime,  cause  of  poverty,  576;  causes, 
815  ff.;  definition,  803,  804;  eco¬ 
nomic  condition,  820;  illiteracy, 
820;  immigration,  822  ff.;  occupa¬ 
tion,  818  ff.;  religion,  818;  rural,  816, 
817 

Criminal,  100,  155;  defectives,  414;  E. 
London,  513;  habitual,  854;  hered- 
ity,  383;  procedure,  867  ff.;  respon¬ 
sibility,  872  ff.;  statistics,  834  ff. 
Criminal  law,  administration,  867  ff., 
886  ff.;  American,  927  ff.;  definition, 
804 ;  English,  921  ff. 

Criminality,  803  ff. ;  heredity,  814;  and 
mental  condition,  826  ff.;  statistics, 
834 

Criminals,  identification,  838  ff. 
Cripples,  486  ff. ;  Birmingham,  census 
of,  486;  children,  491  ff.;  Cleveland, 
494  ff.;  New  York,  497 
Criteria,  of  child  welfare,  764  ff. ;  of  con¬ 
trol,  248  ff. ;  of  social  survey,  184-185 
Criterion,  moral,  132  ff.;  of  principle, 
272;  of  science,  184-185;  of  social 
worth,  334 

Criticism  of  contemporary  method, 
151  ff. 

Culture,  47,  62  ff. 

Curative  treatment,  647  ff. 

Dactyloscopy,  839  ff. 

Davenport,  306,  320,  429 
Davies,  559,  560 
Davis,  Katherine  B.,  832 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


1021 


Deaf-mutism,  452  ff. 

Death-rate,  339 
Death  registration,  753 
Defective  delinquents,  414,  826  ff., 

1003  ff. 

Defectiveness,  353  ff. 

Deformity,  486  ff. 

Degeneracy,  376  ff. 

Delinquency,  see  Crime,  Criminality 
de  Maistre,  Joseph,  848 
Democracy,  39  ff.,  123  ff.,  217  ff.,  230 
Dependency,  665;  causes,  574  ff.  See 
Poverty 

Desertion,  739  ff. 

Desertion  bureau,  742,  743 
Despotism,  99 
Determent,  850  ff. 

Development  of  personality,  121 
Devine,  Edward  T.,  548  ff. 
de  Vries,  301 

Dewey,  John,  27,  41  ff.,  53  ff.,  125  ff., 
132  ff.,  203  ff. 

Dietary,  963.  See  Malnutrition,  Budg¬ 
ets,  workmen’s 

Difficulties  in  criminal  procedure, 
894  ff.,  911  ff.,  917  ff. 

Disabled  civilians,  497  ff.,  501  ff. 
Disablement,  853 

Discipline,  246  » 

Discretion,  administrative,  908 
Dissipation,  repression  of,  260  ff. 

Doll,  E.  A.,  370  ff. 

Domestic  Relations,  Court  of,  743 
Domestic  subjection,  257 
Drafting  bureaus,  285  ff. 

Drink,  576,  577 
Drug  deterioration,  831 
Drunkards,  215,  524 
Dugdale,  Richard  L.,  376  ff. 
Duplication,  771 
Durkheim,  72 

Duty,  29  ff.,  86  ff.,  119,  153;  versus 
expediency,  88  ff. 

Dwight,  Louis,  945,  946 
Dwight,  Theodore  W.,  948 

Economic  condition  and  crime,  820 
Economic  cost  of  disability,  497  ff. 
Economic  factors,  592  ff. 

Economic  laws,  218 
Economic  research,  592  ff. 

Economics,  2,  8  ff. 

Eden,  Sir  Frederick  Morton,  559,  560 
Education,  for  citizenship,  1 71 ;  criti¬ 
cism,  170  ff.;  of  deaf  and  blind, 
467  ff.;  of  feeble-minded,  393  ff.; 
moral,  6,  23,  186  ff. 


Egoism,  20  ff.,  39,  41  ff . 

Elberfeld  system,  659,  690,  691,  694  ff. 
Elderton,  Ethel  M.,  343 
Ellwood,  Charles  A.,  1 
Elmira  Reformatory,  947  ff. 
Employment  exchanges,  624,  628 
End,  moral,  20  ff. 

Enforcement  of  law,  867  ff.;  standards 
of,  262 

Engel,  Ernst,  558 
Engel’s  Law,  557 
English  convict,  808  ff. 

English  criminal  law,  921  ff. 

Enriques,  F.,  184-185 
Environment,  342 ;  and  crime,  810  ff., 
815  ff.;  definition,  717;  effect,  384  ff. 
Epilepsy,  386,  435  ff.,  438,  805  ff.,  831 
Equality,  70  ff.,  2038.,  217  ff.,  220, 
255  ff. 

Espionage,  953,  954 
Estabrook,  Arthur  H.,  376  ff. 

Ethics,  and  economics,  8ff.;  and  politics, 
17  ff.;  practical,  14,  15,  90;  scope, 
2  ff.,  nff.;  of  the  State,  92  ft.,  103  ft., 
hi  ff.,  125  ff.;  theory  of  moral  pur¬ 
pose,  20  ff. 

Eubank,  Earle  Edward,  739  ff. 

Eugenic  Review ,  140,  344  ff . 

Eugenics,  311ft.;  definition,  349;  lim¬ 
itations,  332  ff.;  practical,  328  ft. 
Eugenics  Record  Office,  377,  431 
Eutechnics,  351 
Eutopias,  351 
Evidence,  906  ff. 

Evil,  26;  of  penal  system,  950  ft. 
Evolution,  124,  139,  142  ft.,  309  ft.;  of 
juvenile  court,  991  ff.;  of  Poor  Law, 
641  ff. 

Executive,  762 
Expediency,  88  ff. 

Factory  legislation,  266 
Fagan,  Bernard  J.,  1001 
Failure,  666 

Family,  93,  821,  939;  ethics  of,  103  ff. ; 

social  work  with,  707  ff.,  715  ff. 
Family ,  The ,  719  ff. 

Family  Welfare  Society,  714 
Faries,  John  C.,  497  ff. 

Fawcett,  586 

Fay,  Edward  Allen,  460  ff. 

Fecundity,  323;  of  Jukes,  381 
Federal  aid,  748  ff. 

Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Educa¬ 
tion,  510 

Federated  American  Engineering  So¬ 
cieties,  594  ff. 


1022 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


Federations,  financial,  769  ft.;  Cleve¬ 
land,  780 

Feeble-minded,  census  of,  391  ff . ;  crim¬ 
inal,  831;  definition,  370  ff.;  educa¬ 
tion,  393  ff. 

Feeble-mindedness,  heredity  of,  390 

Felony,  definition,  804 

Fernald,  Grace  M.,  374 

Fernald,  Guy,  355 

Fernald,  Mabel  R.,  827 

Fernald,  Walter  E.,  393  ff.,  408  ff. 

Ferri,  860 
Fetter,  F.  A.,  703 

Financial  federations,  769  ff.;  in  Cleve¬ 
land,  780  ff.;  subsidies,  699  ff. 
Finger-print  system,  839  ff. 

Fish,  Frederick  P.,  508  ff. 

Fleisher,  Alexander,  699  ff. 

Flexner,  Bernard,  981,  991,  992 
Flood,  Everett,  435  ff. 

Folks,  Homer,  703,  993 
Forgotten  Man,  151  ff. 

Forster,  F.  W.,  262 
Fosdick,  Raymond  B.,  838  ft. 
Frankfurter,  Felix,  841  ff. 

Freedom  of  thought,  259  ff. 

Fresh-air  classes,  735,  736 
Fresh-air  funds,  738 
Freund,  Ernst,  255  ff.,  270  ft.,  281  ff. 
Fry,  Elizabeth  Gurney,  943 

Gallaudet,  Edward  M.,  475 
Gallaudet,  Thomas  Hopkins,  467,  470, 
471,  472 

Galton,  149,  300,  314,  316,  322,  326, 
349 

Garofalo,  806 

Genius,  24,  40 

George,  Henry,  574 

George  Junior  Republic,  951,  967 

Giddings,  Franklin  H.,  1,  240  ff. 

Giving,  772  ff. 

Glueck,  Bernard,  826,  827,  950,  1003 

Goddard,  Henry  H.,  390 

Good,  moral,  20  ff.,  30  ff.,  35  ff.,  53  ff.; 

as  self-realization,  53  ff. 

Goring,  Charles,  808  ff. 

Government, distrust  of,  126.  See  Social 
control,  Legislation 

Governmental  agencies,  5,  92  ff.,  251  ff., 
255  ff.;  limitations,  290  ff.,  681  ff.;  re¬ 
form  in,  130 
Grants,  699  ff. 

Gray,  B.  Kirkman,  251  ff. 

Great  men,  24,  40 
Green,  T.  H.,  30  ff.,  853 
Guerry,  815,  834 


Habit,  209  ff. 

Hadley,  127 

Hamburger,  Amy  M.,  494  ff. 
Happiness,  35  ff. 

Harlotry,  382 
Harper,  Grace  S.,  509 
Harrison,  Shelby  M.,  180 
Hart,  Hastings  H.,  756,  763,  879  ff. 
Heacox,  Frank  L.,  826,  827 
Health,  value,  205  ff.;  public,  263  ft. 
Healy,  William,  355,  995,  996,  1003  ff., 
1009 

Hedonism,  33  ff. 

Hegel,  29,  849 

Henderson,  Charles  Richmond,  694  ff., 
962  ff. 

Henry,  Sir  Edward,  839 
Heredity,  299  ff . ;  and  criminality,  814; 
and  deaf-mutism,  455  ff.,  460  ff.;  and 
degeneracy,  376  ff.;  and  feeble-mind¬ 
edness,  390;  and  insanity,  428  ff. 
Herschel,  Sir  William,  839 
Higgs,  Henry,  561 

History,  of  budgetary  studies,  559  ff . ; 
of  care  of  feeble-minded,  393  ff.;  of 
criminal  statistics,  834  ff . ;  of  edu¬ 
cation  of  deaf  and  blind,  467  ft.; 
of  Federation  in  Cleveland,  780  ff.; 
of*Juvenile  Court,  991ft.;  of  legis¬ 
lation,  255  ff.;  of  penology,  942  ft.; 
of  Poor  Law,  641ft.;  of  procedure, 
921  ff. 

Hobbes,  42,  70,  99,  no,  858 
Hobhouse,  Leonard  T.,  11  ff.,  135  ff., 
332  ff. 

Hocking,  William  Ernest,  186  ff. 
Hoover,  Herbert,  594  ff. 

Housing,  546,  570,  582,  734 
Howard,  John,  943 

Howe,  Samuel  Gridley,  395  ft.,  475,  479, 
480,  483 

Human  inheritance,  305  ff. 

Human  talent,  629  ff. 

Hurry,  Jamieson  B.,  581  ff.,  584 
Huxley,  149 
Hysteria,  420  ff. 

Idealism,  79  ft.,  146,  236 
Ideals,  724;  social,  61,  349  ft. 
Identification,  838  ff. 

Illegitimate,  766 
Illiteracy  and  crime,  820 
Immigration,  316 
Immigration  and  crime,  822  ff. 

Income,  592  ff. 

Individual,  versus  society,  22,  105  ft.; 
versus  state,  niff. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


Individual  effort,  500 
Individualistic  school,  133 
Individuality,  715 
Individualization,  722  ff 913,  914 
Infancy,  aid,  748  ff.  f 
Innocent,  879  ff. 

Insanity,  417  ff.,  425  ff.;  causes,  433  ff.; 
census,  425  ff.;  and  crime,  872  ff.; 
heredity,  428  ff. 

Instinctive  tendencies,  49 
Instincts,  189  ff. 

Institutions,  for  criminals,  942  ff.;  for 
crippled,  491  ff.,  501  ff.;  for  deaf  and 
blind,  467  ff.;  for  dependents,  671  ff.; 
ethical,  92  ff.;  for  feeble-minded, 
391  ff.;  for  insane,  425  ff. 

Intelligence  levels,  1005 ;  quotient, 
359  ff.,  374,  1010 
Interest,  definition,  30 
Interests,  108;  organization  of,  30  ff. 
Interim  relief,  741 
International  problem,  132,  166 
Investigation,  173  ff.,  709  ff.;  of  crime, 

834  ff. 

Italians,  criminal,  824,  825 
Itard,  393 

Jails,  879  ff. 

James,  William,  33,  44,  49,  197,  209  ff. 
Jenks,  Jeremiah  W.,  290  ff. 

Jeter,  Helen  Rankin,  995 
Jewish  National  Desertion  Bureau, 
743 

Jones,  Henry,  27 

Judge,  868,  927  ff-  • 

Judge  Baker  Foundation,  1003 
Judgments,  moral,  12  ff. 

Jukes,  376  ff. 

Jury,  867  ff. 

Justice,  59  ff.,  67  ff.,  81,  217  ff.;  admin¬ 
istration,  886  ff.;  criminal,  841  ff., 
846  ff.,  886  ff. ;  distributive,  2198.; 
in  family  relations,  939 ;  preventive, 
938 

Juvenile  Court,  767,  991  ff.,  1017 
Juvenile  delinquents,  10038.;  Psycho¬ 
pathic  Institute,  1003 

Kant,  42,  54,  61,  197,  853 
Kellogg,  Paul  U.,  177,  178,  548 
Kelso,  Robert  W.,  678  ff. 

Killits  case,  983 

Kingsley,  Sherman  C.,  7808. 

Kleene,  Gustav,  5748. 

Kohler,  Joseph,  848 
Kohs,  Samuel  C.,  390 
Kraepelin,  428,  429 


Labor,  convict,  956  ff. ;  versus  capital, 
94 

Laissez-faire,  586,  587 
Lathrop,  Julia,  749,  750 
Laurie,  S.  S.,  98 

Law,  aim,  914  ff.;  criminal,  804,  867  ff., 
886  8.;  function,  890  ff.;  political 
and  moral,  178.;  and  public  opin¬ 
ion,  897,  898;  substantive,  933 
Law  of  proportionality,  218 
Laws,  economic,  218 
Leaders,  328.  See  Genius 
League  of  Nations,  166,  169 
Lee,  Joseph,  236  ff. 

Lee,  Porter  R.,  662  ff.,  707  ff. 

Legal  enactment  versus  morality,  18 
Legal  history,  255  ff. 

Legislation,  child-welfare,  768;  labor, 
2558.,  6098.,  619  ff.,  6278.;  limita¬ 
tions,  290  ff.;  moral,  fallacy,  153; 
social,  255  ff.,  586  ff. 

Legislative  program,  217-218;  limita¬ 
tions,  290  ff.,  867  ff.,  886  ff. 
Legislative  Reference  Service,  285  ff. 
Lenroot,  Katharine  F.,  991  ff. 

Leonard,  Christine  M.,  829,  832 
Le  Play,  558,  561 
Less  eligibility,  645  ff. 
Lewinski-Corwin,  728  ff. 

Liberty,  1148.,  126,  133,  2588. 
Lindsay,  577 
Locke,  70,  77,  102 
Lombroso,  Cesare,  805  ff.,  808  ff. 

Lotze,  10,  205 

Lowell,  Abbott  Lawrence,  291 
Lucas,  Charles,  947 

McCarthy,  Charles,  287 
McConnell,  Bishop  Francis  J.,  571  ff. 
MacCunn,  John,  205  ff. 

McDougall,  William,  199 
Mach,  E.,  184-185 
Mack,  Julian  W.,  991,  994 
Mackenzie,  William  Leslie,  734 
McLean,  F.  H.,  179,  664 
McMurtrie,  Douglas  C.,  487,  501  ff. 
McNaghten’s  case,  874  ff. 

Maconochie,  Captain  Alexander,  947 
Malnutrition,  582,  728  ff. 

Malthus,  574 

Management,  definition,  595 ;  financial 
federations,  769  ff.,  780  ff.;  public 
welfare,  787  ff . ;  responsibility,  6098.; 
and  workers,  61 1 
Mann,  Horace,  475,  476 
Manny,  Frank  A.,  731 
Marshall,  Alfred,  550  ff. 


1024 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


Marx,  Karl,  574 

Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Charity, 
756 

Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Educa¬ 
tion,  508  ff. 

Maternity  aid,  748  ff. 

Mayo-Smith,  Richmond,  815  ff. 
Medical  inspection  in  schools,  450 
Mendel,  Gregor,  301 
Mendelian  principles,  302  ff.,  305  ff. 
Mental  deficiency,  391  ff.,  1003  ff. 
Mental  Deficiency  Act,  372 
Mental  disease  and  delinquency,  826  ff. 
Mental  disorder,  417  ff.,  420  ff. 

Mental  equipment,  353  ff.,  358  ff. 
Mental  hygiene,  767 
Mental  tests,  353  ff.,  1003  ff. 
Metaphysics,  12,  13,  14 
Method,  social,  151  ff.  ;  social,  criticism 
of,  151  ff.,  164  ff.;  psychometric, 
353  ff. 

Middle  class,  522  ff. 

Midwives,  training  of,  450 
Mill,  John  S.,  36,  38,  209,  213 
Misdemeanant,  881  ff. 

Misdemeanor,  definition,  804 
Mitchell,  W.,  402 
Money-raising,  772  ff. 

Montesquieu,  858,  859 
Montessori,  Mme.,  191 
Moore,  George  Edward,  86  ff. 

Moral  education,  23,  245  ff. 

Moral  end,  as  common  good,  20  ff. 
Moral  good,  30  ff. 

Moral  judgments,  12,  27,  132  ff. 
Morality,  34,  58 
Moron,  training,  412  ff. 

Mosaic  Law,  886 
Mothers’  pensions,  744  ff. 

Motive,  46 
Mudge,  G.  P.,  347  ff. 

Muirhead,  John  H.,  n  ff.,  20  ff.,  209 
Munsterberg,  Emil,  585,  694  ff. 
Murders,  871 
Mutual  aid,  112 

Mutual  Welfare  League,  952,  965  ff. 
Myerson,  Abraham,  420  ff. 

National  Bureau  of  Economic  Re¬ 
search,  592  ff. 

National  Committee  for  the  Preven¬ 
tion  of  Blindness,  446  ff. 

Nationality  and  crime,  823  ff. 
Necessaries,  550  ff. 

Nettleship,  84,  429 
Neurasthenia,  420  ff. 

New  York  Academy  of  Medicine,  728  ff. 


New  York  Board  of  Estimate,  566  ff. 
New  York  Factory  Commission,  565, 
568 

Norton,  William  J.,  769  ff. 

Obligations,  125  ff.,  151  ff. 

Occupation  and  crime,  818  ff. 
Occupations,  of  blind,  442  ff . ;  of  deaf- 
mutes,  457 

Ogburn,  W.  F.,  564,  568,  569 
Ophthalmia  neonatorum ,  446,  449 
Oppenheimer,  Heinrich,  846  ff.,  874, 
876 

Oppenheimer,  Reuben,  991,  992 
Opportunity,  equal,  203  ff. 

Ordahl,  Louise  and  George,  827 
Organization,  of  charity,  662,  714;  of 
interests,  30  ff . ;  of  state  boards, 
787  ff. 

Orr,  Florence  I.,  302  ff.,  428  ff. 

Osborne,  Thomas  Mott,  950  ff.,  965  ff. 
Ought- judgments,  15 
Outdoor  relief,  658  ff.,  662  ff. 

Pain,  43 
Paley,  860,  862 

Parole,  986  ff.;  definition,  981 
Paulsen,  Fr.,  33 

Pauperism,  causes,  574;  as  hereditary 
taint,  344  ff.,  382 

Peabody,  Francis  Greenwood,  8  ff. 
Pearson,  Karl,  184-185,  328  ff.,  338, 
734 

Penn,  William,  942 
Pennsylvania  system,  944  ff. 

Perry,  Ralph  Barton,  30  ff. 
Personality,  62,  96,  723,  915,  1006  ;  def¬ 
inition,  715  ;  development,  121, 
715  ff.;  make-up,  366;  right  of,  255 
Philanthropy,  4,  236  ff. ;  versus  state, 
681  ff. 

Physical  culture,  963 
Physical  factors  in  crime,  81 5  ff. 
Pittsburgh  District,  571  ff. 

Pittsburgh  Survey,  177  ff.,  548  ff. 
Plato,  77,  83,  93,  95,  96,  128,  209 
Play,  196  ff. 

Pleasure,  33  ff. 

Poincare,  H.,  184-185 
Police  administration,  925 
Policy,  social,  2  ff. 

Political  abuse,  676 
Political  activity,  132  ff. 

Political  economy,  2,  157 
Political  institutions,  133 
Political  rights,  125  ff. 

Political  theories,  849  ff . 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


1025 


Politics,  127,  926;  and  ethics,  17  ff. 
Poor-law,  English,  264-265,  344  ft., 
641  ft.,  644  ff.,  651  ff. 

Pound,  Roscoe,  105  ff.,  886  ff.,  894  ff., 
911  ff.,  917  ff. 

Poverty,  512  ff.  ;  causes,  512  ff.,  523  ff., 
536ft.,  574 ff.;  East  London,  512  ff.; 
prevention,  592  ff. ;  primary,  536  ff . ; 
secondary,  534  ff. ;  and  its  vicious 
circles,  581  ff.;  York,  531  ff. 

Poverty  line,  539,  543 
Prevention,  of  blindness,  446;  of  de¬ 
generacy,  309  ff . ;  of  desertion,  739  ff . ; 
of  poverty,  592  ff.,  655  ff. 

Preventive  philanthropy,  236  ff. 

Prison,  criticism  of,  950  ff. 

Prisons,  history  of,  942  ff. 

Private  activity,  217  ff.,  681  ff. 
Probation,  981  ff.,  991  ff.;  definition, 
981 

Procedure,  criminal,  867  ff.,  886  ff.; 

English,  923  ff. 

Production,  594  ff. 

Professional  criminals,  854,  855 
Progress,  social,  124,  127,  135  ff.,  142  ff., 
167,  342,  897;  definition,  139,  147 
Prohibition  fallacy,  153,  273 
Prosecution,  929,  933  ff.;  petty,  937 
Psychoneuroses,  420  ff. 

Psychosis  and  crime,  831 
Public  agencies,  681  ff. 

Public  opinion,  218,  871,  872,  897,  898 
Public  welfare,  state  boards  of,  787  ff. 
Punishment,  100,  156,  245  ff.;  theories, 
846  ff.;  true  function,  856  ft. 
Purpose,  social,  1  ff. 

Quakers,  942  ff. 

Questionnaire,  181  ff. 

Quetelet,  834 

Race,  improvement  of,  310  ff.;  and  na¬ 
tivity  of  blind,  442 
Rashdall,  866 

Raymond,  Stockton,  722  ff. 

Realism,  146 
Records  of  crime,  834  ff. 

Red  Cross  Institute  for  Crippled,  497, 
501,  502,  503,  504,  5o8 
Reeder,  R.  R.,  725 
Reeves,  Edith,  486  ff.,  491  ff. 

Reform,  social,  criticism,  633,  153  ff., 
164  ft.;  limitations,  292 
Reformation,  criticism,  155 
Reformatories,  942  ff.,  962  ff. 
Reformer,  vice  of,  39  ff. 

Reforms  in  party  machinery,  129 


Registration  of  feebleminded,  410 
Rehabilitation,  508  ff. 

Relief,  719  ff.;  interim,  741,  742;  prin¬ 
ciples,  644  ff.;  public,  658  ff.,  662  ff. 
Religion,  and  crime,  818;  productive, 
224 

Rent,  547,  570 
Repression,  260  ff. 

Research,  need  of,  598 
Responsibility,  224,  595,  609  ff.;  crim¬ 
inal,  872  ff.;  departmental,  799  ff.; 
of  labor,  612  ff. 

Restraint,  social,  1 14  ff . ;  impatience  of, 
900,  901 

Retribution,  914,  915 
Rewards,  245  ff. 

Richmond,  Mary  E.,  715  ff. 

Right,  67,  87,  1 19;  of  personality,  255  ff. 
Rights,  86  ff.,  93,  161,  191,  255  ft.;  of 
aliens,  256;  natural,  119,  153,  901; 
political,  125  ff. 

Riley,  Thomas  J.,  658  ff.,  741 
Robinson,  James  Harvey,  164  ff. 
Robinson,  Louis  N.,  834  ff. 

Rosanoff,  A.  J.,  302  ff.,  428  ff. 

Ross,  Edward  A.,  240,  248  ff. 

Rossy,  C.  C.,  826,  827 
Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  22,  70,  71,  77, 
206 

Rowntree,  B.  Seebohm,  531  ff.,  542 
Rural  crime,  816,  817;  jurisdictions, 
928 

Ruskin,  John,  82 
Russell,  Bertrand,  188,  19c 

Safety,  public,  263  ff. 

Saleeby,  C.  W.,  584 
Saving,  223,  570 
Sayre,  Francis  B.,  269 
Schedule,  181  ff. 

School  lunches,  736,  737 

School  medical  inspection,  450 

Science,  159,  184,  185 

Scientific  study  of  delinquents,  1003  ff. 

Seager,  Henry  R.,  592  ff.,  619  ff. 

Seasons  and  crime,  816 

Segregation,  31 7  ff. 

Seguin,  E.,  393  ff. 

Selection,  natural,  140,  346 
Self-realization,  53  ff. 

Self-support,  488 
Seth,  James,  59  ff.,  92  ff. 

Settlement,  university,  234 
Sex-interest,  198 
Shaftesbury,  Lord,  79 
Sheppard-Towner  Act,  750  ff. 

Sherwell,  542 


1026 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


Sidgwick,  19 

Silence,  944  ff.,  952,  953 

Simon,  Theodore,  353  ff.,  370  ff.,  373 

Sin,  definition,  226,  803 

Sing  Sing,  950  ff. 

Slavery,  255  ff. 

Slingerland,  W.  H.,  755  ff.,  763 
Small,  Albion  W.,  1 
Smith,  Adam,  8,  9 
Smith-Hughes  Act,  510 
Social  administration,  6 
Social  case  work,  707  ff.,  715  ff.;  defi¬ 
nition,  716 
Social  classes,  151  ff. 

Social  contract,  28 

Social  control,  240  ff.,  248  ff.;  of  hered¬ 
ity,  299  ff.,  309  ff. 

Social  councils,  769  ff. 

Social  damage  of  Jukes,  386  ff. 

Social  ethics,  1  ff. 

Social  ideals,  349  ff. 

Social  insurance,  265 
Social  investigation,  3  ff.,  173  ff.,  841  ff. 
Social  legislation,  255  ff.;  principle, 
270  ff. 

Social  measures,  2  ff. 

Social  method,  2  ff.,  151  ff. 

Social  policy,  1  ff. 

Social  progress,  135  ff. 

Social  purpose,  1  ff. 

Social  question,  7  ff. 

Social  science,  1  ff. 

Social  self-control,  240  ff. 

Social  Service  Exchange,  712 
Social  surveys,  3  ff.,  176  ff.,  841  ff. 
Social  work,  229  ff.,  707  ff. 

Socialism,  297 

Society,  theory  of,  hi;  versus  indi¬ 
vidual,  22,  105  ff.;  versus  the  State, 
92  ff. 

Sociology,  1  ff. 

Socrates,  81,  102 
Solomon,  Harry  C.,  417  ff. 

Sovereignty,  98,  101 
Spencer,  Herbert,  20/41,  53,  103  ff.,  137 
Spinoza,  205,  209 
Sprattling,  William  E.,  438  ff. 
Springfield  Survey,  179,  183 
Standard,  of  comfort,  222  ;  of  life,  def¬ 
inition,  553;  of  living,  537  ff.,  550  ff., 
564  ff.;  of  living,  definition,  554 
Standardization,  principle  of,  273  ff. 
Standards,  68,  70;  of  child  welfare, 
764  ff . ;  of  institutions,  494 ;  moral, 
218;  of  parole,  986  ff.;  of  probation, 
981  ff. 

Stanford  Revision,  355,  359 


State,  an  end-in-itself,  96;  ethics  of, 
92  ff.,  103  ff.;  versus  individual, 
niff.;  versus  Jones,  874,  878;  versus 
philanthropy,  681  ff. 
State-interference,  98 
State  intervention,  251  ff. 

Statistical  investigation,  173  ff. 
Statistical  service,  616 
Statistics,  of  blind,  4408.;  of  criminals, 
815  ff.,  834  ff.;  of  deaf-mutes,  452  ft.; 
of  deformity,  486  ff . ;  of  dependency, 
574  ff.;  of  feeble-minded,  391  ff.;  of 
insane,  425  ff. 

Stearns,  A.  Warren,  826,  827 
Stephen,  Sir  James,  804 
Stephen,  Leslie,  43,  44 
Sterility,  812 
Sterilization,  317  ff. 

Stigmata,  810 
"Stool-pigeons,”  954,  969 
Streightoff,  554  ff. 

Stuckenberg,  J.  H.  W.,  1 
Subsidies,  699  ff. 

Subsistence  minimum,  564  ff. 
Substantive  law,  933 
Suicide,  28 

Sumner,  William  Graham,  57,  151  ff. 
Supervision,  253;  of  crippled,  494;  of 
feebleminded,  4o8ff.;  state,  763,  765; 
state,  versus  control,  792  ff. 

Survey,  social,  3  ff.,  173  ff.,  175  ff., 
184  ff.,  376  ff-,  512  ff.,  53i  ff-,  548  ff-, 
559  ff.,  562  ff.,  841  ff.,  886  ff. 

Surveys  of  cripples,  486  ff.,  494  ff ., 
497  ff- 

Sympathy,  36,  160 
Syphilis,  833 

Taft,  William  H.,  842,  8678. 

Tagore,  Sir  Rabindranath,  196 
Taylor,  Carl  C.,  176  ft. 

Taylor,  F.  M.,  99 

Teacher,  qualifications,  193 

Technique,  social,  2  ff.,  173  ft.,  176  ff. 

Temperance,  62,  63 

Terman,  355,  359 

Tests,  mental,  353  ff. 

Thom,  D.  A.,  437 

Thomson,  J.  Arthur,  142  ff.,  299  ff., 
349  ff- 

Thriftlessness,  repression  of,  260  ff. 
Torts,  definition,  803 
Towne,  Arthur  W.,  993 
Toynbee,  Arnold,  587 
Trachoma,  449 
Tracy,  Sheriff,  884 
Trade  unions,  589,  615 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS  AND  AUTHORS 


1027 


Trades,  instruction,  964 
Training  of  habit,  209  ff. 
Transcendental  theories,  848,  849 
Tuberculosis,  335,  606,  736 
Tufts,  James  H.,  41  ff.,  53  ff.,  125  ff., 
132  ff.,  203  ff. 

Unemployment,  525  ff.,  576,  583,  600 ff., 
619  ff.,  627  ff.,  667,  668 
Unemployment  insurance,  625,  629 
Uniform  state  laws,  289 
United  States  Bureau  of  the  Census, 
391  ff.,  425  ff.,  440  ff.,  452  ff. 

United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statis¬ 
tics,  569 

United  States  Children’s  Bureau, 
744  ff.,  991  ff. 

United  States  Immigration  Commis¬ 
sion,  822  ff. 

Veblen,  Thorstein,  196 
Vengeance,  903 
Vermont  plan,  883  ff. 

Vice,  950,  951;  definition,  226,  803 
Vicious  circles,  581  ff. 

Virtue,  61  ff.;  definition,  91,  226 
Vision,  defective,  607 
Vocational  education,  510 
Vocational  Education  Act,  749 
Volta  Bureau,  460,  476 
Voluntary  organization,  589  ff.,  683  ff. 


Von  Mayr,  834 
Von  Scheel,  816 
Von  Wiese,  Leopold,  698 

Wage  payment,  61 1 
Wages,  571  ff. 

War,  318  ff. 

Ward,  Lester  F.,  1 
Warner,  Amos  G.,  574  ff.,  703 
Waste,  594  ff.,  769  ff. 

Webb,  Sidney,  330,  681  ff. 

Webb,  Sidney  and  Beatrice,  587,  644  ff., 
651  ff. 

Weismann,  August,  300 
Wells,  H.  G.,  165,  167 
Whetham,  W.  C.  D.,  140 
White,  Alfred  T.,  659  ff. 

Wiglesworth,  340 

Will,  99  ff.,  190  ff.,  209  ff. ;  effort  of,  215 
Will  to  power,  200  ff. 

Wilson,  Lucius  E.,  723 

Wines,  Frederick  Howard,  803  ff.,  835 

Woods,  Robert  A.,  229  ff. 

Worker,  injured,  508  ff. 

Workhouse  system,  646  ff. 
Workmanship,  599 
Workmen’s  compensation,  506 
Wright,  Henry  C.,  793 
Wright,  Lucy,  494  ff. 

Yerkes,  Robert  M.,  355 


. 


■ 

aorrlA 

' 

' 

. 


< 

’  . 


~  — — 


. 


*■ 


» 

t 

Date  Due 


APR  12' 

35 

*. 

NCI/IT'36 

. 

/£  -  -Stf-3L 

.  Y9 

)  /?  , 

/  V 

uOCcunt  i 

JON  -3 ’49 

cep  i  

1969 

>i  fi\/ 

on 

nW 

ifoy  - , 

?  7GQ0 

3  mo 

• 

129093 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  HEIGHTS 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


Books  may  be  kept  for  two  weeks  and  may 
be  renewed  for  the  same  period,  unless  re¬ 
served. 

Two  cents  a  day  is  charged  for  each  book 
kept  overtime. 

If  you  cannot  find  what  you  want,  ask  the 
Librarian  who  will  be  glad  to  help  you. 

The  borrower  is  responsible  for  books  drawn 
on  his  card  and  for  all  fines  accruing  on  the 


same. 


